## 9.1. Rewrite your draft

The first time you write something, don’t care about grammar, style, and typos. Just leave them in. When you are thinking about the substance of an argument, you do not want to be distracted by cosmetic issues. In this way you can speed up the writing. After you have written a first draft, go over the text carefully. Correct the mistakes and improve the text.

When you go over your draft, check whether claims you made are sufficiently justified by theoretical arguments and previous research. In the introduction and theory section, add references to previous research that support the claims. Make sure that the text is a fair representation of the entire research. Avoid selective citation of previous research by mentioning only those studies that support a certain argument and leaving out countervailing evidence.

Screen your text for sentences who have written in the passive voice. Rewrite them as active sentences. For instance: consider the sentence “using a passive voice leaves determination of the source of the initiative up to the reader”. Rewrite that sentence as follows: “if you use a passive voice, you do not tell the reader who the actor is”. You will see that this sentence, in the active voice, is much clearer.

Rewrite sentences in which you use the same word twice, such as sentences in which you use the word ‘twice’ twice. For instance: a better alternative formulation of the sentence “Starting a sentence with the word ‘starting’ will not earn you a death sentence, but is starting to unnerve your readers.” is “You may annoy your readers if you put the word ‘starting’ at the beginning of a sentence.”

Remove brackets. Brackets (like these) signal to the reader that the content between them is not really important. Well, if the content is not important: then why include the diversion? In my experience, sentences placed between brackets are often important, but not yet thought-through. In these cases they raise more questions than they answer. So if you find yourself putting sentences in brackets, try to rewrite these sentences into the running text, or cut them altogether.