What is the process of polishing a piece of writing?

Answer 1

Polishing a piece of writing involves reviewing the document as to content, format, sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary.

• Does the writing actually say what you intended?
• Could it be said in a different way that may be better, more interesting or understandable?
• Are the paragraphs correctly set up as intended?
• Is the punctuation correct?
• Consider whether to use numeric values (500) or words (five hundred)?
• Are any words or phrases used too often or in the wrong way?
• Are words spelled correctly and was the correct homonym word used (i.e. there, their, theyr'e, to, too, two) ?
• Don't rely on grammar and spell checkers!

ADDED BY ANOTHER USER:

The process itself is called editing.

Importantly, all of the above steps--and countless more important things--should be followed during the initial writing itself, including making sure that you spell everything correctly, so that the editing process goes as smoothly as possible when it comes time for polishing.

Editing takes different forms based on whether you're preparing a research paper, an essay, a short story or book, or a report, and whether or not it's written or digital. Each of these kinds of documents has a different editing system and most require fastidious attention to detail.

For example, when writing a research paper, your information must be set up logically and sequentially, supported by references. Otherwise, it will make no sense. Among many additional step of "polishing", you must make sure that all of your citations match up to the notations in your document, and that all of your citations have been recorded correctly.

Another example is the writing of a book. During editing, it is critical to make sure that the plot/plots are tight, that there are no holes, and that any technical information you include is absolutely correct. There are detailed publishing standards for books and short stories and the document must comply with those standards. The editing process incorporates a review of those standards.

There is no one set of steps for polishing.

Your question is "What is the process OF polishing a piece of writing?" The answer is editing.

Had your question been "How do you polish a piece of writing?", or "What is the process FOR polishing a piece of writing," this answer would be far more wordy.

Nevertheless, sometimes we write things that people take different ways. Whatever your question really is, your answer lies in both of these responses.