Here are some issues to consider as you work on close revision of your writing.

Is it “correct”? Not because it’s the most important, but because it’s the easiest to talk about, start with sentence boundary issues. Do you have a complete sentence? In formal writing, you probably will want to avoid run-on sentences and fragments; in more informal writing, these may be acceptable occasionally, especially if they are serving some stylistic purpose. (There are other proofreading concerns here about things like verb form, pronoun agreement, spelling, apostrophe use, and so forth.)

Is it clear? This is often a matter of word choice. There’s a balance here. Of course, I want to encourage students to develop their vocabularies. But choosing “big words” over simple, clear alternatives does not necessarily make for better writing.  Though your writing voice may well be a bit more elevated than your speaking voice, you still want to sound natural, like yourself. If readers sense that you are trying to hard to impress at the expense of saying clearly what you mean, they may become resentful.

Sentence structures used can also affect clarity. Consider the difference between Hemingway here, from his short story “In Another Country”

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

and Henry James, from Washington Square

For a man whose trade was to keep people alive, he had certainly done poorly in his own family; and a bright doctor who within three years loses his wife and his little boy should perhaps be prepared to see either his skill or his affection impugned.  Our friend, however, escaped criticism:  that is, he escaped all criticism but his own, which was much the most competent and most formidable.  He walked under the weight of this very private censure for the rest of his days, and bore for ever the scars of a castigation to which the strongest hand he knew had treated him on the night that followed his wife’s death.

Each is considered a prose master and each style has its advantages, but if you are trying to communicate clearly and your natural voice is closer to Hemingway’s, don’t feel that you need to try to mimic James, just to impress some reader/teacher.

Is it concise? By this I don’t mean that you need to write in short sentences. This is not about length but rather about making sure that all of your words count, that your writing is like a hearty stew chunky with meat and vegetables, not some thin broth with only a few wilted bits of parsley. Here, again, you want to keep your reader in mind by being as efficient as you can in delivering your information. This does not mean that you write quickly, giving only the main bullet-points you want to communicate, but that you use your space efficiently to pack it with as much information and details as you can.

In trying to make your writing concise, look out for repetition of ideas and overuse of the verb “to be” (including sentences that start with “There is/are…”).  Here are a useful page by Dennis Jerz on eliminating redundancy, a page from Capital Community College on Writing concise sentences, andthis video from the Writing Center, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Here’s a student sample:

The walls are bare like everything else. The color of the walls are white and there is nothing on the walls. There is one thing on one of the walls. That one thing is a bulletin board. If you are facing the door to enter the office just to the left of the door is there this bulletin board is located. Tacked to this board has all the different leagues with all the teams rankings and schedules.

How could you revise this to tighten it up?

Is it well-constructed? Here I’m thinking about how the clauses are put together and how the elements of the sentence are ordered.

If you haven’t learned about clauses earlier, check out UNC-Chapel Hill has a handout on sentence patterns and Capital Community College a page on Clauses: the essential building blocks. Sentence-combining skills also has some useful info.

One general guideline (not an absolute rule) is that the most important piece of information in the sentence should be in the main clause. Also, keep in mind that generally the beginnings and ends of sentences are the positions of greatest emphasis.