Following is a short piece of writing as it might appear when the writer has completed the first draft. As usual, to be able to deal with the piece effectively we need to know the reason why it was written and the reader it was intended for. Let us suppose that a local dealership has decided to sponsor a competition for the best essay of not more than 600 words on the subject of "The Future of the Automobile." The first prize is $100 and publication in the local newspaper. The readers, therefore, are both the competition judges—say, the owner of the dealership, the editor of the newspaper, and a high school English teacher—and the rest of the townsfolk.The Future of the Automobile Is it possible to imagine a future in which the automobile plays no part? Yes, it is possible, but the prospect is a scary one. Imagine the highways of this country deserted. Imagine the streets of our great cities quiet. Imagine trade and industry at a standstill, for there are no vehicles left to take goods where they are meant to go. Imagine the sky and the ocean empty of powered vehicles, too, for whatever kills off the automobile is going to mean the kiss of death for the airplane, the ship, and the railroad too. A world at peace or a dead world? That is the question. Our lives are shaped by our cars. The invention of the automobile at the end of the 19th century brought about a great leap forward in human freedom. A man who has his own transport is a free man. We are living in a go-where-you-like-any-time society. We like living in it and we are not going to give it up easily. And if the ordinary person could be persuaded or forced to part with his car, their are all the commercial interests—the companies who make vehicles, the companies who sell them, the companies who drill oil out of the ground, and the countries whose economies depend on oil—who are not going to lie down and watch themselves going bankrupt. Can you imagine them letting this happen? I can't. But the oil can't be drilled forever. It is a finite resource. We have gotten used to the prophets of doom not coming true. They said the oil would not last into the 21st century, but it has. However, one day it will run out. In the meantime, the pollution in our cities is getting worse, and the climate is changing. Emissions from internal-combustion engines have been identified as a major contributor to global warming. There would be some advantages from the disappearance of the automobile. Cleaner air, especially in the cities, and a more predictable climate. As I see it, human society is caught between a rock and a hard place. Our desire for freedom will prevent us from letting the automobile go, while our desire for survival will ultimately compel us to adapt to new global realities. What is the solution? Exercise is good for you, but I don't see any present or future politician being able to persuade the average American to give up his car in favor of walking or cycling. The answer must be to adapt the automobile to suit the realities. The first necessity is to discover a new fuel to drive the vehicles of the future. We know that automobile manufacturers are already experimenting with electric cars, but so far it has been difficult to store enough electricity inside to enable an electric-powered vehicle to go anything like as far as a gas-powered vehicle. For all we know they may have already discovered a new type of fuel source that does not have this disadvantage, but the rest of the world doesn't know about it yet. Peering into my crystal ball, I foresee that the automobiles of the future will run on hydrogen. Experiments to produce a hydrogen-powered car are already being made. There is an abundance of this gas on the earth—it is the most abundant element in the universe—and it can be burned without producing carbon dioxide—the gas that is most responsible for global warming. That is where the future of the automobile lies. It will be a smaller, cheaper machine for the benefit of the millions of people in the Third World who will one day want to enjoy the advantages that developed nations already enjoy. And it will run on hydrogen. In its present form, the piece has 630 words, so it is over the limit and will need to be pruned. More important, in its present form it is unlikely to win any prizes. Let us see if by applying the questions in the checklist above, the writer can give this entry a better chance.The First Phase of RevisionThe purpose of the first phase of revision is to deal with large-scale issues: Does the text fulfill the original purpose? No, it does not, in one obvious respect: It is too long. Does it fulfill the more general purpose of presenting an interesting account of the topic? Up to a point, perhaps. Does it cover all relevant aspects of the subject? The answer is again obviously no. There is a great deal more that could be said. But it is a very large topic, and the writer has rightly attempted to narrow it down. It is fairly obvious that he or she is not a technical or scientific expert who might have concentrated on seriously attempting to imagine the various ways in which automobile design and technology might evolve during the next 20 or 50 years. Instead, quite fairly, he or she has decided to concentrate on the basic idea that the future of the automobile will be determined by its indispensability to modern lifestyles on the one hand and its ecological impact on the other. If we ask whether all relevant aspects of the subject have been covered from this point of view in the space allowed, the answer is perhaps a cautious yes.Moving on, is there any irrelevant material? Yes. On revising the text, the writer might, for example, question the relevance of pointing out that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe? Nobody is going to send spacecraft out to collect hydrogen to burn in vehicle engines on earth. Conscious that his or her scientific knowledge is slight, the writer has thrown in this tidbit to impress, yet a desire to impress is not a sufficient motive for including anything. This remark should be cut.Are there gaps or thin sections? The writer might not feel very happy with the third paragraph. It seems "thin." Whether this is due to a lack of material or a fault in the writing is a moot point. The last sentence of that paragraph seems particularly weak. It tails off into nothing. The writer should mark that paragraph as requiring more attention.Is the material accurate or accurately presented? There would seem to be some inaccuracies at least in the presentation. The first paragraph conjures up an empty sky and ocean and then goes on to mention the railroad, but railroad trains are not noted for their ability to fly or float. The writer might also, for instance, feel slightly uneasy about the second sentence of the second paragraph. Looked at more closely, it seems to suggest that widespread use of the automobile followed almost immediately on its invention, whereas it was only in the early decades of the 20th century and the introduction of mass-production techniques by Henry Ford that automobiles began to appear in large numbers. That sentence also needs adjusting.Is the presentation clear and logical? There seems to be a lot of work still to be done in this respect. Two particularly glaring examples stand out: one at the beginning and one at the end.The first paragraph ends with a question that is never answered: "A world at peace or a dead world?" To follow this up with "That is the question," when you have no intention of distinguishing between the two types of world and your discussion immediately moves on to another subject, makes matters worse. The writer should realize that the discussion has to be reorganized to make the question relevant, or that the question itself, dramatic-sounding as it is, has to be dropped. The second option would be the easier one.The final paragraph introduces two new ideas: "the automobiles of the future will be smaller and cheaper" and "millions of people in the Third World" will want to own them. Where have these statements suddenly come from? The final paragraph should form a conclusion, and it is generally bad policy to introduce anything new when you are trying to draw the whole body of text together. If these ideas are to be retained, the writer should accommodate them elsewhere. The millions in the developing world might figure in the present second paragraph, which deals with the benefits of the automobile. The writer should perhaps try to include the idea of smaller and cheaper machines—smaller and cheaper by whose standards, incidentally?—in the paragraphs that envision new fuels.The basic structure of the essay on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis is the following: a vision of the future without automobiles—lives are shaped by cars—oil is running out—pollution and climate change—human society between a rock and a hard place—adapt the automobile—new fuel sources/electricity—new fuel source/hydrogen—conclusion. This structure is essentially viable. It would probably benefit by being made more explicit. Rereading the text, the writer might spot that the "rock and a hard place" paragraph stands out from the others because it is the only one in which he or she comments directly on the situation. It might be recycled to provide a more explicit pointer to the direction the argument is going to take and/or to fill out the conclusion after the "new" material there is relocated.The language used by the writer is unlikely to tax the reader's understanding. Its tone is rather uncertain, however, and is not consistently maintained. The piece begins on an almost rhetorical note with repeated injunctions to the reader to "imagine," and the first paragraph ends with the portentous "That is the question." By the end of the second paragraph, however, the tone has become much more informal: "Can you imagine them letting this happen? I can't." There are further instances of informality—"the oil can't be drilled forever," "Exercise is good for you, but I don't see …" and "Peering into my crystal ball …" (not so much informal, perhaps, as jokey)—interspersed with more neutral or formal elements. One sentence in the fourth paragraph does not sound like the rest of the piece at all: "Emissions from internal-combustion engines have been identified as a major contributor to global warming" gives the impression that it has been copied from a source and incorporated into the text without regard to whether it matches the style of the surrounding material. (Instructors, competition judges, and the like are usually quick to spot anything that stands out in this way.) It is to be hoped that the writer would recognize these inconsistencies and decide, given that this is a competition essay, that the best tactic is probably to reduce the informal element and bring everything closer to a neutral tone.There is another aspect of the language in the first draft that the writer should attend to. At certain points, it is sexist or at the very least "noninclusive"; for example, "A man who has his own transport is a free man." A couple of sentences later, the writer seems to have second thoughts and refers to "an ordinary person." Nonsexist language should be used consistently throughout the piece.Cutting and PastingThe first phase of revision may involve moving large sections of text into new positions. The easiest way to do this with a computer word-processing program is simply to select the portion of text you wish to relocate, use the Cut command in the Edit facility to remove it to the Clipboard, then, when you have moved the cursor to the position where you want the text to appear, use the Paste command in Edit to reintroduce it. If you have printed out your work to revise it, you can literally cut out sections with scissors and reposition them on a blank sheet of paper using paste or adhesive tape.The Second Stage of RevisionIf the writer makes changes of the kind recommended in the previous subsection, the essay text may now look something like the following (new or repositioned material is shown in italics, and deletions from the first draft are shown in "strikethrough," having a line appear through text to indicate its omission):The Future of the Automobile Is it possible to imagine a future in which the automobile plays no part? Yes, it is possible, but the prospect is a scary one. Imagine the highways of this country deserted. Imagine the streets of our great cities quiet. Imagine trade and industry at a standstill, for there are no vehicles left to take goods where they are meant to go. Imagine the sky and the ocean empty of powered vehicles, too, for whatever kills off the automobile is going to mean the kiss of death for the airplane, and the ship, and the railroad too. A world at peace or a dead world? That is the question. All this is possible. But the prospect is a frightening one. As I see it, human society is caught between a rock and a hard place. Our lives are shaped by our cars the automobile. The invention of the automobile at the end of the 19th century When automobiles became widely available, they brought about a great leap forward in human freedom. A man who has his own transport is a free man. People who have their own transport are free. We are living in a go-where-you-like-any-time society. We like living in it and we are not going to give it up easily. Exercise is good for you, but I cannot see any present or future politician being able to persuade the average American to give up his car in favor of walking or cycling. And there are millions of people in the Third World who will one day want to enjoy the advantages that developed nations already enjoy. And Even if the ordinary person could be persuaded or forced to part with his car, their are all the commercial interests—the companies who make vehicles, the companies who sell them, the companies who drill oil out of the ground, and the countries whose economies depend on oil—who are not going to lie down and watch themselves going bankrupt. Can you imagine them letting this happen? I can't cannot.
But that is only part of the picture. Can we afford to be dependent on the automobile? The oil can't cannot be drilled forever. It is a finite resource. We have gotten are used to the prophets of doom not coming true. They said the oil would not last into the 21st century, but it has. But we cannot rely on their being wrong forever. However, oOne day it the oil will run out. It is a finite resource. In the meantime, the pollution in our cities is getting worse, and the climate is changing. Emissions from iInternal-combustion engines have been identified as a major contributor to fuel global warming. There would be some advantages from the disappearance of the automobile. Cleaner air, especially in the cities, and a more predictable climate. As I see it, human society is caught between a rock and a hard place. Our desire for freedom, which will prevents us from letting the automobile go, while conflicts with our desire for survival, for which we need a livable planet will ultimately compel us to adapt to new global realities.
What is the solution? Exercise is good for you, but I don't see any present or future politician being able to persuade the average American to give up his car in favor of walking or cycling. The answer must be to adapt the automobile to suit the realities. The first necessity is to discover a new fuel to drive the vehicles of the future. We know that automobile manufacturers are already experimenting with electric cars, but so far it has been difficult to store enough electricity inside to enable an electric-powered vehicle to go anything like as far as a gas-powered vehicle. For all we know they may have already discovered a new type of fuel source that does not have this disadvantage, but the rest of the world doesn't know about has no knowledge of it yet. Peering into my crystal ball, I foresee that the automobiles of the future will run on hydrogen. Experiments to produce a hydrogen-powered car are already being made. There is an abundance of this gas on the earth, —it is the most abundant element in the universe— and it can be burned without producing carbon dioxide—the gas that is most responsible for global warming.
That is where the future of the automobile lies. It will need to be a smaller and more efficient, cheaper machine than the average American car of today, so as to reduce congestion, fuel consumption, and pollution in the ever-expanding cities of the world. for the benefit of the millions of people in the Third World who will one day want to enjoy the advantages that developed nations already enjoy. And it will run on hydrogen. The text is now ready for the second phase of revision, which involves subjecting a reorganized draft to more detailed stylistic examination. This particular second draft, incidentally, though better organized, is still some 30 words over length. This may in part be because the writer has still not entirely solved the problem of the conclusion and, having removed some material from it, has felt the need to add some more. It is not uncommon to find that revision proceeds at first on a basis of two steps forward and one step back. One reason for this is a natural reluctance to contemplate really radical change. To take two steps forward and not retreat at all, we need to be cruelly objective and not hesitate to reorganize and rewrite extensively if the piece fails any of the revision tests.As far as length is concerned, however, the fact that a text is still slightly too long at this stage of revision need not be a serious problem. So, instead, let us imagine the writer applying the second-phase questions to the essay.The paragraphing and paragraph-linking in the second draft are better than they were in the first. On the other hand, the writer might well think that the whole thing has not quite gelled yet. The repositioning of a sentence at the beginning of the second paragraph, for example, has made the structure slightly clearer, but that sentence is not a topic sentence for that paragraph. In fact, it is difficult to identify any sentence in the paragraph that constitutes a nucleus for the material it contains. "Our lives are shaped by the automobile" sounds as if it should perform this task, but the next part of the paragraph consists of short sentences that read more like separate thoughts placed next to one another, rather than thoughts connected to a central concept.Part of the problem may lie in the type of sentences the writer uses. Applying the sentence questions dispassionately, the writer might well feel that the shorter sentences work best, but that there are possibly too many of them. The longer sentences do not suffer from being too complex; instead, they tend to straggle. For example, "Even if the ordinary person could be persuaded or forced to part with his car, their [there] are all the commercial interests—the companies who make vehicles, the companies who sell them, the companies who drill oil out of the ground, and the countries whose economies depend on oil—who are not going to lie down and watch themselves going bankrupt." This sentence would surely benefit from being tightened up. The parenthetical phrases between the dashes (the companies …, the companies …) are intended to emphasize the number and variety of the commercial interests that would be affected, but the same effect could be achieved more neatly: "Even if the ordinary person could be persuaded or forced to part with his [?] car, commercial organizations from vehicle manufacturers to oil companies and even nations would face being bankrupted. They would certainly not let this happen without a fight."The language that the writer uses is simple and clear, and often vigorous. For example, the replacement sentence "Internal-combustion engines fuel global warming" has considerable punch through playing on the word fuel. However, the piece contains a number of clichés and inappropriate metaphors.A cliché is a fixed phrase that has become overused. Clichés are usually neat, convenient, and superficially attractive phrases. The problem with them is that everyone finds them neat, convenient, and attractive, consequently they have been used over and over again. They are usually dead metaphors. When people use notorious clichés such as "go the extra mile," not only are they not, literally, going to walk five miles instead of four, but it never even enters their heads that what they are writing or saying has nothing to do with walking or distances. The metaphor is therefore dead. The phrase means no more than that they will make an extra effort.The text under consideration contains several such phrases: "the kiss of death," for example, or "between a rock and a hard place" or "a great leap forward." It is very difficult not to use clichés. Even the most experienced writers may use them, if their attention lapses. Conscientious writers, however, ought to be ruthless about striking them from the text at the revision stage.The writer of the example essay may have thought that "kiss of death" followed quite nicely the phrase "kills off the automobile," and that both brought a touch of racy vigor to the sentence. But if his or her conscience were really active, then "kill off" might, on second thought, seem a rather sloppy verb to use about the automobile, which is in no sense alive. It may seem a harsh judgment, but if "kiss of death" has to go, it is better that "kill off" goes too in order to make way for a new expression, perhaps something such as "… for whatever drives the automobile from the highway will inevitably and permanently ground the airplane and dock the ship." That formulation is more concrete and hardly less vigorous.Are any words repeated too often? There are instances of repetition for effect ("Imagine … Imagine … Imagine …"), which is certainly allowable, and there is accidental repetition when the same word simply appears too many times within a short space, as oil perhaps does in the following passage: "The oil cannot be drilled forever. We are used to the prophets of doom not coming true. They said the oil would not last into the 21st century, but it has. But we cannot rely on their being wrong forever. One day the oil will run out."Inexperienced writers sometimes think that the best way around this problem is to reach for the thesaurus, but if the writer substituted petroleum for oil in the third sentence and gasoline in the last, the passage would not be greatly improved. It would also be fairly obvious what he or she had done. If you find a word repeated, first try reconstructing the sentences in the passage and only then look for a synonym. And if you decide to use a synonym, make sure that it is a word of the same kind as the one it is intended to replace, not a much more formal or informal one that will upset the tone.If the writer rewrote these sentences to eliminate one instance of the use of oil, he or she could take the opportunity to correct two other mistakes: Oil cannot be drilled; the ground or the seabed is drilled to extract oil. Likewise, only prophecies may not come true; prophets, on the other hand, can only be proved wrong (or right, as the case may be). An improved version might read: "We cannot go on drilling for oil forever. The prophets of doom have been wrong so far. They said the wells would run dry before the end of the 20th century. One day they will be proved right. Oil is a finite resource and will, in the end, run out."There is a different kind of "repetition" a little further on in the passage that might possibly cause confusion. In the third paragraph from the end, the writer makes reference to a "gas-powered vehicle," meaning, presumably, a vehicle that runs on ordinary liquid fuel. Gas is so commonly used in this sense that we can easily forget that it is essentially an informal contraction of gasoline. But in the next paragraph the writer uses the word gas in its standard sense of, to quote Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, "a fluid (as air) that … tends to expand indefinitely." Vehicles that run on liquefied petroleum gas already exist, and a vehicle that used hydrogen gas as its fuel could be correctly described as a "gas-powered vehicle." It makes sense, therefore, to change gas-powered vehicle in the third paragraph from the end to gasoline-powered vehicle.The grammar and punctuation of the passage are fairly sound. Many misspellings, which are often really mistypings, such as relaities for realities, can be caught by a spell-checker. A spell-checker will not, however, alert you if you accidentally type their when you mean there (as this writer does), fro when you mean for, or on when you mean one. Always look out for the really common confusable terms, especially its and it's and there, their, and they're. It is a rather tedious procedure, but it may be worth conducting a computer search for each of these (using the Find command in the Edit facility) in order to make sure that you have not mistakenly used the one in place of the other. (Consistency in spelling is yet another matter, which is dealt with below.)Are there peculiarities in the writing style? It requires a very special distancing effort to spot your own personal mannerisms, if you have any. Again, it is usually a question of tracking down repetition, but not single repeated words so much as repeated sentence elements or repeated formulations of a particular type. It may, for instance, strike the alert reader that this is the third sentence in a row that has been couched in an impersonal form beginning with the word it. The style chosen for this book has been kept deliberately impersonal (from the point of view of the authors), so there has been a great temptation to overuse this particular construction. But for the need to illustrate the point, the writers or editors would undoubtedly recast one or more of the sentences in this paragraph to ensure greater variety.The writer of the example piece, on the other hand, seems to have a special fondness for a question-and-answer formula: "Is it possible to imagine …?" "Can you imagine them letting this happen? I cannot." "Can we afford to be dependent on the automobile?" There is nothing wrong with this way of initiating a discussion as such. It is only when a particular form of words recurs often enough to call attention to itself, and consequently perhaps distract the reader's attention from what is being communicated, that action needs to be taken.Even when all the second-phase revision questions have been asked and answered, it is still worth carrying out two further procedures before proceeding to the third, and possibly final, draft. The first is to take a final look at any parts of the piece that have caused you particular difficulty at any stage. Often these will be—or will include—the introduction and the conclusion. The writer of the example essay has, as we have seen, had problems finding an adequate conclusion. The introduction, after a little revision, has seemed to be a sound, indeed quite a strong, passage of writing.The second is to ask yourself as searchingly as you can whether, with all the changes you have made or are about to make, the piece now fulfills its original intention. This is perhaps a cue to check over what you regard as the strongest parts of the piece, those that caused you least trouble, your favorite sentences and paragraphs where you seemed to be able to hit the right note almost by instinct.The great British lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson once recalled being given the following advice by a tutor at his university: "Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage that you think is particularly fine, strike it out." That instruction is unduly harsh. Nevertheless, it may serve as a timely reminder that it is possible to go wrong even when you think everything is going right, and that the piece as a whole is more important than any individual passage of apparently fine or successful writing.Our essay writer, for example, might apply this final test to the generally strong introduction and realize that its very first sentence "Is it possible to imagine a future in which the automobile plays no part?" is very slightly skewed with respect to the title "The Future of the Automobile." The title obviously envisions that the essay will deal with the automobile as it will be in the future, not with the future and whether the automobile will play a part in it. In asking his or her reader to "imagine a future," the writer gets the emphasis slightly wrong. The sentence should be recast. If it read, for example, "Is it possible that the automobile has no future?" it would follow the lead of the title better and possibly give everything that follows a surer sense of direction.Approaching the Final VersionHere, then, is a third draft of the example essay, as it might look if all the corrections suggested above were incorporated and a general effort was made to tighten it up and cut it down to fit in the 600-word limit. (Corrections and additions to the second draft are given in italics, and deletions from the second draft are shown in strikethrough.)The Future of the Automobile Is it possible to imagine a future in which that the automobile plays has no part future? Imagine the highways of this country deserted. Imagine the streets of our great cities quiet. Imagine trade and industry at a standstill, for there are no vehicles left to take goods where they are meant to go. Imagine the sky and the ocean empty of powered vehicles, too, for whatever kills off drives the automobile from the highway will inevitably and permanently ground is going to mean the kiss of death for the airplane and dock the ship. All this is possible. But the prospect is a frightening one. Can you imagine it? It is a possible and very frightening scenario. As I see it, human society is caught between a rock and a hard place. But most human beings are not yet ready to be frightened. Our lives are shaped by the automobile. When The automobiles became widely available, they brought about a great leap forward in increased human freedom in a way very few other inventions have. A man who has his own transport is a free man. We are like living in a go-where-you-like-any-time society,. We like living in it and we are not going to give it up easily. Exercise is good for you, but I cannot see any present or future politician being able to persuade the average American to give up his or her car in favor of walking or cycling. And there are millions of people in the developing third world who will one day want to enjoy the advantages that developed nations already enjoy.
Even if the ordinary person people could be persuaded or forced to part with his their cars, their are all the commercial interests—the companies who make vehicles, the companies who sell them, the companies who drill oil out of the ground, and the countries whose economies depend on oil—who are not going to lie down and watch themselves going bankrupt. Can you imagine them letting this happen? I cannot. commercial organizations from vehicle manufacturers to oil companies and even nations would face being bankrupted. They would certainly not let this happen without a fight. But that is only part of the picture. Can we afford to go on being dependent on the automobile and ignoring the frightening scenario? The oil cannot be drilled forever. We are used to the prophets of doom not coming true. They said the oil would not last into the 21st century, but it has. But we cannot rely on their being wrong forever. One day the oil will run out. It is a finite resource. We will not be able to drill for oil forever. The prophets of doom have been wrong so far. They said the wells would run dry before the end of the 20th century. One day, however, they will be proved right. Oil is a finite resource. It will in the end run out. In the meantime, the pollution in our cities is getting worse, and the climate is changing. Internal-combustion engines fuel global warming. There would be some advantages from the disappearance of the automobile. We would have Ccleaner air, especially in the cities, and a more predictable climate. Our desire for freedom, which prevents us from letting the automobile go, conflicts with our desire for survival, for which we need a livable planet. What is the solution? The answer solution must be to adapt the automobile to suit the new realities. The first necessity is to discover a new fuel to drive the vehicles of the future.
We know that automobile manufacturers are already experimenting with electric cars, but so far it has been difficult to store enough electricity inside to enable an electric-powered vehicle to go anything like as far as a gasoline-powered vehicle. For all we know they may have already discovered a new type of fuel source that does not have this disadvantage, but the rest of the world has no knowledge of it yet. I foresee that that the automobiles of the future will run on hydrogen. We have heard too of attempts Experiments to produce a hydrogen-powered car are already being made. There is an abundance of this gas on the earth, and it can be burned without producing carbon dioxide—the gas that is most responsible for global warming. If it is impossible to develop an electric vehicle that is capable of long journeys, perhaps hydrogen will do the job. That is where the future of the automobile lies. It will need to be a smaller and more efficient machine than the average American car of today so as to reduce congestion, fuel consumption, and pollution in the ever-expanding cities of the world. And it will run on hydrogen. I do not personally believe that the frightening scenario will come true. Human beings have shown enormous ingenuity in the past in overcoming their problems, as they did when they invented the automobile to give the ordinary citizen the go-anywhere capability of the horse and the speed and strength of the railroad locomotive in a single machine. We need the automobile, and it does have a future. But in future it will have to go green.
This represents a great improvement on the second and third versions. The writer remains within the word limit and has tightened up the piece considerably, notably by taking the idea of the "frightening" quality of the introductory scenario and, instead of dropping it after asking a useless question, using frightening as a keyword to link various parts of the argument together through to the radically altered conclusion.It would tax the reader's patience to analyze this particular piece any further. You may well be able to spot places where the text could be further improved or have your own ideas on how to tackle the subject. The more important question, however, is, if this were your essay, would you be satisfied with it in its current state? Or, more broadly, at what point should you be satisfied with a piece of written work?There is, unfortunately, no all-purpose answer to this question. You should continue to work on your text until you are reasonably satisfied that you can improve it no further and/or until the time you have available to work on it runs out. With luck, you will achieve satisfaction before your time expires. On the other hand, a piece of writing rarely reaches a state where it is absolutely perfect and cannot by any stretch of the imagination be improved. You need to strike a balance. The previous section has shown the kind of improvements that can be made by thorough revision. Revise until, in your judgment, the piece fulfills its purpose, is well organized, and reads easily and clearly, then let it go.
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