After completing a rough first draft, it's time to start editing.

The first step of the editing process is to improve your sentences. In Rewrite, you are shown your writing broken down into individual sentences. Choose a paragraph to edit. Start by rewriting each sentence within that paragraph.

Try to write a completely new version of your sentence to see if you can improve it. Play with your ideas and iterate on them. Compare your sentences, and try to choose the best one.

Better would mean shorter and simpler. Only keep words and sentences that are absolutely necessary to convey your idea. There is almost nothing a novice writer can do that will improve his or her writing more rapidly than writing very short sentences.

Better would also mean that each word is precisely and exactly the right word. Often, new writers try to impress their readers with their vocabulary. Write clearly at a vocabulary level you have mastered (with maybe a bit of stretching, to produce improvement).

Rewrite your sentences

Head to Rewrite to start improving your sentences.
Rewrite shows you the full text of your essay broken down into individual sentences in the panel on the left, and your draft in the editor on the right.
Click a sentence to start rewriting it.
- Click the "+" (or hit enter) to add a new sentence.
- Rewrite the sentence and try to improve it.
Compare each rewrite to determine which version is the best.
- Select a rewrite to see the sentence within the context of your paragraph in the editor on the right.
- Essay saves all your rewrites so you can always go back and see a previous version of your writing.
When you rewrite a sentence, a green icon will appear next to the sentence in the tool to indicate how many rewrites you have written.

Clicking on a sentence in Rewrite will scroll the editor on the right to make sure you’re always viewing your changes in context.
Clicking on a sentence in the editor will scroll and highlight that sentence in Rewrite.

Accept selected sentences & Accept all selected sentences

Choose the best version of each sentence, which can be either a new sentence that you have written, or the original sentence.
Once you are satisfied with your sentences, you can accept your sentences to commit the change to your essay and remove the unselected rewrites.
- Click the “Accept selected sentence” button at the top right of the rewrite panel.
  - This commits the selected sentence to your essay.
  - Beware: Accepting the selected sentence delete your rewrites for that sentence.
- Click the “Accept all selected sentences” button at the top left of the rewrite panel.
  - This commits all selected sentences to your essay.
  - Beware: Accepting selected sentences will delete all the unselected rewritten sentences in your essay. Essay automatically saves a version when you accept all selected sentences. You can find your rewrite history in Versions.

Rewrite Toolbar

At the top of the left panel you'll see the Rewrite Toolbar, which contains a number of sentence-level actions.

Mark for review

If you get stuck on a sentence while editing your work, you can mark a sentence for review and come back to it later.
- Click the “Mark for review” button in the toolbar.
- When you mark a sentence for review, a purple ribbon will appear beside the sentence in the rewrite panel.

Filtering your sentences

You can filter your sentences to only view: sentences you’ve rewritten; or sentences you’ve marked for review.

Switch to reorder

While in the rewrite tool, you can quickly switch to the Reorder tool to reorder a sentence by using the “reorder sentence” button at the top right of the rewrite panel.

Delete a sentence

You can delete a sentence by clicking on the sentence you want to delete, and then clicking the “Delete” icon at the top right of the rewrite panel.

Rewrite Settings

You can change whether the Rewrite tool will copy the selected sentence into a newly created rewrite, or leave the new rewrite space blank.
- To change this setting, go to the “Workspace settings” tab in the right toolbar.
- Copy selected sentence (toggle on):
  - When you click a sentence to rewrite it, the original sentence will be copied.
  - This is useful if you only want to make small changes to the existing sentence, as you don’t have to write the whole sentence out again.
- Copy selected sentence (toggle off):
  - When you click a sentence to rewrite it, the space will be blank
  - This is useful if you want to completely change the structure of the sentence or want to rethink the idea without the distraction of the original sentence.