PS Tip 76: Wait a day

Herein lies the major issue with editing – getting too close to your work.

Now that you’ve gone through the initial editing stages, there’s a very high chance that you’ll miss things if you try to power through and finish the job in a single sitting. Once you get too close to a document, you will simply start to miss things as a result of reading what you think is there, rather than what’s actually on the page.

For personal statement writing I recommend that you stop here, and wait at least a day before you continue – ideally more. If you do this, when you restart the editing process you’ll probably find that you pick up one or two mistakes almost immediately.

When I work on personal statements, I typically do so in several batches, and (time allowing) over several days. In this way, I’m able to approach each statement several times with fresh eyes

This may not sound like a significant point, but it does help.

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