Brandon Mountan
WRIT101
September 11, 2014
Reviewing somebody’s paper can be difficult mostly because you don’t want to offend the writer. In high school, peer revisions were required by my teacher. I always tried to be cool and give short brief comments like “nice” or “good”. I always thought that they would never change their writing because of what I said. Now there is sort of a new way to look at reviewing a paper. It doesn’t have to offend the person if you’re just commenting on how the writing is being interpreted by you. You can simply just say how the writing is coming across to you as a reader. As a reader, you are most likely part of the audience, so when asked to do a revision, you should take it seriously. The writer shouldn’t be confident enough to think their paper is perfect. They should be able to take some constructed criticism and apply it to changes in their paper. The reviewer is simply making suggestions about the reading, not insisting the writer change their paper completely.
The article gives many good tips to review a piece of writing. There should be comments that are 7+ words in length in the margins and at the end of the paper. The reviewer needs to praise, constructively criticize and question the writer. The writer can do as they wish with the review. It is for their own good to go through the comments the reviewer left though so they can know if the reader is interpreting the writing as they intended because that is most important. Grammar and spelling aren’t as important as how the message is being displayed.
In conclusion, it’s important to take the time to review a paper and let the writer know what’s good and what can be done differently in order to make the message more clear.
bpmountan 