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English Composition · Chapter 14 · Section 4

The Comment Worth the Hour

Peer review fails in a predictable way: everyone is nice, nobody is useful. Here you do both halves of the job. Build a comment from its parts and watch a five-light meter judge whether a writer could act on it tonight — then switch sides and triage six pieces of feedback that have just landed on your own draft.

The draft in front of you

Writer’s memo, attached to the top of the draft. “This is a structural draft — please ignore the surface. I am arguing that mandated staffing ratios are worth having even though they are crude.” Q1. Does the acuity paragraph help my case or undercut it? Q2. Can you tell what my thesis is without hunting?
Where are you commenting? pick a place
1 · Describe — report what you experienced
2 · Evaluate — measure it against a standard
3 · Suggest — propose, do not prescribe
4 · Answer the writer’s two questions

Five comments that waste an hour

Tap one to see exactly why it fails — and what it becomes when a reviewer describes instead of grades.

The comment you are writing

Start hereStart by choosing where you are commenting. Every comment must be attached to a place in the text: “the organisation is confusing” is unusable, while “I could not tell why paragraph 5 followed paragraph 4” can be acted on tonight.
The sequence nearly everyone agrees on: describe first, then evaluate, then suggest — and never suggest without having described. Descriptive feedback is the most undervalued and the hardest to argue with, because you cannot tell a reader she did not get lost.