I'm pretty serious about my reviews, often I'll quote the entire piece and write my comments and adjustments on the original poem, as if I would if it was handed to me in hard copy. Is this standrad practice or ever acceptable here? I had a quick glance in the poetry section and I didn't see anything like that, I did just hit random threads in the hope of hitting something similar, so it is entirely possible I may have just missed it. I just would like to know if this is okay to do before I step on the toes of members. I'm here to help and be helped.
Praise the lord. I can happily spend the evening working on other peoples poetry. I must have just been unlucky with my clicks.
It is one popular approach. I personally prefer to pick up to five aspects of the piece I'd like to address, and illustrate them with quoted passages from the writing. That way I'm focusing more on principles rather than just enumerating possible fixes. For example, if I see the writer has used there instead of their in three different places in the excerpt, it's a usage pattern that I'd want to draw the writer's attention to. If I simply marked it up in a full quoted copy of the excerpt, the point would probably be skimmed over. By my approach, I put the focus on the habit. The advantage for me as a critic is that by summing up the issue into a general recommendation, I'm forced to organize my thoughts more coherently. It often becomes something I then look for in my own writing, and I have a better notion of how to fix it. Also, I'm not turning the writer's piece of manuscript into a red-splattered page that would look at home at a particularly bloody crime scene. (Sorry, Joker. It's only one of the approaches, not the preferred one. There is no single sitewide preferred approach)
I never radically change someone's work unless I know that person extremely well, my way of writing is not everyone's. I'll bear what you've said in mind, I just often find it easier to quote the piece as a whole rather than bit by bit. Thank you.
I use this approach a lot (not always), especially for longer works where I want a comment to be near the point of inspiration. You are not alone.
I use it quite often, but not always. Sometimes, people just add too many revisions of what you made and it changes the structure that you first came up with. Not a pretty sight, so I guess I'll try to do what Cogito recommends. After all, if you put edits in the piece, it partially becomes your work; better leave concepts and thoughts rather than directly changing the material.
For me, I only put individual suggestions. "Rewriting" something someone else wrote with a consistent tone is way beyond the scope of my activities here.
