Sato, I've read some of your critiques and they are excellent. Surely, you must know this. As far as reactions to your critiques, a public forum attracts a cross section of society. Not everyone is here for the same reason, i.e. to improve their writing skill. You merely need to decide where to invest your time if you want to have a good experience in reviewing rooms. Let's look at some of the animals in the zoo: 1. Honestly looking to improve, but struggling with self-confidence. These are my favorite reviews because the writers are so open minded and appreciative of ideas. They may not agree with you but they always value the different perspectives. 2. Here for therapy..."look at me and please make me feel good." God bless these writers. They really don't care what you say as long as you "talk" to them. From a reviewer perspective, it's more about participating in group therapy than critiquing their writing. 3. Asocial and looking for an argument or acting out in an anti-social manner..."Duh, I wunna b a reely gr8 ritur sum day. Rede my storee 'n let me no whut you think." These clowns are pretty easy to spot and avoid. (although I have a tendency to get sarcastic with them...gotta stop that!) 4. Genius at work...what can I say? The next Hemingway or Tom Clancy or Rowling; they're just one "smart" editor away from immortality. Now, if only they could find that smart editor! These folks are presenting the next "Gone with the Wind" and you BETTER like it or you're an incompetent reviewer. 5. Welfare writers...why use the term "welfare?" Because they are looking for a handout. These are lazy people, who might even have a fresh idea, but they are too lazy to perform a simple spell check before posting. They are looking for you, the reviewer, to do their work for them. 6. Zombies - I am sure we have an occasional post from someone who is not "all there" due to drugs or alcohol. Incoherence usually stands out. 7. Kids. They are hard to spot. Their inexperience may come off as lazy so it is incumbent on a reviewer to think before assuming the nature of the poster. I will be happy to help a kid, even if the spell check, grammar and other normal requirements have not been met. Kids need mentors more than critics. Mentors can teach them to do spell checks. 8. Mentally challenged writers With a prior background in mental health, I am acutely aware that someone with diminished capacity due to retardation or other psychological problem might post. These people, if they can be identified, need love and understanding. This is the only time when I will tell a lie and say how good the work is. 9. New to speaking English. It is rare that someone who is new to English will be offended by corrections. Quite the contrary, they often deeply appreciate the advice and correction. Just be prepared to say "no" if they ask you to sponsor them through immigration. Well, there you have it, Sault's Personal Guide to Reviewing characters. It may not be complete and it might engage in too much "pigeon-holing" but it works for me!
I do line-by-line reviews on a reasonably regular basis. I do not always do them, but I find it much easier to have the material in a single spot where I can search quickly. I don't leave large black spaces if I can help it, and honestly, for many reviews, my red comments are longer than the original work. But I also give a more condensed version of the review in black under the quote, citing the most common issues and those overarching problems that I feel need the most attention. I'm perfectly fine doing shorter reviews, many of which don't deal with every SPAG error, but I learned how to ciritque in a harsh school which follows the philosophy that you ought to do your own edits at least once before posting. If you don't, I feel justified in pointing out your errors. Looking at the length of most of the posts and excerpts here, I find it a bit shameful that some people don't even run a simple spellcheck. I'm spending a lot of my valuable(subjectively?) time giving reviews because I love this site and I enjoy the process and results of critique; this even though I haven't been--and won't be--posting anything of my own for critique for a fair bit of the future. Sato- from what I've seen, you are well above the average critiquer on most writing forums. Don't sweat complaints. If the author doesn't like it, don't review them.
Quoting an entire passage is only of use when reviewing a piece of literature. In other cases, I do find it annoying.
I agree, although I usually quote the whole passage and then read it, making corrections along the way. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty when their writing is good and I have not many things to fix. I can be classified as this as I am only 12. Although, some people have called me this aswell. Can I be classified as both? If you are taking the word "kid" literally and are reffering to people under the age of 18 (or a baby goat), then does that mean that a kid can't be good? I think this is a generalisation although I am probably making to much of a fuss about it.
NaCL I'm a "kid" so should you just expect ignorance from my writing? Don't think I'm picking a fight because I'm not lol, I'm just very blunt today But yeah, I don't think that we should just look for kids, I think that the age should be irrelivant. I can't spell very well at all, but that is one of my few drawbacks as a writer, but that shouldn't automatically make you think kid should it? I have seen plenty of horrible spelling mistakes that even I can pick up in adult members.
Okay "kids", now calm down. Why do you assume "kids" strictly means age? My reference to "kids" assumes youth AND inexperience. Not all young people are inexperienced. Frankly, the young people on this site write better than many adults! My caution is simply that when I see "inexperienced" writing, I do not want to automatically assume a lazy author, when it might be a young person who doesn't yet understand all the tools available to them. I also pointed out that poor writing might be the result of someone with limitations due to retardation or other mental health issue (such as autism)...these people need our support and compassion. As far as the term "kids", if you're younger than 21, you're a "kid" to me...and, I'd give my eye teeth to be a "kid" again! Enjoy your youth while you still have it. LOL
If we spent as much time writing reviews as we did griping about them, Daniel would have to get a new server just to house them all.
Writing reviews is a skill also, one that can always be improved upon. This isn't so much griping as debating strategies.
we assume the word kid means age because 99% of the time the term refers to someone of a young age... And I get your point...it makes sense...like always *sighs*
I personally like line-by-line reviews if they are necessary (if there are three 'errors' in a longer piece it's unnecessary) and if the length of the piece permits. I like to be as thorough as possible when giving a review, so I like quoting the whole piece and giving first reactions on both technical aspects and creative aspects, whether they are issues or strong points, that show up in the piece once or twice. If there's a long part of the piece where I make no comments I cut that out from the review and follow up with a final paragraph about issues and strong points with plot, character ect that I found throughout the entire piece. But of course this is all personal preferance and will undoubtedly vary among reviewers and writers for the type of review they like giving and receiving.
I still have yet to comprehend the multi-quote function, and only recently realized that there was a little button that let you copy-paste something and wrap it with a quote box. Would it be possible to put a tutorial thread somewhere on the site?
I don't think multi-quote is implemented. The button probably should be removed from the display posts page template. There are instructions for using some of the editing features in the FAQ, but they aren't great.
I must say, I have been known to do this in the past when reviewing poetry with a lot of bad grammer etc. It just makes thing simpliar. I only do it with poetry as they are small enough to cope with, but I just do think it can be a lot easier if you are doing a lot of suggestions and changes in small areas, rather than quoting. I think it just comes down to your preffered reviewing style, and it is up the individual how they choose to do it.
Yeah, I don't understand why you would need to quote the WHOLE thing. That's just.... odd to me. When I review, I usually only quote small excerpts from the piece; these excerpts usually either have something really positive I want to specifically point out to praise, or something I want to specifically point out to critique. But quoting the whole thing is just strange. I don't understand why anyone would.....
I have to throw my two bits into this discussion. I don't get a chance to review often, but when I do, I like to sit down with a text and really work on it. I feel this helps both of us—the author through my editing and me though attending to elements of writing that I might not have before. And when I review somebody’s work, I tend to mix the reviewing styles mentioned in this discussion. I go line by line, quoting the entire work, but I also write my general thoughts about the text in a sort of preface, so the author understands where I am coming from. And the simple fact is that if one doesn't want to look through all the line by line (I myself look at line by line reviews given by others, just so I can see where I make similar mistakes in my own writing), he or she can just skip over it. A solution you might think about: Have a section just for editing. I love to do it. I spent years studying literature and writing, taught English and have even worked as an editor. In my opinion editing is a pleasure, a chance to step away from my other life, to play with words, and in the process share what I’ve learned over the years. And I am sure there are some who enjoy having their texts fully edited—especially since we on this forum are a heck of a lot cheaper than the professionals advertised on the Internet.
Some people are nit-pickers. I quote the entire thing, point out every teeny-tiny possible issue, and then cut off the larger sections of pure black. I like to be able to read the text easily when working, so I don't have to keep scrolling to see what I'm talking about. THe majority of works posted have enough Spag and typo errors that I can make it seem like I'm giving useful critique of the majrity of the text. Occassionally, I get a real fun one, where my red marks are longer than the quote passage.
I'm usually a nit-picker but i have never quoted the entire passage. i quote the parts that are issues. Even if it is only a few words or a sentence and even if there are a lot of them. Maybe thats just me but i find it easier to do that too.
I've picked a few nits in my time here too. I think it's more useful for the writer to get the lay of the land, then pick out what stands out the most, among "flaws" and strengths. If I focus on those, and can give general principles with examples rather than just a collection of corrections, I believe the writer has a better chance of avoiding the problem in the future. To do that, I have to be very selective about what I quote, to keep the focus on the general principles rather than on where the examples lie scattered among the words. It's only one approach of many that are equally valid, but to me it's a very sound approach, akin to: No matter how comprehensive the red markup is, if it doesn't help the writer with the next writing he or she attempts, what value has been delivered?
To be fair, for big massive reviews then you should only take the excerpts of it which you are actually correcting/changing to quote; but for 1/2/3 paragraphs I see no harm in quoting it.
I don't get to review as often as I'd like, but when I do I tend to lean towards an holistic overview of style and approach as opposed to line by line syntax and gramatical errors. I fully understand writers have varyng levels of literacy, but it annoys me when I see a piece that's often seriously wounded simply because its writer hasn't bothered proofing before posting. In saying that, I agree that people should review however way they prefer once they're being constructive and to the point.
