I have always understood the importance of properly “responding” to other’s papers. The whole point of editing is to highlight and clarify the problematic areas that the writer needs to improve. So therefore, if the writer doesn’t fully understand the comments one has marked up on their paper, the reader has failed. As Richard Straub emphasized, it’s vital to not take the “stingy” route, but to explain thoroughly any comments one has. If no effort is put into helping the writer understand what she/he has done wrong or needs to improve then, in my opinion, the reader has wasted his/her time.

The sad and harsh truth is that most people, even some teachers for Christ sake, tend to brush of the editing and ignore the importance of it. Throughout my few years in high school we usually had peer editing sessions a couple days before major paper deadlines. In these sessions, we were supposed to thoughtfully edit each other’s papers and lay out a roadmap on how to improve the effectiveness of said papers. Although I personally loved the concept behind these sessions, almost 80% of the time I received back a couple grammar corrections and if I was lucky a vague statement on how to improve (Something along the lines of “add more details”). Richard Straub made a good point in his article, that even though making miniscule grammar corrections is helpful, what the readers should really focus on is the bigger picture; what the writers are trying to accomplish with their papers and how effectively have they done it.

If more people actually followed Straub’s framework for editing and commenting on papers, then these peer editing sessions would actually be an extremely useful tool. I’m excited that we were assigned read his paper because this should lead to meaningful advice for improvement.