Since we’re starting our rhetorical analysis project I think that this article is very helpful and useful for this project as well as for other future projects. This piece by Richard Straub is very simple and easy to follow along with because of the format that it’s written in and it also sticks to very straightforward points and things to pay attention to. As someone who reviews the work of others and has their own work reviewed I found this piece to be very useful because it explains how vague, general and useless comments sometimes are. Its hard to know what to fix when the comments aren’t specific enough to understand what exactly the issue the reader is having with the writing is.

While reading the parts about how to properly respond to someone else’s writing I found myself agreeing with what he had to say. It isn’t my place or any other readers place to edit and change up the writing of someone else. I always found it weird and awkward when a person would have to read my writing in class and instead of making suggestions would write down all different types of edits and fixes. Even when I was told to edit someone’s work in class by teacher’s I always found it dreadful and didn’t want to be the one changing up the words and thoughts of someone else. I Like to receive feedback on my work, but I think it’s better not to receive any comments at all than to receive vague comments that are not going to help improve your writing at all.

After reading this I feel like I can be more helpful to a writer when reading their work over and having to comment on it. Instead of giving them vague feedback that won’t really help them improve at all I can now give them more feedback on specific topics within their writing. I found myself enjoying this article and agreeing with what Straub had to say about writing good comments that are helpful for the reader and I’ll also be using his advice when I have to write comments in the future.