Thursday 25 October 2012

"Poorly written article"

It always annoys me to read a comment where someone dismisses a piece of writing as a "poorly written article" with absolutely no explanation as to why they think the quality of the article's writing is low. Sometimes I'm not convinced that the person has any problem with how the article is written, but rather because they disagree with the content.

I single out this particular term because it is the one I observe the most in regards to comments about writing quality. "Poorly written article" does not provide any helpful feedback to the writer. Are there spelling errors? Grammatical problems? Too few or too many commas? A few misused words? Without any examples the comment comes across as unhelpful at best and insulting at worst.

As to my second point about the term, there are occasions when I cannot find any fault with the article's writing whatsoever, and the rest of the critic's comment is about their disagreement with the subject. Disagreeing with something does not make it badly written: there are times when I agree with what an author is saying, but the writing quality is terrible, and in other cases the quality is superb but I disagree with their opinion.

With any criticism, giving tips on how someone can improve is the best way forward: it's how we learn. In conflating disagreement with writing quality, it is perhaps a matter of perspective, but I for one usually separate my opinons on the writer's message from the way they wrote it. Irregardless, a vague "poorly written article" comment is useless if it's not backed up.

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