Everybody knows that criticism is a hard pill to swallow, what they don’t tell you is that it isn’t easy to prescribe it either. We have been taught all through our lives to be kind to people, to encourage rather than to tear down. Even if we don’t always (or even mostly) reach this ideal, it is still a influential part of how we interact with others in society. For this reason it’s hard to write good criticism. When I start critiquing something it takes a bit for me to warm up and deliver some truly constructive comments. Good criticism forces the writer to reanalyze what they have written without impacting their moral. I find the more detailed the criticism the more helpful it is. Rather than write, “This paragraph is too vague”, elaborate on why it’s vague and how to improve it. For example if someone writes “the 1960s was a time of great turmoil”, suggest a few reasons they could include to back that claim (women’s rights, the Vietnam war, etc). While grammar and structural editing is always important, good criticism, if followed, can turn a good paper into a great paper. The value of another person’s ideas and experiences are impossible to measure. When you work on something for too long you tend to develop tunnel visions and an outsider’s insight provides a welcome breath of fresh air. I believe I give pretty good criticism but I sometimes find myself succumbing to laziness and providing the most rudimentary of editing. It’s difficult to truly analyze a text and expose its weaknesses and how to correct them. Still if everyone edited each other’s works in a systematic and thought provoking way we can tap into our collective pool of knowledge and experiences. So I guess good criticism is more like an vaccine rather than a pill, if everyone takes it then it benefits everyone.
