Throughout the duration of the course, I attempted to make my peer revisions for our major projects as thorough as possible—which increased more and more with every attempt. There are a variety of ways I went about instituting this effect. Firstly, I made small local error revisions pertaining to either sentence structure of clarification of a specific sentence. These comments typically also included suggestions of what point I am actively aiming to make, further explaining my edits. For example, for a peer article I revised, their original sentence went along the lines of “Nicholas Carr, who formerly served as executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and most recently served as a visiting sociology professor at Williams College. Carr believes among many other variables, that technology acts as a distraction, as noted by technology and its societal repercussions.” As the first sentence is fragmented between describing who Nicholas Carr is and his relation to the author’s paper, I made this statement in my comment. I also included that the author could connect this description with what claims he makes in his article. This edit would not only provide context into who Nicholas Carr is but would offer the clarity that is needed for the sentence to flow.

Once I finished focusing on the small/minuscule edits of the paper, I began to analyze the bigger thoughts. This included large-scale edits, typically that of a main paragraph or a topic sentence. For reference, when approaching the same article as the local revision example, there had been a section which while was very elaborate on the versatility technology has provided, lacked personal insight on experiences have shaped this author’s perspective. “People can now pursue their educational aspirations with simplicity and efficiency because of this abundance of knowledge. Through websites for education, journals, or online courses, technology has made accessible education by enabling individuals to interact with a wide variety of topics and viewpoints. Technology also makes it easier to organize and be productive, simplifying work and helping people handle their jobs more skillfully.” I informed the author that there would be much more benefits to the “I say” of their writing with examples as they pertain to them, and how they formed their opinions on such matters. I also commented that comparing and contrasting the sources at the end of the paragraph (similar to that of Barclay’s formula) would strengthen the effect of the text on the reader.

Ultimately at the end of each revision I performed in this course, I left a descriptive letter to the authors of the articles. These letters included both local and global concerns, describing how each concern I had affected the readability/clarity of the topic discussed. I strongly felt that insight of how these specific sections impacted their article would offer full insight into how their paper was interpreted.