A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018
Two kinds of feedback: advice and data
Learning from comments on your paper
Research and writing
12.1 Two Kinds of Feedback: Advice and Data
12.2 Find General Principles in Specific Comments
12.3 Talk with Your Reader
Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced researcher, you can learn much from the feedback of careful readers. But to get the most benefit from such comments—whether they are on a draft of a final version—you need to know how to use them.
As you develop as a writer and researcher, you will receive feedback from many different readers, some (like teachers and editors) having authority over you and others being people whose responses you seek out. Experienced writers know that nothing is more valuable than comments from a trusted reader. None of us can accurately judge the way readers will respond to our writing, for the simple reason that we know too much about it. We need readers to show us, through their responses, what we got right and where we went wrong.
12.1 Two Kinds of Feedback: Advice and Data
Commenting on a paper is hard (even if a reader is being paid to do it). When giving feedback, that reader’s responsibility is to be honest and to try to be helpful. Your responsibility as a writer is to make the most of the comments you receive.
To do that, you must decide whether to treat a reader’s comments as advice—observations about what you could do (or should have done) to make the paper better—or as data documenting a particular reader’s response. When you treat comments as advice, you must decide whether to accept or reject them. Good advice, especially from a trusted reader, can be invaluable to new and experienced researchers alike. Sometimes you might feel a strong obligation to accept a reader’s advice, such as when it comes from teacher, advisor, or editor. But even in those instances, you are not obligated to accept it wholesale: as a writer, you are responsible not only for your ideas but also for the choices you make in expressing them.
When you treat comments as data, you don’t accept or reject them; you analyze them to understand why your reader responded to your paper as she did. And when you understand that, you can revise the paper or make a different decision the next time. You might know what you wanted your paper to say, but only your reader can tell you what it in fact said—at least to her. Again, the writer is ultimately responsible: if a careful reader misunderstood your paper, you should not blame her for that misunderstanding but use the data of her feedback to figure out how and why that misunderstanding occurred.
In this sense, bad advice can be great data. Even the most dedicated and careful reader is not infallible. She might misunderstand your intentions or argument, or give you wrongheaded advice (even if she is a teacher). In such cases, ignore the advice but ask yourself, What about my paper created that misunderstanding? How did I lead my reader astray? If you can answer those questions, you can still improve your paper, or the next one.
Here are some tips for making the most of the comments you receive, however you choose to interpret them.