Professional Documents
Culture Documents
When you have to write this type of assignment for the first time, you may have
questions like “What is a commentary?”, “How to write it”? So we have prepared this
article to help you out. It will provide you the guidelines and tips on writing a good
literary commentary.
Your commentary will act as an extension of the thoughts of the author and boost or
further advances the argument. Thus it works as a perspective that brings more clarity
to the idea or the problem discussed in the article.
It should be critical yet with a respectful tone
With your commentary on a text, you will be portraying a situation in present and an
anticipation on what can take place in future. You can do this with the existing data and
facts along with your opinions depending on a detailed analysis. In a general definition,
you will be providing your views and opinions on a focal article using your knowledge
and in-depth analysis.
While doing this, you have to take care that your discussions are focused on the subject
matter and the message underlined and not on the author of the text. It is vital to be
critical but at the same time, you have to be unbiased with the work of the author. So
the tone of your discussion should be respectful and constructive that can give your
readers a reason to read it.
Read it loudly and several times so that you will be able to have thoughts and ideas. As
you have them in your mind, note them on a paper. Have a hard copy of the text so that
you can refer it every time you need.
When you note down the ideas, make sure to highlight the important keywords. Mark
them with a highlighter or pen in your notes. Especially those words which are bold or
italic in the text as they are important. They will help you understand the important
message in the text.
You may have questions about some words. You can refer to other sources to
understand them and it will help you write your commentary in more details. Some
important keywords may be repeated in the article, so they will be very useful in writing
in your commentary. Look for such words and highlight them.
Generally, it should have an introduction which identifies the important points. Then
comes body outline which discusses the ideas and issues in detail. And lastly, there will
be a conclusion in which you summarize your analysis of the content.
Note the major event when the major work was introduced. For example, if a particular
piece of content was written as part of a larger collection and published at a particular
time, you can mention it in your introduction section. However, avoid writing the
unnecessary details like the author’s biography or the overall plot. This is because it will
seem useless. Avoid them unless you feel it highly relevant in order to strengthen your
viewpoint or opinion in the discussion.
It will help you understand and determine the structure of the content. If the content is in
long sentences and paragraphs, it can be a descriptive writing on a traveling
experience. If its a poem, it will be in short lines and will be divided into stanzas. So you
will be able to know its structure based on the genre of the text.
If there are words like “you” or “we”, you can say that there are two or more characters
communicating with each other in the text. You can describe this in your commentary so
the readers know the voice of the text being discussed.
Observe how the tone changes to understand the fluctuations of the mood and changes
in the situations or events. The choice of words may play an important role and it will
help you understand this thing accurately. Author’s experience and mood may be
different in different situations and the words and diction will reflect it effectively.
If the text you are writing a commentary on is an act, you may see that the tone is
friendly with some characters and changes to be serious with others. The description of
the surrounding will change depending on the tone and mood and can be identified
easily.
We provide you the best academic papers ghostwriting service online to achieve the
best result.
Some sentences will clearly present the imagery, for example, the character describes
the test of the food with words like sweet and delicious, juicy etc. Mention such words in
your commentary to give your readers an imagination of the situation.
For example, if you are discussing the theme of the article, you may take the lines that
contain the words like love or the words that describe the emotions. They should be
showing the mental situation of the character and the theme of the content as a whole.
Note that you have to restate whatever you have discussed in the main body part of the
summary. Avoid adding new points or thoughts that are not discussed earlier to give it a
feel like a conclusion as you see in other writing works.
Make your commentary presentable
After you are done with writing your commentary, you have to read it to identify the
room for improvements. You may not be able to write it perfectly at once, so you should
read it several times and also loudly. It will give you a chance to view it as a reader’s
point of view.
Listen to the words and sentences carefully and observe the tone and style of
discussion. Note the places where you need to improve. There may be some points
which you can remove or revise. Also, add points if you feel necessary. Make sure that
the commentary follows the outline you have prepared in the beginning.
Make changes in the sentences to make them short as long sentences may be
confusing and fail to convey the correct meaning. Same way, look for the complex and
long words and use simple words as far as possible. The content of your discussion
should be easy to read and understand.
Again, you can ask someone else to read and point out the spelling and grammatical
mistakes and sentence structure issues. This will help you improve your commentary.
Polish it and make it perfect as much as possible before you present it to your audience.
Anyhow, you can always find professional writing or editing help here: