Effective Commenting with NowComment®
Author: Brandon Marsh
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Here are a few tricks for effectively commenting with NowComment:
1. Different Conversations for Different Topics
If you're saying something on the same topic as an existing comment, just click the "reply" link to join the existing conversation. You can reply to anyone, not just the most recent commenter.
But if your comment introduces a new topic, then start a new conversation by double clicking (on text to comment on the specific sentence, on the paragraph number for a general paragraph comment, or on the Document-level link at the bottom of the page for a comment not tied to any particular passage).
2. Write communicative, informative Summary Lines
Just as emails have subject lines that help you decide what the message is about and whether main point and whether it's relevant to you or not, NowComment comments have Summary Lines so people can skim them to decide which comments they want to read. If your Summary Lines don't do that, we'd recommend expanding them.
If everything you have to say fits on the Summary Line, it's fine to leave the rest of the comment empty; better to have an expressive Summary Line!
3. Summary Line Don'ts
- No need to say that you're responding to a comment — your comment will be automatically indented below the other comment to show that connection.
- Don't write your name or the paragraph# — the system adds both automatically.
- Don't repeat someone else's Summary Line when you reply to it; your Summary Line should communicate your main point!
Here are some interesting samples of good commenting style:
Commenting on Images and Photos
The mesmerizing painting The Raft of Medusa portrays desperate sailors stranded at sea:
I’m the head/founder of Fairness.com LLC. We really hope you … (more)
I’m the head/founder of Fairness.com LLC. We really hope you … (more)
Per Wikipedia:
“In June 1816, the French frigate Méduse departed from Rochefort, bound for the Senegalese port of Saint-Louis. She headed a convoy of three other ships…it ran aground on a sandbank off the West African coast, near today’s Mauritania. The collision was widely blamed on the incompetence of De Chaumereys, a returned émigré who lacked experience and ability, but had been granted his commission as a result of an act of political preferment.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raft_of_the_Medusa
147 people started out on the raft but only 15 (10%) survived the 13 days of starvation, dehydration, cannibalism, and madness.
Jessica Phillips is an English major with a focus on business… (more)
Jessica Phillips is an English major with a focus on business… (more)
That Wikipedia article says that Géricault spent a lot of time on research, including how to render the flesh tones of dead bodies; I’m surprised he drew the survivors as he did.
In fact, the king didn’t have a say in the captain’s appointment.
Commenting on Text
How much do you know about the origins of Thanksgiving, our Fall harvest holiday? Most Americans just know that we eat a lot of turkey on the fourth Thursday in November (vegetarians excluded).
Jessica Phillips is an English major with a focus on business… (more)
“On October 3, 1789, President George Washington issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as an official holiday of “sincere and humble thanks” (for victory in the Revolutionary War and for the new Constitution).
Information from a page on the National Archives website: http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=2591
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I’m the head/founder of Fairness.com LLC. We really hope you … (more)
’On October 3, 1863, President Lincoln made the traditional Thanksgiving celebration a nationwide holiday to be commemorated each year on the fourth Thursday of November. In the midst of a bloody Civil War, President Lincoln issued a Presidential Proclamation in which he enumerated the blessings of the American people and called upon his countrymen to "set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of “Thanksgiving.” ’
• Argentina: Fiesta Nacional de la Vendimia
• Barbados: Crop over:
• China: August Moon (mid-Autumn) Festival
• Germany: Erntedank
• Ghana: Homowo Festival
• India: Pongal
• Japan: Niiname-sai, Shinjo-sai
• Jewish: Sukkot
• Korea: Chu-Sok
• Mehregan: Iran
• Nigeria: Ikore
• Poland: Doynki
• Turkmenista: Hasyl toy
• Vietnam: Tết Trung Thu
“In 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the holiday to the third Thursday of November to lengthen the Christmas shopping season and boost the economy still recovering from the Depression. The move set off a national debate and was reversed in 1941.”
Source:
http://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2012/nr12-29.html
Commenting on Videos
You can use start and end times in the Summary Line to point people to particular segments of a clip. For example, here's one of the first (and creepiest) film adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula, director F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu:
Note also the very defined eye makeup.
I’m the head/founder of Fairness.com LLC. We really hope you … (more)
I’m the head/founder of Fairness.com LLC. We really hope you … (more)
This is the scene where the real estate agent cuts his finger and then becomes unnerved when Dracula suck the blood off it. He displays his fear through facial expressions and by backing up. When the music score changes to something like a heartbeat it really ratchets up the tension!
Jessica Phillips is an English major with a focus on business… (more)
Jessica Phillips is an English major with a focus on business… (more)
These are when the real estate agent hides from Dracula and when he discovers Dracula’s coffin.
Film scholars analyzing the film found places where he had no reflection in the mirror… and others in the cast and crew said they only saw him at night (and that he kept to himself). Nicholas Cage produced a 2000 movie Shadow of the Vampire about this, see the trailer at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyBt5DDFcQY&feature=player_embedded
In this movie he dies. But in the popular “Twilight” films vampires glow or sparkle in the sun…quite different!
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