How to add comments to a document

Comments live in the Review menu of Write by Zaweba. Select the words you want to comment on and add a comment from there. The text is highlighted and a comment opens in the comments pane beside the pages, ready for you to type. The comment stays attached to that text and is saved with the document.

Why comments beat notes in the text

When you review someone's work, the temptation is to type remarks into the text in capitals or brackets. That mixes your notes with their words and means somebody has to find and delete them all later. Comments sit beside the page, attached to a piece of text, and can be read, answered and removed without touching the document itself.

They suit a teacher marking an essay, a committee member checking minutes, a colleague reviewing a report, or a friend reading your CV.

Setting your name first

Before your first comment, set your name for comments in the Review menu. Each comment then carries your name, so the person reading knows who said what. This matters when a document goes round several people.

Adding and working through comments

Select a word, a sentence or a paragraph, then add a comment from the Review menu. Type your remark in the comments pane. The commented text is highlighted so it is easy to see which part the comment refers to.

To work through a document someone has commented on, use next and previous comment in the Review menu to jump from one to the next. Edit a comment to change it, or delete it when it has been dealt with. Delete all comments clears the lot in one go, which is the last step before sending a final version.

Comments from other programs

Comments made in Word open in Write and keep their author, so you can see who wrote each one. When you save the document back as .docx, the comments go with it, so the person who sent it sees your comments alongside theirs in their own program. Write's .zawr format is a .docx inside, so comments are kept there too.

If the document also has tracked changes from another program, Write shows them as coloured text. The Review menu can accept all or reject all of them in one step, which is handy once the comments have been dealt with.

Writing comments people can act on

A good comment is short and specific. Say what the problem is and, where you can, suggest a fix. "Date missing" is clearer than "check this". "Could this paragraph go before the last one?" is more useful than "order?". Keep praise in comments too: knowing what works is as helpful as knowing what does not.

Try to comment on the smallest bit of text that makes sense, rather than a whole page, so the highlight points to the real problem.

Before you send a final copy

Comments are part of the document until deleted, and they travel inside .docx files. Before sending a finished letter or CV, use delete all comments, then check through once more. If you export a PDF for sending, check it before it goes, so no review notes slip out with it.

Comments in Write by Zaweba make it easy to give and take feedback on a document without anyone losing track of what the text actually says.