Technical Manual for ApplyBoard

Voiceover and Recording Tips 

Tips on Constructive Draft and Review Procedure

Constructive commentary and critique of content drafts is always greatly appreciated.

However, the review process could be made a lot more productive, smoother, and less
painful, if we could adopt a more disciplined and professional review procedure. Just as we use design processes to creatively solve complex problems, we use writing and
review processes to create complex documents.

In both cases, there are steps or stages, but we don’t dump all our feedback into one
stage. Please bear in mind that writing is an iterative process that proceeds in stages.

Draft 1 – Review Checklist

Remember, this is the developmental review, when you should be focused on the
content. The feedback should be concerned with the big picture (the document as a
whole). Please provide feedback on the following:

• Factual accuracy; facts you want included in the draft
• points that should be developed or improved
• examples you want inserted or improved
• Information, images, media, or other data that you want include
• Critique and commentary on structure and organization of
  ideas or points in the draft
• Critique and commentary on major unclear or confusing
  passages in the draft

The Four Main Stages of Content Review

In general, there are four stages in the review process:

1. First draft – Content or developmental edit. The feedback should be concerned
   with the big picture (the document as a whole). Please provide feedback on the following:
   
   • Factual accuracy; facts you want included in the draft
   • points that should be developed or improved
   • examples you want inserted or improved
   • Information, images, media, or other data that you want included
   • Critique and commentary on structure and organization of ideas or points in the draft
   • Critique and commentary on major unclear or confusing passages in the draft
2. Second draft – Line edit focuses on sentence- and paragraph-level edits. The
   point of line editing is to improve the flow and readability of the draft. The
   feedback should be more fine-tuned and focused on closer reading of content
   and form. Please provide feedback on the following:
   • Confirm that factual and main ‘big picture’ issues from first draft have been fixed
   • Confirm that structural issues have been addressed
   • Closer critique and commentary on writing coherence and writing sense.
   • Critique and commentary on phrasing and word choice
   • Critique and commentary on transitions from sentence to sentence Or bullet point to bullet point
   • Critique and commentary on stylistic and tonal consistency
   • Critique and commentary on design-related elements (questions, format of content, etc.)
3. Third draft – Copyediting is one of the final stages of the review process. It
   focuses on smaller details of words and sentences according to the ApplyBoard
   style guide.
   
   Please provide feedback on the following:
   • Confirm that coherence and cohesion issues from previous draft have been addressed and fixed
   • Close critique and commentary on facts and minor details
   • Critique and commentary on word choice, punctuation, spelling, and
     capitalization
   • Critique and commentary on style according to ApplyBoard style guide
4. Final draft– Proofreading is the very final stage after the draft has been approved by managers and Subject Matter Experts to be sent to the Instructional Designer.
   It is the final clean up.
   
   Please provide the following feedback if necessary:
   • Close scrutiny of draft for consistency in grammar, spelling,
     capitalization, use of ApplyBoard terms and abbreviations, word
     choice, and punctuation.

Each phase of the review of the content addresses different aspects of the content draft, and all the phases work in sequence. There’s no point editing for commas and typos if the content needs rewriting and additional information and research. Additionally, if the review process has been followed in a disciplined and professional manner, it should not be necessary to critique punctuation, spelling, and style after the draft has been submitted to the Instructional Designer. At that stage, such feedback is late.