Thank your reviewer, not Bill Gates.

The problem of revision ↑

It's been a year since I published the first version of this post. Since then, a lot has changed and I decided to make a compilation of my findings and current anxieties.

From the beginning of this journey, my goal was to be more productive in writing, especially when this process required a routine of collaboration at work - both for mere revision and for co-authorship.

In this context, the first objective was to avoid exchanging Word files by email, which is certainly an unproductive process. In the end, most of the time, I couldn't convince my writing partners to change this dynamic, which is understandable, since Word and email are tools that everyone has used since they were born.

I confirmed that, if it is difficult to change a habit of ours, changing a habit of others is practically impossible.

That's why I was content to transform only my writing process, which turned out to be good for my personal productivity. Proof of this is that I am publishing this post, which might not have happened, if I still wrote with the usual tools.

The problem of synchrony ↑

From the beginning, I also wanted to avoid the risks of leaving shared files in Dropbox (a natural alternative to email), as we know that only the latest version of the file is saved. Now, anything can happen in a shared folder, and everything can be lost from one moment to the next. Thus, replacing email with Dropbox did not seem to me a desirable solution.

Looking better, I found several ways to get around these problems, and tools for this can be organized into the following groups: editors for writing, editors with revision marks or versioning, and editors with comments. But the truth is that any solution, by prioritizing one approach, sacrifices the others.

The problem becomes, therefore, to know which dimension is more important to you: the writing itself, the record of the evolution of writing or the conversations that are collateral to the text. What is the real bottleneck of your writing? If you answered that the last alternative is the most (or at least quite) important, this text may be of interest to you.

The most overlooked approach ↑

In general, I consider that the perspective most neglected by editors is the one oriented to comments. The comments are not intended to merge with the text, but to provide a new layer of information, perhaps inaugurating a new discussion. That's why it's really hard to find a good text editor that pays enough attention to comments and their way of being.

A good example of a platform that moves in the latter direction is the Medium . The platform promotes the comment to practically a new fragment of text, starting infinite conversations (threads) of the same hierarchy in front of the originally published text. It wasn't always like this and Medium has already had another approach, when it had a kind of inline comment, displayed next to the text. Today Medium displays the comments stacked at the end of the text.

But, first of all, Medium is a publishing tool, not a web text editor per se . I don't recommend in any way that Medium be used as a solution for your writing productivity, because it really isn't good for that. In any case, Medium is a good source of inspiration for us to think about how the debate around and through texts can occur.

Returning to the subject, if you prefer comments next to the text, one possibility - and my old choice - would be the Hypothesis . I have always considered Hypothesis to be a better solution than its commercial competitors, such as Genius or Diigo. The latter seems to have a more closed profile and focused on education, a spectrum in which Perusall and Kami are also found. Hypothesis's ambitious presentation identifies it as A new layer on the Internet .

In fact, the problem that Hypothesis aims to solve is to make the internet noteworthy. To do so, your solution keeps annotation links intact, even in an environment where annotated text evolves. As I said, other products have tried to solve the same problem. None of them, however, seem to be as good as Hypothesis himself in this mission.

In addition, Hypothesis can be installed inside your own website or blog, which is not possible with other tools. Finally, it is open source and, naturally, has a vocation for integration with other systems. But, although it is an inspiring software, I believe that Hypothesis is not a good solution for productivity of your writing, nor mine.

In this field, more recently, in my view, the Coda has been evolving unbeatably. Really Coda is on a whole different level And, among other features, it has a great commenting tool:

In other words, the initial difference is that, conceptually, Hypothesis is a tool to comment on any page on the internet, while Coda is an application with a great commenting tool. They are completely different missions and, therefore, more than solving your writing problem, they serve to outline what are the existing solutions in the face of problems related to the theme of reading and writing in the digital age.

Reducing barriers for the reviewer ↑

The power of annotation lies in the fact that - there must be - a minimal barrier for the proofreader to collaborate with your text. With this, you are more likely to be able to count on that person who would not be available to collaborate within a co-authoring platform, for example.

We cannot fail to consider that, In the end, what matters is the quality of the text . Thus, it is important that the tools are aligned with this purpose.

For this purpose, we don't always need a sophisticated platform with version control (i.e., the text and its changes), which is something that is not fully mastered by most reviewers. In contrast, annotation tools are almost always within the reach of a minimally available person and can give much more return to the advancement of your text.

We cannot fail to consider the power of annotation . The annotation tools are simple and, in fact, work, mainly because they respect the time and comfort of the reviewer. After all, there is no one who writes well. There are those who dedicate themselves to revising the text and creating conditions for it to reach new levels of quality, which will be much easier through collaboration with different and more experienced people.

Conclusion: the tool is not the most important thing ↑

People write texts and this is not a simple task. That is why it is important that writing and proofreading tools have the authors (not the readers) as recipients, respecting their way of working.

Almost never are the barriers to writing visible, until they are discovered. In this scenario, the more comfortable the writing process, the more productive the author will be. And this applies, with much more emphasis, to the task of the reviewer.

Well, if you are fortunate enough to have a good proofreader, I recommend that you take advantage and work with a program that is in his domain. This fact is more important than the choice of any tool, especially if you have the chance to discuss your text in person.

What I expected with this post, in addition to praising the role of the proofreader and the collateral conversations to the text, was only to contextualize some tools aimed at collaborative writing.

Although none of the programs mentioned are the definitive solution to the problem of collaborative writing, they serve to expand your list of references and help you choose the essential tools for the workflow you will build. Happy writing!