Back in December, blogger Steven Bradley had an interesting post about a writing course he took that used critiquing to improve your writing. Quoting from his blog:

"The critiques followed a specific format. If you liked something you underlined it. It might be a word or an entire passage. If you liked it you drew a line underneath.

Consequently if you didn’t like something you drew a squiggly underneath. Anything you didn’t understand received a question mark. None of the above came with any explanation. Just the underline, squiggly, or question mark.

In addition to the above each critique asked you to do two things
1. Write 3 things you likes about the submission
2. Offer 3 suggestions for improvement

During the week after you handed out your work you would sit quietly while everyone else discussed it."

Steven's writing improved as much from the process of critiquing others as he did from the criticisms themselves, and volunteered to critique my blog as an illustration of this process.

We selected two short posts -- Steroids, HGH, and the Mitchell Report and The Other Side of the Steroids Scandal. The blogs are written, and I'm awaiting Steven's feedback.

It's early in the semester, but writing is one subject that you can never get too good at. (Oh wait, I ended that sentence with a preposition... damn.)