Giving feedback on writing can be tough. Writing is an incredibly personal act, and many writers (even those for whom writing is a strength) can struggle with hearing feedback on their work. Even mere suggestions for revision can feel like harsh criticism when you’ve poured your heart and soul into something.

One way to help alleviate the stress of giving meaningful writing feedback is to make sure that you (as the one giving feedback) always remember whose writing it is: not yours. Just as we teach kids bodily autonomy in order to show them that they are in control of themselves, we should practice writing autonomy to make sure that our writers know that, ultimately, it is their paper. They can do what they want with it—even if that’s ignoring all of our advice.

This can be hard for teachers/parents to handle well. After all, some of these things we see in the paper are just wrong. That’s a fragment! That’s the wrong “there”! That’s not how you spell that word!

But helping writers to see that, at the end of it all, they’re in charge of what happens in their writing is empowering. It teaches them the role of feedback and the power of their own rhetorical choices. It shows them that they can take risks and see things in ways that differ from our own.

Here are five strategies for giving feedback without taking away a student writer’s agency.

Tip 1: Ask Permission

The first tip is to ask for permission before you mark up a paper. “Is it okay if I write on this?” That’s a question that I asked every single student who visited me in university writing centers. They were there to get feedback on their papers, and they often wanted me to write all over their drafts to help them see what to change, but I always asked if it was okay to write on their draft before I put my pen to the paper.

The paper, after all, wasn’t mine.

Tip 2: Just Talk

Another strategy was to never pick up my pen at all. I’d just talk to the student about what they wanted to do, what they thought they were doing well, and what they’d like to change.

As we talked, I’d occasionally ask, “Do you want to write that down so you don’t forget it?” Often, the session turned into me simply listening to a student’s own ideas and reminding them every so often to write them down.

Tip 3: Ask Questions

One strategy I use when I leave comments on drafts is to ask questions instead of making statements about how to revise. This is especially useful for lower-order concerns like sentence structure and errors in grammar and syntax.

“This is a fragment. How could you combine this with another sentence to make it complete?”

“These two sentences don’t really fit together. What kind of transition would help show the connection?”

Tip 4: Model Corrections Sparingly

If a student is struggling with a style issue (wordiness, for instance), I might take two or three sentences and make some direct edits. Then, in the margins, I write something like this: “I made a few suggested edits here to show you one way you might revise for wordiness. As you read aloud, you might look at how to make changes like this elsewhere.”

In this case, I’m not “fixing” their paper so much as pointing out some possible tools they can use to fix it themselves.

Tip 5: Always “Track Changes”

If you’re giving feedback digitally, never make direct changes to the paper. Always use the “Track Changes” (Microsoft Word), “Suggesting” (Google Docs), or similar feature. This allows writers to see the changes easier, but it also gives them the power to “Reject Changes.”

Not every suggestion is going to be wanted. Sometimes writers have a different vision for their project than we do. Furthermore, not every suggestion is going to be justified, in the writer’s mind, for the time it takes. Part of learning to write well is time management, and sometimes, you spend more time working on that great conclusion and decide to let the wordy third paragraph stand as it is to meet your deadline. That’s an important lesson, too.

Giving feedback on papers is often an emotionally-charged act. You want to support without taking over, provide guidance without being bossy, help a writer improve without shaking their confidence.

Adopting practices that help the writer maintain their ownership over the work is a great way to help reach these goals.