"Article exhibits problems with clarity."?

[hellscream86]

I had answered a request "History of Halloween" which had to have "candies" as the subject. The article was rejected because it exhibited problems with clarity. I know that it could be pretty hard to answer each writer's queries or give them individual corrections. But since a man or a machine is going through the whole write-up and identifies that the write-up is not up to the mark because of a few sentences (awkward sentence construction and wording), they would do well to highlight those sentences in red/make it bold. This would not take more than 5 seconds. Categorizing your work under a small, vague class is not really helpful and unless, on revisions, you can identify the area where you are making mistakes, chances are that you may never learn to correct those mistakes if not pointed out by a more experienced person. For instance, when the review results came, I asked a couple of my friends (who are good with English, I make it a point here because I live in India where not too many people are really fluent in their written skills) to read my work and see if they can sense something unclear in it. They fared no better than me at identifying the error-zone. Anyway, it would help if somebody corrected my article.
handle : karthikg1986

Thanks and regards

P.S : The review process for my article took around 100 hours. Is it normal?

[jadedragon]

There is one editor/reviewer here who goes through dozens of articles a day. This site requires the ability to self edit - Ed is not paid to point out your writing problems. If your article does not meet the standard, you might get a simple explanation but no more.

I will point out that your post is unclear as well. Too many run on sentences and unusual grammar. You vocab is good, but you need to focus on improving your writing skills to be more clear.

You wrote:
"Categorizing your work under a small, vague class is not really helpful and unless, on revisions, you can identify the area where you are making mistakes, chances are that you may never learn to correct those mistakes if not pointed out by a more experienced person."

Better would read:
I want to improve my writing. I find that a vague classification of my mistakes is not very helpful to me. I need someone more experienced in writing to identify the mistakes. If I can't see the mistakes it is hard for me to fix them.

Word has a tool that will check spelling and grammar, and I'm sure other programs have similar tools. When you run the tool it gives several readability scores. Aim for:
1. Zero-5% passive sentences. Passive sentences are more wordy and harder to read.

2. a Grade Level of under 10. Unless the article is a scholarly or highly technical paper it must be easy to read. English newspapers are at about Grade 8 level. In other words a high school student should be able to easily read your article.
3. Readability of above 50%. Long, hard to follow sentences drive down readability. Don't make your reader struggle.

Good luck.