Fit Between Chosen Critique Type and Actual Content
Whether the text actually delivers on the critique type the critic selected (descriptive/analytical/evaluative), rather than claiming one type while practicing another
The five levels
Each anchor describes what separates one level from the next — not a general description of quality. This is the text the evaluator itself reads.
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Level 1 Below Standard
The declared type doesn't match the text's content at all (declared "descriptive" while the whole text is evaluative judgment)
Example A critique labeled "descriptive" containing not one neutral descriptive sentence
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Level 2 Approaching
The text partially approaches the declared type, but more than a third of it actually belongs to a different type
Example An "analytical" critique that spends most of its length on pure description without analyzing causation
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Level 3 At Standard
Most of the text actually matches the declared type, with a limited departure
Example An "evaluative" critique issuing clear judgments through most of its paragraphs
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Level 4 Above Standard
The text clearly commits to the declared type, using that type's own distinguishing features precisely (causal explanation for analytical, explicit grounded judgment for evaluative)
Example An "analytical" critique explaining "how" and "why" in every paragraph instead of settling for description or judgment alone
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Level 5 Exemplary
The text is a clean model of its declared type, precise enough to serve as a teaching example of that specific kind of critique
Example A "descriptive" critique showing how description alone can imply a judgment without stating it directly
Where does your own work sit on these levels?
Submit one work to be read against this criterion alone: your position across the five levels, why you are not higher and why not lower, three literal quotes from your own work, and one exercise with its success check. Your first card is free.
Price: 7 SAR · Included in Pro & Artist Plus · First one free — Pricing details
Read my work by this criterionOther criteria in the same art
Whether every evaluative judgment is paired with a specific pointer to an actual location or detail in the work that grounds it
The five levels →How clearly the critique distinguishes "what is in the work" (description) from "my opinion of it" (judgment), rather than blurring them in one undifferentiated sentence
The five levels →How closely the work's details the critic describes (color, shape, composition, word, rhythm) match what is actually present in the work
The five levels →Whether the critique goes past the first impression to uncover relationships or causes not obvious on the surface, rather than stopping at surface-level description
The five levels →The critic's distinction between "what is seen in the work" and "what it is presumed to mean or symbolize", and whether the move from the first to the second is signalled
The five levels →Whether the critic's judgments hold together across the text, rather than contradicting themself evaluating the same element or equivalent elements
The five levels →Whether evidentiary grounding is sustained throughout the text, rather than concentrated in one paragraph while the rest of the critique is unmoored judgment
The five levels →The critic's use of the discipline's own terms (composition, rhythm, contrast, plot, maqam...) with their precise conventional meaning in that art, rather than as loose metaphor
The five levels →