Writing Partners Overview

1. Discuss/Chat - Social Exchange (Talking about texts)

2. Read/Annotate - Social Annotating (Talking with texts)

3. Create/Edit - Social Making (Talking through creating texts)

1. Comments Have Two Parts

2. Comment Display Options

3. Commenting Features

1. Starting a new conversation

2. Joining an existing conversation (Your Thoughts) or Adding an AI-assisted reply

1. Controls Available for All Three Types of Documents

2. Controls Available for Read/Annotate and Create/Edit Documents

Users can create three different kinds of documents on Writing Partners:

• Discuss/Chat - Social Exchange (Talking about texts)
• Read/Annotate - Social Annotating (Talking with texts)
• Create/Edit - Social Making (Talking through creating texts)

1. Discuss/Chat - Social Exchange (Talking about texts)

Discuss/Chat Documents open with four parts:

• a brief description of the the Writing Partner the user has chosen
• Chat History - a linked list of previous conversations in chronological order
• a button to Start a new conversation
• all conversations with their discussion threads, which are listed toward the bottom in reverse chronological order.

Here's an example of a Writing Partners interface for Discuss/Chat - Social Exchange (Talking about texts):



Users open Discuss/Chat - Social Engagement Documents by selecting a Writing Partner. Their chat is private except for any administrator in thier group (usually a teacher). Users can invite others to chat with them by clicking the Invite button in the top left corner of the document. Users can continue their conversations by clicking Continue with AI at the bottom of the comment box. Options for comments are the same as with other kinds of Writing Partner documents.





2. Read/Annotate - Social Annotating (Talking with texts)

Read/Annotate Documents load in 2-Pane View, with the document in the left-hand (LH) pane and comments in the right-hand (RH) pane. Paragraphs are automatically numbered along the LH pane's right margin.

Here's an example of a Writing Partners interface for Read/Annotate - Social Annotating (Talking with texts):





A “comment balloon” next to a paragraph number indicates how many comments that paragraph has (e.g. there are six comments on paragraph #3 in the screenshot above).

Comments can be on:

• a particular sentence
• a particular text paragraph (and also many embedded video/audio players and small images)
• the document in general (not tied to any particular passage, e.g. the author's background, the document's style and structure, its historical context, etc.)

Once you click somewhere in the document's text, comment balloons will also appear at the end of all sentences that have sentence-level comments. For example, paragraph #2 below has a total of 18 paragraph-level comments (2 on the first sentence and 5 on the second one, and 11 paragraph-level comments):





Mousing over the document highlights the sentence you're on in blue and outlines the paragraph in gray.

Document passages and comments about them are synced; single clicking a document passage scrolls the screen to highlight and show any related comments. Similarly, clicking on a comment or comment header will scroll the document to highlight and show the corresponding passage.




Document View Options for Read/Annotate Documents

Read/Annotate Documents on Writing Partners offer you two different views:



• 2-Pane View is the default already described; it's best for reading the document with minimal distraction and reading selected comments.
• Combined View puts the document and the comments together in a single pane, making it easy to scroll through the document and read all the comments without needing to do any clicking (but distracting when you're trying to read the document itself).

In both views, comments show in this sequence:

• a header at the top of the page giving the number of both General Document comments and Paragraph and sentence comments
• for paragraphs that have comments, a header shows the paragraph# and a comment balloon with the number of total (Paragraph + Sentence) comments on that paragraph
• comments on the Paragraph
• comments on Sentences within the Paragraph
• General Document comments at the very bottom. You can click on the link in the top header, or just scroll down, to reach them.




3. Create/Edit - Social Making (Talking through creating texts)

Create/Edit Documents load in a 2-Pane View only, with the document in the left-hand (LH) pane and comments in the right-hand (RH) pane. Paragraphs are not automatically numbered along the LH pane's right margin like they are in a Read/Annotate Document. The document is easy to edit, and edits are saved automatically. All comments in the right margin refer to the entire document. When a responder wants to refer to specific paragraphs or sentences, they need to specify, and when using AI, users can ask for responses to specific paragraphs or paragraphs.

Here's an example of a Writing Partners interface for Create/Edit - Social Making (Talking through creating texts):



Users can use the Invite button (in the top menu to the left) to solicit feedback from peers. Administrators (usually teachers) will automatically receive an invitation to users' documents by students in their groups (or classes). At the bottom of each comment there are three options:
• Your Thoughts (to leave a comment without AI enhancements)
• Continue with AI (to develop the dialogue with a Writing Partner)
• Comment Options





At the bottom of the document in the Left Pane, there is a button that allows the user (and Administrators) to Browse previous versions of this document. Users (and their teachers) can follow the revision process by using a slider at the top of each version. There is also a place where users can add to an AI Declaration to describe their process even more. Here's what a Version looks like on Writing Partners:

1. Comments Have Two Parts

1. “Summary of Comment” —a required overview of your comment; the essential point(s) you want to make. One or two communicative sentences work best.
2. “Full Comment” — optional; lets you flesh out your summary line with more detailed arguments and perspectives, citations, data, etc.



2. Comment Display Options





Full vs. Summaries mode (not available on Discuss/Chat Documents) — When you first load a document, Writing Partners shows all the comments in Full mode (both the Summary and Full Comment fields). But if you don't want to read all the comments in full right away, choose “Summaries” to just see the Summary field for each comment; this lets you quickly skim what people are talking about. The screenshot above shows comments in Summaries mode.

Sorted mode (only for Read/Annotate Documents) — sorts comments by Last Name, by First Name, by the Date the comment was made, or by Tag rather than in document order. Here's an example using Last Name:





3. Commenting Features

An “Edit” button will appear for each of your comments; you can edit a comment at any time until someone else replies to it; the comment will show that it's been edited.

When you mouse over any part of a comment, a “Comment Options” button will appear; mousing over that button will pull down a menu with additional commenting features. If the options button does not appear, refresh your browser.






The Document Owner (the person who uploaded the document) has the most options:

• Edit Comment — the Document Owner, and the Group Admin if that Document is shared with a Group, can edit a comment; the comment will show that it has been edited.
• Delete Comment — similarly, the Document Owner can delete a comment at any point.
• Show Comment URL — this option generates a link that takes people right to that comment and the corresponding part of the document.
• New Conversation — just an alternate way to start a new conversation (thread).
• Hide Full Comment — shows just the “Summary of Content” field for this comment.
• Hide Thread Detail — shows just the “Summary of Content” field for all comments below this one.

All these options are available to you when the comment is yours even if you're not the Document Owner, but you can only edit or delete your comment if no one has replied to it yet.

If you're neither the Document Owner nor the Commenter then you can't edit or delete it, but you have all the other options.

Starting a new conversation

On Discuss/Chat Documents Choose a Writing Partner for a discussion. The conversation is private; only the user and their Administrator can see it unless the user invites others to that Discuss/Chat Document. Click the button: This window will pop up: After writing a comment or question, the user can read the response, then click Continue with AI to add to the text thread.	On Read/Annotate Documents desktop, laptop and Chromebook users — double click on the sentence or paragraph number you want to comment on (or General Document) tablet and phone users — single click on the sentence or paragraph number you want to comment on (or General Document), then click on the resulting at the far right margin. A “New conversation” box will pop up: Once the commenting window is open, check to see whether your comment is about a Sentence, a Paragraph (includes images and video/audio players), or the Document in general. In addition to writing text, users can add these multimodal elements to their comments: links to an image embed code to a video or other media Users can add AI generated images. Links to other resources on the web may also be added, and can be live links on public documents .if permitted by the document owner. When you finish writing and proofing your comment, adding a link to an image, or embedding code for a video, click the blue button at the bottom right of the pop-up to submit it. There can be a time lag of several seconds, but only click the button once! When you hit the Ask AI button an AI dialogue box comes up in the top right corner like this:	On Create/Edit Documents Click on one of the two buttons next to General Document Comments Use the AI button to add AI-assisted comments or the + button to add just your own thoughts. A “Writing Partner” box will pop up in the top right corner when AI is selected: OR a “New conversation” box will pop up for adding your own comment: In addition to writing text, users can add these multimodal elements to their comments: links to an image embed code to a video or other media Users can add AI generated images. Links to other resources on the web may also be added, and can be live links on public documents .if permitted by the document owner.

Joining an existing conversation (Your Thoughts) or Adding an AI-assisted reply

Click on the “Your Thoughts” button at the bottom left corner of a comment and a box similar to the one above will pop up. After you finish writing and submitting your comment it will appear slightly below and indented to the right of the comment you replied to.

Note that images and video embeds can be added to replies as well.

Click on the “Continue with Ai” button at the bottom middle of a comment and a box will open to select a Writing Partner to assist in creating a reply to a comment.

Here's a quick explanation of the controls on the light blue (horizontal) navigation strip near the top of a each type of document (different options are available on each):

Discuss/Chat Documents

Read/Annotate Documents

Create/Edit Documents

Controls Available for All Three Types of Documents

• “Invite” link — Inviting Others to See and Comment on your Document
  By default, all three types of documents are private; no person or Group you don't invite to it can see it, except for Administrators of any Group you are in. Administrators (usually teachers) can see any document by users in their Group.
• Read/Annotate and Create/Edit Documents can be made public in by changing Basic Information in Document Properties, found by clicking More > Properties > Edit. Users can also add their Read/Annotate and Create/Edit Documents to a public collection called Youth Voices by first joining the Youth Voices Group.
• Anyone can invite people and Groups to Public Read/Annotate and Create/Edit Documents Documents.
• Only the Document Owner and their Administrators (usually teachers) can invite others to a Private Document.

To invite people, click the “Invite” link in the blue navigation strip to get to the Invite page (if the document is a Private Document that's not yours this link will be inactive):




On the Invite page, you can:

• invite people you've previously shared documents with, people who have shared documents with you, and Groups you already belong to (all will be in your Address Book).
• invite new people; just input the email addresses, separated by commas, of everyone you want to invite.
• import class rosters and other contact lists

Each of the above has its own tab. For more information see our Sharing (Inviting) page.


• Updates
  This feature (if turned on) will send you an email notification of each comment made on that document (either right away or as part of your Daily Digest email, depending on what you chose in your Comment Notifications.




Controls Available for Read/Annotate and Create/Edit Documents

• Print Icon
  Click to print your document after choosing your view (described below).
• “i” Information Icon
  Mousing over the icon provides basic information about the document (e.g. who uploaded it, when it was uploaded).
• Text Highlighter—Customizable Color Meanings (Read/Annotate Documents only)
  Our highlighting tool gives you 5 public and 5 private highlighting colors; each can have a customizable meaning. This very powerful Writing Partners feature for Read/Annotate Documents is described in its own Highlighting help file.
• “More” link
  File Download, File Copy, Tag, Reports, access to Document Properties, and other features are available off this menu; explore at your leisure!
• Lock Icon
  If shown, the Document Owner has set Time Controls (via Document Properties) that don't allow new comments on the document at this time.

That covers the basics of using Writing Partners; it's easy! More information on each of these and other topics is available on our Help pages.

You can try Writing Partners by commenting on a Public Document or by uploading your own document.

[Last updated March 2, 2026]