Critical commentary is a written justification or a criticism of a text book or a publication of text or any other textual materials and it’s totally different from other writing methods in style, views and purpose. Critical commentary aims at presenting a forum for critical views to detail the concept and the basic ideas behind a part of the given presentation or writing or any textual resource. Critical commentary gives the analysis of the author’s view point, the purpose of the writing and the comments and reviews about the piece of writing.

Critical commentary details the characters in a particular piece of writing or a presentation as they are the foundation or the main concept in every piece of the whole writing or presentation. The readers are connected with the characters and are focused on these characters. The characters may catch the attention of the readers or the characters may be an unwanted one from their point of view. The reasons behind these various opinions or the different point of views should be clearly analyzed by the author of the critical commentary. The author needs to be a real critic, able to criticize positively as well as negatively and he should be bold in stating his strong views or opinions in his own writing and should analyze what is what.

While writing critical commentary, one can follow the three-stage approach which can deliver an effective commentary. The stages are introduction, commentary and conclusion. A concise introduction is a must for critical commentary of a passage and it should precede the analysis. If the critical writing is about a passage of a drama or a prose or any other literary work, the introductory part should have the original passage, taken from its source document, placed as the first thing. But the essence or the dominant theme of the passage in the introduction part should not exceed more than two or three sentences.  A brief summary of the passage should also be given. In the commentary part, the discussion about the passage should be analyzed in detail. Each and every part of the passage, significant sentences and highlights should be analyzed and commented by the commentary writer in his/her point of view. The main features of the presentation like the syntax, length of sentences, the narrative or dramatic techniques, rhyme, verses, contrast, imagination and other literary terms should be analyzed and commented effectively. Finally let us focus on few points about the conclusion part. Conclusions are optional part of a critical commentary, which gives a summarizing statement about the presentation. It’s up to the choice of the author of the critical commentary to decide whether to place a conclusion in his writings.

In broader terms, critical commentary involves an analysis and detailed discussion on the content and style of any literary piece of work. By concentrating on the passage and reading it carefully, noting down the points of style and content, one can write a good critical commentary.