I agree that there aren't too many great options...and I don't like the way Word's marginal comments are so small.

I've been beta-testing a Microsoft Word add-in for Word 2007 that extends the idea of Comments...the results are promising. Check it out here:
http://authenticassessment.wordpress.com/annotate/

The latest version (in beta) is different than the pictures on the blog.

Jim C.

I think you should ask your students which they find easier to navigate - comments on electronic documents or handwritten notes on hard copy. Comments are for the student's benefit; if they're in an offputting format, then what's the point?

My students much prefer to see notes on an electronic version of their drafts. I use boldface type to embed comments in the text; all of those red balloons in the margins smack of the dreaded red pencil.

I, too, am a fan of electronic comments; I have my students turn everything in electronically. Within Word, I don't care for the comments feature because of the way it sets everything in the margin. Comment too prolifically and one finds all those teaching moments relegated down into footnote style comments.

I rely on tracked changes and have made peace with the interruptions to the textual flow they create. I know a couple of folks who use actual footnotes for substantive commenting to keep the text clean, and use tracked changes for indicating proofreading and editing errors.

Another fairly good alternative is the editing functions in Adobe Reader, which is explained in fairly good detail here: http://www.samford.edu/groups/sturec/Cat-ElecRevTutorial.pdf

I haven't used Adobe's function for files not already in PDF, but it's fairly simple to convert Word to Adobe, so that might be a nice option, too.

I don't use the comment feature--I don't like the way that they hang around in subsequent versions of a text. But I find that it's not hard to add your comments in bold to the body of a Word document. (Control+b will format the text that follows; the same command returns you to regular script.) This lets me interpolate local comments,or add a few sentences at the beginning or end of a passage, and I have the option of writing a note at the end. The reader can find my remarks easily, and use them or erase them as they choose.

Word commenting isn't too bad once you get the hang of it. You can also turn on "track changes" and make sentence-level changes that will show up in a different color.

Word commenting has changed the way I common on writing. Because of the way comments display (in the margin), I'm careful not to overload a page with too many comments. Also, I always include a longer end note (longer than what I used to write when handwriting) to synthesize comments.

Honestly, there aren't too many options out there. You could try using Google Documents, but I don't think it provides a good way to include marginal comments.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?