[rgmerk]

I’ve been a reviewer and occasionally written reviews a bit like you describe.

Papers are an exercise in communicating information to the paper’s readers. If the writing makes it very difficult for the audience to understand that information, the paper is of little use and not suitable for publication regardless of the quality of the ideas within.

It is not the reviewer’s job to rewrite the paper to make it comprehensible. Not only do reviewers not have time, it is not their job.

Writing is not easy, and writing technical papers is a genuinely difficult skill to learn. But it is necessary for the work to be useful.

To be honest, it sounds like the teacher who suggested you write the paper let you down and wasted your time. Either the work was worth their time to help you revise it in to publishable form, or they shouldn’t have suggested it in the first place.

[matsemann]

Did you ironically misread their comment, and didn't realize the grammar the reviewers were complaining about was the known bad examples his algo could fix?

[maleldil]

It's hard to believe that the reviewers misunderstood the examples. It's more likely that the surrounding text was badly written, and the reviewers had no idea what they should be looking at.

[jll29]

There is the option of contacting the program committee chair or proceedings editor to complain if the reviewers misunderstood something fundamentally, like it looks like it happened in his example.

The teacher should have fought this battle for the pupil, or they ought to have their efforts re-targeted another conference.

[rgmerk]

Ha!

Sorry, I did miss that. And yes, that sounds like lazy reviewing .

But I have also read many word salads from grad students that their supervisors should never have let go to a reviewer.