English 309 Prof. Zawacki

Questions to ask about the piece of writing you're analyzing:

· What is the writer's purpose? How do you know? Where in the essay/article do you begin to be focused on purpose? (Remember that personal essays may proceed quite differently from articles or academic writing. A "thesis" may not be apparent, but there will be a focus.) What about the title? How does it tell you to read the text?

· How would you characterize the author's "persona"? Think about voice, tone, language choice, complexity of sentence structure, length of paragraphs, etc. All of these elements are part of persona. Look especially at how the "I" is constructed. Remember that the "I" is a construction in language and that a writer's "I"/eye may be very different from one piece to the next depending upon audience and purpose. Is the persona trustworthy? Why? Engaging? Likable? Authoritative? Distant? Reliable? Purposely unreliable?

· How is the essay/article structured to fulfill the purpose? How do paragraphs begin? How are they connected to one another? Does the writer proceed chronologically? By points? By seeming digressions? (This question is especially important when you look at personal essays, which may be "mind walks" but still have a certain logic in the organization.)

· Look closely at sentence structure and punctuation. Does the writer use complex sentence structures with lots of relationships signaled between ideas (e.g. if, when, after, since, because, etc)? What about "and" and "but" connectors which link equally important ideas? Intentional fragments? Comma splices? Punctuation is also part of voice. Semi-colons, for example, tend to be more formal than commas or other kinds of connectors. Colons are very formal. Exclamation marks might give the prose a sort of reckless energy, but overuse of exclamation marks, as one writer once said, is akin to laughing at your own jokes.

· What kinds of rhetorical devices does the writer use (narration, description, comparison, classification, definition, explanation, etc)? Essays and articles are always combinations of these devices, but look to see if any particular one seems to prevail. What figures of speech are employed? Look, for example, for metaphor, simile, vivid imagery (appeals to the senses).

· Does the author use other sources? If so, how are they cited? Any other quoted voices? How are quoted voices introduced? Notice that articles for popular/general audiences employ sources very differently from academic writing. Notice how sources are introduced in the articles you're using as models if you are writing an article for your portfolio.

· Notice format of the printed text itself. Spacing, font, paragraph length, even the margins. Are different fonts used in the same piece? Why? To what effect? How about use of headings and lower level subheadings? Why used? Pictures? Graphics? All of these are part of voice.

These are only a sampling of the kinds of things you might notice about how a piece is written. You don't have to address everything here for every piece of writing you look at. Use these questions as guidelines when you do your own close reading. Also use these as guidelines for revising your own pieces for the audiences you might be imagining as readers.