1. Conventions of this genre-
The Quick Reference Guide is exactly what it sounds like. A quick, reference, and a guide. The conventions of this genre are as follows.
- Subheadings
This genre is flooded with subheadings. Used as a fast guide to get you to the information you need and care about, subheadings are incredibly useful, almost like a table of contents, the subheadings are always in bold, a larger font, sometimes a different color, and often posed as a question. This is a technique employed by the writer to mimic what the reader is thinking. The reader looks up an article or a QRG, and is thinking "well I wonder how this started?". The use of questions and bold subheadings allow the reader to quickly skim through and immediately see the subheading "How this started" and then they are right there at the information they want to be at.
- Informative writing
People will read articles and QRG in order to find something out about something, however they are not as dedicated to it as to spend hours reading a scholarly journal that uses words that take up half a line to describe something. So the writers of QRG, knowing this, get straight to the point, within the first few sentences you can find the answer you are looking of and if you read on, then the writer will start to employ his/her opinions and thoughts on the issue.
- Pictures, Graphs, Information Condensers
Like I previously mentioned, people reading QRG want to know what they want to know about the topic, but don't want to spend 3 hours reading a PhD's thesis on the pros and cons of E-cigs, so they go to QRG's. Even then though, people still don't want to read lists of numbers and estimations, so the authors include graphs and charts and images as a way to condense information into a comprehensible concise list, as humans we respond to images better than descriptions of things, so images and charts help us do that.
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| Example of a pole quote. Screenshot taken by Dylan Cotter 9/9/2015 Public Domain Usage |
2. How are those conventions defined by the formatting and design conventions?
The authors of QRG have to know that people who are reading their work moist likely heard about something on twitter and want to learn more about it. So they have to grab people attention and give them the information quickly. Some use images and graph other uses pole quotes (see image), It is totally up to the writer and what he or she likes or thinks will be effective in grabbing their attention and this is an area that the writers' personality can shine through.
3. What is the purpose of the QRG?
QRG are incredibly useful if you know how to use them. QRG are kind of like trickle down reading. If you want to know about some topic, you can read a scholarly journal about it and know as much as possible. If you don't have the time or don't want to read something for 4 hours, then you can read newspaper articles. If you don't want to read through the whole article hoping to find the answer to the question you have in your head, then you can go to QRG who will show you what questions it answers using the subheadings. So again, it is in the name, quick, reference (sends you to exterior links for more info), guide.
4. Who is the intended audience?
Outside of the demographic of people who the QRG is written for (i.e.: gamers are interested in this while not so interested in this) then the main audience for QRG are just simply people who don't want to be experts in things, but people who heard about something interesting, want to find out more information about it, and get their questions answered quickly. So they are all similar in their intentions, but obviously different in what topics they want to investigate.
5. Why do QRGs use imagery?
As human we respond to images better than words. As Mr. Bottai said in class, people did cave paintings before they could speak. Picture books come before chapter books. Images are just easier for us. And as I mentioned in the conventions of a Quick Reference Guide, images, graphs and charts are image condensers. They help the writer get understandable information across quickly.
I like how you said the reference guide gives you a trickled down version of the information. You get the gist of the information without having to spend hours on scholarly journals and newspaper articles and that is something I appreciate about the guides.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you answers to these questions. They were similar to what I had as well. I especially like the way that you answered the purpose of a QRG question because I could not agree more. A QRG does not exist to tell you everything and anything about something, but is rather something that gets you familiarized with a subject and directs you further if you wish to know more.
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