Writing: Form, Presentational and Language Features

Packages

Choosing the form of your text is choosing the way you package it.

You may have written the most interesting article in the world, but if you have packaged it in an inappropriate form then it will not be very effective.

There are many different forms of text you can select from when planning, let’s take a look at them now:

Signposts

You can choose to include presentational features (also called organisational features by some exam boards) in your text to help your reader travel around it.

By including these useful signposts, you will make it easier for readers to find the information they are looking for, and to find the important information in your text.

Some of these are particularly useful or common so let’s take a look at the options you have when writing…

Bullet Points and Numbered Bullet Points

These presentational features look like this:

• This is a bullet point
• This is also a bullet point
• This is a bullet point too

1. This is a numbered bullet point
2. This is also a numbered bullet point
3. This is a numbered bullet point too

They are typically used for texts with lists, such as a report, recipe or instruction manual.

Numbered bullet points are used rather than basic bullet points when the information needs to be read, or carried out, in a specific order, for example, for safety reasons.

Headings and Subheadings

These presentational features look like this:

In this leaflet,

the heading is ‘Solar Eclipse Event‘,

AND

the two subheadings are ‘Catch the once in a lifetime celestial event at Filbury Park, 23rd November, 8pm‘ and ‘Did you know?‘

First glance:

Headings act as an overall introduction to a text in the simplest words possible. The aim of a heading is to inform the reader about the contents of the text at a glance, so that they can decide whether to continue reading or not.

Second glance:

Subheadings act as a more detailed introduction to a text. They will usually give you a few more details than the heading itself, and, after reading the subheading, you can usually infer whether the text is biased or not. Once the reader has decided to keep reading after looking at the heading, the subheading’s job is to keep them there.

Direct Address to the reader:

• When it seems as if the writer is talking directly to the reader.

For example: YOU must buy our insane new cleaning product!

The effect of this is to persuade the reader to do something – in this case, influence the reader to buy the product!

Spices

Language features are like spices, they can make texts much more delicious to read.

There are lots of different language ‘spices’ we can add into our texts, let’s take a look at a few of them now.

1. Idioms

Idioms are common phrases which are generally understood by a wide range of people.

Watch out though, they do not make literal sense, and are instead meant to symbolise a complex idea or feeling.

For example: 

”She was over the moon about the promotion!”

Here, ”over the moon” describes how happy the person is, rather than that they have taken a trip into outer space!

2. Metaphors

Metaphors describe something as something else.

You should include them in your text when you want to make the reader explore the connection between the two items themselves.

For example:

”The meeting was a rollercoaster”

3. Similes

Similes compare something to something else, and clearly emphasise their similarities.

Simile, similarities, sounds… similar, doesn’t it?

This can be a useful way to remember this technique when you are writing.

You can create a simile using either ‘as…as…‘ or ‘like‘ in your sentence.

For example:

”The to do list for today is as big as a mountain.”