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| Altmann, Gerd "Board Questions Who What How Why Where" 06/11/2015 via pixabay. CC0 Public Domain |
The first convention of the QRG is hyperlinking to relevant sites. The hyperlinking is formatted so that the link stands out. This makes the reader's eye immediately drawn to the link, making it easier to find. The purpose of the Quick Reference Guide is to give you a detailed but concise overview of a particular issue, and hyperlinking lets the author offer the reader additional information without making the QRG excessively lengthy.
Another convention is the use of subheadings. The reader makes these headings in a bigger and bolder font than the rest of the text so that it is easy to see and find where the sections are divided. These subheadings often take the form of questions in order to guide the reader and let them know what information will be covered under the subheading.
An informal tone is also an important convention. The typical audience of the Quick Reference Guide is pretty general, and not necessarily experts on the topic they're reading about. This is because the QRGs are presented in a place (online) where normal people will be just scrolling through, not necessarily looking for a scholarly report. By keeping the tone conversational, the writer presents the information in a way that is easy to follow and understand for the typical reader. Some QRGs expect a bit of previous knowledge on the subject, but they don't usually go beyond general knowledge almost any reader would already have.
Relevant pictures are also seen in these guides. The author of the QRG uses these visuals to both give the reader a visual representation of the information being presented and also to break up the text. The author tends to place these pictures in a way where they can give the reader a few seconds of break from reading the text. The general audience reading the quick reference guide probably often enjoys pictures as a more fun part of the article than the actual text, and as such the pictures keep them interested. Pictures also evoke emotional appeal to prove the author's point, and make the topic seem more relevant and real to the reader.
Quick Reference Guides are an efficient way of presenting detailed material to a general audience, and the design choices and visuals the writer uses compile to create a very readable and understandable source of information.
Later on:
What I learned when reviewing Zayla, Grace, and Michaela's blog posts was that we as a class seem to have a pretty solid understanding of the QRG genre (at least in theory, we'll see about in practice later!). I couldn't really find anything to correct for any of them. That makes sense considering we went over this and discussed it in class, so I guess yay we all pay attention in class!
Later on:
What I learned when reviewing Zayla, Grace, and Michaela's blog posts was that we as a class seem to have a pretty solid understanding of the QRG genre (at least in theory, we'll see about in practice later!). I couldn't really find anything to correct for any of them. That makes sense considering we went over this and discussed it in class, so I guess yay we all pay attention in class!
I like how you addressed how QRGs are informal and that you addressed everything that we went over in class in detail. I also like how you ended your blog post with a conclusive paragraph that wrapped everything up in less detail than the paragraphs going into each aspect of a QRG.
ReplyDeleteWow, you hit all the major points of the QRG! I think the combination of subheadings, informal tone, and hyperlinking is the "big 3" of QRGs, and then pictures (like you said!) go a long way to keeping the audience engaged.
ReplyDeleteWhen you summed up the QRG in the last paragraph as efficient, I think that really struck home. The QRG is at its very core an efficient document, and I think even in your picture you address this. The QRG gets to the point, the who what when where and why, and then leaves the reader to develop an opinion on their own.