When looking at pieces of literature, one can see that from author to author there are differences between the ways in which they have written. This can be anything from parenthesis or italics to the language used within the text. All of these different methods can be summarized as “moves”, meaning something a writer does within their pieces to get a certain effect on the reader.
In the They Say, I Say Appendix, there are many moves the author employed for the benefit of the reader. One of these is the inclusion of bold centered titles, which I like to call “Front and Center”. By including these, the author made it much easier to see the different sections included in the book. He also made it much easier for someone to find a specific topic as the titles are brief but very concise. The author made their writing very navigable to all that want to utilize it. Next to this title the author makes another move, one that I’ve named “further directions” as the move is the inclusion of the page number next to the title in parenthesis. This move would be less significant if it happened to also be in bold, but rather the author made it in normal text, showing that the page number is not the most important thing he wants to show on this page. It is included however if the reader would like to look further into the template that they were shown if and only if they want to. While there are many types of bullet points that someone could use, this author strayed away from the traditional circular bullet points and opted for one that is a triangle instead. These triangles make the different subjects pieces stand out much more than a typical bullet point as it almost looks as though the bullet point is pointing at the line, drawing the attention of the reading and signifying that something new of importance is on this line. These eye catching and attention focusing bullet points are thus named “Look over there”. The next move I call “eXclude” because the author excludes the use of any word referring to a person by substituting the letter X in each place. This serves to let the writer have full creative control and not be swayed by what they author used in their template. The author wants to guide the writer, not make writing decisions for them. The last move I’d like to mention is the blank spaces left within each template that I’ve named “Your Turn”. These blanks serve to signal to the reader that this is where they are to add their own writing into the template, making this piece of writing very easy for the reader to utilize. This allows for them to be creative while at the same time guiding them to the writing they are intending to create.
Another text that includes very noticeable moves is How to Read Like a Writer. instead of including a heading for each section of the essay, the author titles them all with centered, bold questions. The fact they are bold and in the center of the page makes them very noticeable to the reader. Forming the titles into questions allows the reader to better find the answer to a question they have about this topic, something unique and very effective that is not seen in most other pieces of writing. For this reason I’ve called it “What’s Your Question”. This author also uses italics on a single word or short phrases. This is done to emphasize a point to the reader or to draw attention to a specific detail the author finds important about the topic. This is a very effective way to point something out to a reader and is called “Pay Attention to Me”. Our author in this piece embeds many questions for the reader to ponder as they go through the piece. They are thus called “Follow Me” as they serve to guide the reader to the point the author is making. Finally within this piece I found the “Did You Catch That Yet?” as throughout the piece the author is constantly repeating the pain point of the essay. This serves to keep the reader focused on what the point of the piece of writing is. The technique, although at times annoying, is very successful in keeping the purpose known to the reader.
The last notable move I’d like to discuss is within Steps Toward Rhetorical Analysis. While titles are included to separate each topic, they are aligned with the rest of the text and do not have any distinguishing qualities. The author could have chosen to do this as to make the entire piece equally important or to make it all flow together versus being broken up into chunks. While effective in making one long piece of writing, this serves to make the paper feel like it goes on forever and is not pleasing in the slightest to read. Significant breaks within large pieces of writing are what makes it easier to read a bulk of text.
