This post will explain what parts of the guide to drafting carry over from an essay draft to our drafts of quick reference guides.
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| Seattle Municipal Archives. "Drafter working in Engineering Department, 1959" 4/28/1959 via flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic License. |
For example, a thesis statement is not very important in a Quick reference guide, because there isn't supposed to be an overarching point the author tries to get across. A QRG is more about giving information than persuading or arguing in itself.
The PIE format for paragraphs is also (though not as entirely) not vital for a QRG. it draws on the same reason as the thesis statement, because the format is designed to support a thesis. Now, it is important to draft how the paragraphs will be set up, so PIE could work, it's just that a "point" is a bit strong, when a QRG should just be giving information.
Introductions are extremely important for QRG in addition to papers. This is because the audience for a QRG is ideally someone who doesn't know much about the topic, so an introduction is vital to ease the transition from ignorance to understanding. To do this most effectively, a draft is important.
Organizing information is also highly important in a QRG, as there will be a lot of it, and organizing it appropriately makes it easier to take in. Without proper organization, a reader will get lost in a random mix of information, without path markers to figure out what's going on.
Conclusions are also not as vital in a QRG. For a proper conclusion, it would need to be long, since the topics are usually so broad, and any information that a conclusion would offer can be found easily in the subsection it relates to, because each section is short enough not to need a conclusion.
Reflection:
After reading Mark's and Ann's post about their thoughts on the drafting suggestions from the book, I realized that maybe conclusions are important after all.
- First, I'll need to include a conclusion. maybe I'll do small summaries at the end of each subsection.
- I also don't think that my introductions were particularly effective, which is important.
- I'm also not sure if I adequately introduced the whole topic, so in addition to the intros to each subsection, I'll need to include one for the whole topic.
I'd have to agree with you about a formal thesis statement not being as important, however like you mentioned in your reflection, a conclusion might be more important than you made it out to be.
ReplyDeleteI like the way that even though you did not use bullet points to organize your answers it is still perfectly easy to read and feels organized. I also agree with the content and most of my answers are similar to yours, and I like your emphasis on the importance of an introduction. Good post.
ReplyDeleteScott, I see the logic in your point about the formal thesis statement, but I still think the thesis is important in this case, simply because I believe every text should have some sort of main idea stated in the beginning. For QRGs it should be part of the introduction and less stressed, but it's still vital so that the readers know what you will be talking about. I also agree with Katherine about the conclusion being important as well. Just because this genre is less formal shouldn't mean big chunks can be overlooked. The thesis is supposed to be the first impression and the conclusion is supposed to be the last. In my opinion, both are still significant for this genre. I like how you addressed this in your reflection and said you might add mini-conclusions at the end of every section. I think that's a great idea. Good luck!
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