Reading Response Week 6
After reading chapter 37 I began to think about how to make our brochure could a nice sentence structure. The ideas that the Thomson Handbook focused on was that sentences should be “simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.” We used a mixture of all of these in our brochure. I thought it was important to try different types of sentences. By using different types of sentences, I think it made it easier for the reader to comprehend. Comprehension is key especially when focusing on different types of people and interests. Mixing up the sentence type also makes the reading less boring, which is important when trying to attain their attention. For our brochure I used simple sentences, because I did the mail-in form. I also added some designs to this page, and that is where I used the information I read in chapter 24. Overall our sentences were general, in order to appeal to the general population.
As for chapter 24 it focused more on the graphics. It mainly focused on how to convey information and do it in a way to reach the reader. The idea of conveying a message was going through my head when I was designing my brochure. After looking at many examples of other brochures, I had sort of got a feel for designing the brochure. The goal was to be neat in appearance, while still appearing to the readers’ eye. Through this we wanted to gain and retain our readers’ attention. Our group used various color schemes, boxes, and pictures to enhance our brochure. After reading these two chapters we were able to complete our brochure in a more professional manner. Overall I think we did a good job on the brochure.
Comments
Comment
It is a good idea that you looked at many examples for design. There is nothing wrong with mimicking a brochure you may find online or anywhere for that matter. If you know that a company put the effort to publish it, then you know that they were happy with the structure and context. It is up to you to be the judge of what brochure you find is effective or not. That is why it was a good idea in our last reading response for us to find a brochure and tell why we thought it was effective and what parts we would change. It helped us to develop what kind of things we are looking to use in our own projects, and what kind of things to leave out. On top of all this, we received feedback from our peers, so that helped mold our ideas as well. Through the use of good design and sentence variety we will all benefit our own projects from here and the rest of our lives if we are ever faced with making a similar text.
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I agree with how you feel about using various sentence structures in the brochure. The four types of sentence structures that the Thomson Handbook listed are simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. These different types of structures create some variety in the brochure and keep the audience focused on the material. Brochures can be lengthy and full of words, but by using the variety in sentence structure, the audience will be much more interested in the material. Since the audience will be more interested in the material, a positive result may occur such as more volunteers and more donations to the Community and Family Resource Center.
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I agree that the variety is important, and we had a good variety of sentences within our brochure. This was one of the things I was going to take a look at before our next draft was due though, just to be sure we did an effective job with our sentences and emphasis. I tried to keep this principles in mind as I worked on the brochure but sometimes they slipped my mind, and I'm sure it was the same for all of us. So I thought it would be a good idea to look back and make sure everything is structured effectively.
Chapter 24 really helped me with some of our graphics, and put me in the right frame of mind when picking the pictures I wanted to use. I think we did a good job tying together text and pictures to help convey our message. This was another thing I thought we could all take a look at to make sure we have a consensus on the images, as sometimes they can convey different meangings to different individuals.
Comment
I also thought chapter 37 brought up some great points about sentence structure. Before I read this, I knew about sentence structure, but I often did not pay attention to it. I think in a brochure we should use concise simple sentences. In something the size of a brochure, or even a flyer, we need to make sure we grab our audience’s attention quickly. I think using bullet points to convey important information is a very effective way of doing this. Another strong attention getter is by rhetorically placing pictures. If you place a dull picture on the front of the brochure, you probably will not get the audience’s attention whereas if you place a fun bright picture on the front you will probably catch the reader’s eye. I glanced over your brochure and I think you guys are out to a good start.