QGR's: the Genre

QGR's the Genre

Nicosmos. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy,_english.svg. July 2009 via Wikimedia. Public Domain.

This blog post will focus on the genre of quick reference guides and what they encompass. This is a new genre for me

1. The genre seems to have five conventions. These conventions are use of images and visual data, hyperlinks, subtitles are questions, paragraphs that are short and to the point, and tons of context.

Images and visual

• Provide evidence in graphic form
• Emotional impact
• Visual Appeal

Hyperlinks

• Provides context background
• Condenses the writer's job

Subtitles are questions

• Scannable
• Leads into topic
• Transition
• Storytelling
• Clarity

Paragraphs are short and to the point

• Scannable
• Simplifies a complex story
• Gives the purpose
• Digestible

Tons of context

• The purpose is to provide tons of context
• provides insight into all sides
• who, what, when, where, why, how

    2. These conventions are defined by the author's formatting and design choices because the author

• Writes in short paragraphs with big font making it scannable
• Has images to go with the short paragraphs or separating them
• Includes hyperlinks to different articles
• Embeds tweets into the QGR
• Makes subtitles different color than body text to stand out

    3. The purpose of a QGR seems to be to give a overview of a much larger event by giving a short description in what happened in the many sub-events. It gives the reader all the information they would want to know on the topic with out overwhelming them. It's brief descriptions make it very easy to digest so you can learn about the topic quickly.

    4. The intended audience for each article is different but also similar

• Example 1: This is written for those who are interested in the health effects of an E-cigarette user.
• Example 2: This is written for those who are interested in learn about the gamergate scandal.
• Example 3: This is written for those are interested in learning about the Greek debit crisis.
• Example 4: This is a guide for those who missed the Sochi Olympics or did not understand parts of it.
• Example 5: This is an guide for those who do not understand the connections between the black lives matter movement and presidential candidate Bernie Sander.

While these cover different topics, the overall intended audience is those looking for a brief but detailed easy to read guide on a topic or event.

    5. QGR's uses visuals and images to appeal to emotions and to use the images as evidence. Because QGR's are trying to be brief, the pictures are able to send a message or show a real shot from the event without using any words. This makes showing what happened a lot easier.

Reflection:
After reading the "OGR's the Genre" of Rachel, Chingiz, and Clay I realized that they all put very similar things. There were a couple of things that I missed though. Rachel said that images can be used for cultural perspective and that was something that I had not thought of. Chingiz talked about having graphs and videos which I left out. Other than those two smaller details, our blogs on the subject were all very similar.