Integrating Texts and Graphics into Your Writing :: Writing Education Essays

Integrating Texts and Graphics into Your Writing My advice for students about integrating texts and graphics would be to figure out how to combine them most appropriately for what you want to convey, whether it be an informational article or a creative story. In most cases, especially in technical writing, the main purpose of graphics is to explain something faster or organize the information better. Last spring in technical writing, we focused a lot on how to use our graphics in our final proposal to add to the written information, not take away from it. We used charts for comparison of statistics and diagrams to show how something is assembled. Something else to keep in mind is that graphics do not just mean photos. Graphics are everything from a plain border around a page to a colorful subheading or even a callout box to draw special attention to a quote. These things can make a document more aesthetically appealing and keep the reader’s attention. When a reader sees a full page of text and nothing else, it can be quite o verwhelming if there is nothing to break up the information. Subheadings are a great way to divide sections of text for easy reading. I don’t think a picture should be put into a document for no reason as that would take away from what the writer wants to say. If the picture is not related to anything but is just there to be cute, then don’t use it at all. For instance, I would not put a flowery border around this document right now because that would be completely irrelevant, although quite lovely I’m sure. Having said that, understand that technical writing is different from creative writing. If you are writing a poem or story and pictures could really add something significant to it, then it is wonderful to use appropriate graphics to do that. As McCloud states in â€Å"Show and Tell,† â€Å"the different ways in which words and pictures can combine is virtually unlimited.† It is good to be creative, but also remember the purpose of your graphics and the flow and readability of your pages. If it is too crowded or busy, the reader may give up trying to figure out what you want to focus on. McCloud lays out at least a dozen ways that pictures can accompany words to more completely present an idea or story.