The OPTIC Strategy for Visual Analysis is a simple method of rhetorical criticism designed to help with the process of analyzing visuals. OPTIC is an acronym, standing for By following the five steps of the OPTIC strategy, you can take nearly any visual artifact (like a poster, painting, advertisement, video
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With Mom’s big day right around the corner, I know what you’re thinking: you want to impress that amazing woman in your life with impeccable, flawless, and beautiful punctuation. Problem is, that pesky apostrophe is…confusing. So, what should you do? Where should you put the apostrophe? You basically have three
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As we enter spring and approach one of the most important holidays in Christianity—Easter—it’s time to dig through your calendar to ensure you have the right date circled. After all, Easter has probably one of the most unique ways of determining its date of any religious holiday and it’s not
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Rhetoric is, as Aristotle once put it, the “faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion.” What does that mean exactly? Every time we communicate, we have options for how to assemble a message. We can use words, sounds, facial expressions, colors, icons, symbols or any
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Semicolons are often seen as a strange and mysterious punctuation mark; they’re part period and part comma. So why use them? They’re useful to break up the stylistic approach to sentence structure, allowing writers to combine two related thoughts, often removing a word or two in the process. They’re also
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Quotation marks are most commonly used to signify direct quotes. However, they also have a unique quality in that they can communicate sarcasm or snarkiness. They can also draw attention to words being described as words and they distinguish a short media piece from its larger container. Good writers need
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Question marks are easily recognized has the icon that turns a statement into a question. You may be interested to know, however, that while question marks typically fall at the end of a sentence, they can sometimes be used mid-setence. Terms You Need to Know to Use Question Marks QUESTIONA
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Periods (also known as “full stops” or “full points”) are probably the most recognizable and widely used punctuation mark. Their primary and most common purpose is to end a sentence. But periods can (and should!) be used for a variety of other purposes as well, including creating acronyms and abbreviations.
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Parentheses are valuable writing tools; they allow writers to insert added detail within a sentence, clarify a writer’s thinking, or include citations to avoid plagiarism. It’s important to know how to use parentheses—especially for citation purposes!—but you won’t want to overuse parentheses for the purposes of inserting added detail. Be
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Hyphens are incredibly helpful for clarifying meaning. Notice, for example, the difference in meaning between these two phrases: “hot water bottle” and “hot-water bottle.” In the first phrase, there is a bottle that is physically hot to the touch. In the second phrase, it’s a bottle that holds hot water.
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