MM12 Emphasizing important information

MM12-a Determining what needs emphasis

MM12-aDetermining what needs emphasis

Before you can make decisions about how to emphasize certain information, you need to decide what information is most crucial to convey. This decision depends on your audience and your purpose.

If your purpose is to inform and your audience is peers (other college students) who are new to the topic, you’ll want to think about overarching categories of information and what might motivate your audience to engage with the information. If your purpose is to persuade your audience to embrace your position in a debate, the most important information to emphasize might be the evidence you provide to support your key points.

Student composer Alyson D’Amato, when creating her informative Web site about brewing tea, wanted to emphasize the benefits of brewing loose leaf tea and the pleasures of creating custom blends. She didn’t want these ideas to get buried under other basic information such as different kinds of tea leaves. To start identifying information that needs emphasis in your own composition, think about the following questions:

What is your reason for composing? What are you trying to accomplish, and why?
Who are your audience members? What information is going to be most appealing to them? Most convincing?
What’s the main thing you want your readers to remember after they’ve experienced your composition?