Illustration
You are in a conversation with someone ,and you express
an opinion about something. The person you are with says, "What do you mean?
Why do you say that?" Your response is, "Well, let me give you an example."
From this natural tendency to explain through examples comes the illustration
paper. The illustration paper can be considered the first step on the way
to writing a persuasion paper since it is through illustrations that we convince
others of the meaning of our ideas.
To illustrate means "to throw light or lustre on; elucidate
with pictures."
Think of your topic as one that is totally in the dark to your reader (and
perhaps nearly in the dark to you). Your theme brings your topic to the reader's
awareness through the process of lighting it up through each of your examples.
Each example reveals the topic more; finally the topic stands revealed so
that everyone can see it. It is lustrous, and you have made it so with personally
developed images (pictures).
What kinds of topics lend themselves to illustration? Just about any.
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Places. Do you have a like or dis-like for a particular town or area? Some
people are surprised to hear it, but when asked about how I like living in
Ashland, I reply that I love it. For me, at this time in my life, Ashland
is a great place to live. When they ask why, I say that it's a safe community
to live in and to raise kids. It's near to many great outdoor areas, some
of the country's best natural parks for year round recreation. Housing is
cheap, at least compared to so many other places in the country. And so on.
To develop these examples into a formal essay, I would have to pick reasons
that would lend themselves to at least a paragraph of information, information
in the form of illustrating by examples.
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People. Around election time, we tend to form strong opinions about political
figures. Why? Why do some candidates for public office appeal to us? Give
the examples. Be specific.
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Things. Some people prefer Chevys and others prefer Fords. Or at least it
used to be that way before there were so many different cars to choose from.
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Sports teams. Why does anyone root for any particular team?
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Popular sayings. Biblical sayings. Folk wisdom. All of these can be used
to inspire an illustration paper.
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Ideas. Abstract ideas must be illustrated in order to communicate your meaning.
Politicians love to stay at the level of abstraction. They will promise a
big tax cut, but they won't say who will benefit most from it. Everyone
wants a tax cut, but how fair is it to give the wealthiest people many
thousands of dollars of tax cuts and the average person pennies?
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