READING INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS

Transcription

1 READING INFORMATIONAL MATERIALS About Magazine Articles MAGAZINE ARTICLES Magazines are a form of print media. Some magazines appeal to special interest groups, such as gardeners, skiers, or opera lovers. Other magazines appeal to general audiences and offer feature stories on current topics with more detail than newspapers can give. Reading Strategy Headings Informational text in magazines, newspapers, and textbooks is often divided into sections. Headings, or heads, stand out from the text in one of th e following ways: color larger print boldface ' placement on page Heads organize the material in an easy-to-follow pattern. They also visually break up the type on a page so that the article is easy to read. Use the headings in "How to Be Polite Online" to help you organize notes and summaries as ou tlined in the chart below. Title Section Introductory Text Tone of Voice Online Table 1 Table 2 Flame On/Flame Off looking Good Online Summary BUILD UNDERSTANDING Knowing these words will help you read this magazine article. online (AHN LIN) adv. connected to the Internet ASCII (AS kee) American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a code that allows computers to communicate with each other cyberspace (SI ber SPAYS) n. term for the world of computers and telecommunications on the Internet flaming (FLAYM ing) v. slang for ranting, or going on,and on about something 258 Adapted Reader's Companion Pearson Education, Inc.

2 How to Be Polite Online from N etiquette Virginia Shea The truth is that computer networking is still in its infancy. Probably nothing illustrates this more clearly than the "ASCII jail": 90% of network communications are still limited to plain old ASCII text-that is, the characters of the alphabet, the numerals 0 through 9, and the most basic punctuation marks. It's bad enqugh that multimedia communications have not been implemented in most of cyberspace. Most of the time you can't even put a word in bold or italics! Because people cannot see or hear you in cyberspace, you need to pay close attention to the style of your electronic communications if you hope to make a good impression there. The style of electronic commu :-) Sm~ ~ laugh ~ '~'m joking" :-( Frown; sadness; "Bummer".... ~, ) Variant of :-) or "Have a _ ~_ L nice_day".._) I Wink; denotes a pun or, slyj~ke :-0 ' Yelling or screaming; or completely shocked - :-() - Can't (or WOIrt) stop talking - - :-0 -j Big, delighted grin ~ -- :-p _ Sticki.r:g o~t}~ur to~~e :-] or :-)! Sarcastic smile %-) Confused but happy %-( ~ Conf ~ sed and unhappy -- -I :_1 Can't decide how to feel;, no feelings either way - -, * Kiss ' T} or [] - Hug {{{***}}} Hugs and kisses _ nications encompasses 1 everything about your corresponden~e except its content, from your use of network conventions like "smileys" and. "sigs" to the number of characters per line in your messages. Style considerations are influenced by several of the rules of Netiquette, especially Rule 4, Respect other people's time, and Rule 5, Make yourself look good online. It doesn't matter how Reading Magazine Articles Netiquette is an example of a "portmanteau word"-a combination of two other words. It combines net(as in Internet) and etiquette (rules for polite behavior). Based on its title, who do you think could benefit from reading this magazine article? ' Read Fluently Read the second paragraph aloud. Then, tell why the author says that style is important in electronic communications. 1. encompasses (en KUM puhs uhz) v. includes. Pearson Education, Inc. Reading Informational Materials: Magazine Articles 259

3 brilliant your messages are if they're formatted in such a way that no one can read them. Reading Check What is an emoticon? Circle the answer in the bracketed paragraph. Tone of voice online The fact that most network interactions are limited to written words can be the 35 source of misunderstandings. Fortunately, clever netw~::>rk users have had years to deal with this. They've created a shorthand 2 to help communicate the tone that you'd otherwise get from the other person's voice, facial expressions, and gestures. These short- 40 hand expressions are known as smileys or emoticons. They're easy to figure out once you get the hang of it. Just remember that they're all sideways faces. See Table 1 for a list of the most commonly used emoticons. There are whole books about smileys for 45 those who are interested, including the enjoyable Smiley Dictionary by Seth Godin. People also use abbreviations to express emotional states or to qualify what they're saying. See Table 2 for a list of common abbreviations. 50 Reading Magazine Articles Why might an author use tables and charts in a magazine article? Reading Check According to Table 2,, what does LOL mean? The "FLAME ON/FLAME OFF" notifier When you really want to run off at the keyboard-but you want your readers to know that you know that you're not expressing yourself in your usual measured, reasoned manner-you need to let them know that you know that you're flaming. So before you begin your rant, simply enter the words FLAME ON. Then rant away. When you're done, write FLAME OFF and resume normal discourse.,.. Table 2: Abbreviations ~ '. BTW _ ~~ way IM~ In my humbl e opin~n_ IMNS HO ~ ~y not so humble - ' ~~~ low.j~ 0 t..h~wor~_ I- IRL ~ ~ al~.!ib~--t In the real worjd LOL ~ughing out I ~d ~ -I On the floor (laughingl _ ROTFL I Rolling on the floor! laughing WRT I With regard to- --- YMMV I Your mile age may varl <g> or <G> Grin <bg> Big grin -" f ' shorthand (SHORT hand) n. a method of writing rapid ly using symbols. 260 Adapted Reader's C9mpanion Pearson Education, Inc.

4 Looking good online One of the neat things about computers is that they let us use all kinds of special effects in our documents that we didn't even dream 70 of back in the days of typewriters (if you're old enough to remember those days). But when you're communicating online, in most cases it's back to the typewriter as far as effects go. Even if your mail system lets you use boldface, italics, and tabs, there's 75 no guarantee that your correspondent's system will understand them. At worst, your communication will turn into unreadable gibberish. What to do? Forget about boldface, italics, tabs, and font 80 changes. Never use any effect you couldn't get on an old-fashioned typewriter. In fact, you can't even use all of those. Underlining won't work, for example. Nor can you use the old IIrequired backspace" trick to put a diacritical mark 3 (a tilde 85 or an accent mark, for example) over another character. Most systems won't read the diacritical marks anyway, so just leave them out. If you feel an accent mark is absolutely necessary, type an. 90 apostrophe after the letter the accent would have gone over. Use only ASCII characters. This includes all 26 letters of the alphabet (upper and lower case), the, numerals 0 through 9, and most commonly used 95 punctuation marks. For any publishing mavens out there, however, it excludes em dashes (11_"), en dashes (11_"), and bullets. Limit your line length to 80 characters, or better yet, 60 characters. Stop to Reflect. Why might a person be tempted to use boldface, italics, and other "special effects" in an message? Reading Strategy Why do you think the author organizes the text with bullets under the heading "What to do?" 3. diacritical (df uh krit ik uhl) mark n. mark added to a letter or symbol to show its pronunciation. '. Pearson Education, Inc. Reading Informational Materials: Magazine Articles 261

5 Reading Informational Materials Magazine articles usually focus on topics of current interest and present up-to-date information. List two topics related to the Internet that might make 'interesting subjects for articles in a general interest magazine _ Otherwise, your lines may break in w eird places and your readers will have to wade through notes that look like this. Believe me, it gets annoying after a very short while. NEVER TYPE YOUR NOTES IN ALL CAPS, LIKE THIS. It's rude-like shouting constantly. And, like constant shouting, it makes people stop listening. All caps may be used, IN MODERATION, for emphasis. To indicate italics, you may *surround the material to be italicized with asterisks. * Adapted Reader's Companion Pearson Education, Inc.

6 Check Your Comprehension 1. What are some possible online substitutes for voice, facial expressions, and gestures? 2. Why is it suggested that you not type in all capitals or write lines longer than 60 characters? Applying the Reading Strategy Headings 3. What are three main ideas identified by the headings in this article? 4. What is the abbreviation for "In other words"? How do you know? Writing Informational Materials In "How to Be Polite Online," the author informs readers about the do's and don'ts of ing.think of another activity, and list some do's and don'ts that could be part of a useful magazine article. The Do's and Don'ts of Do's Don'ts Pearson Education, Inc. Reading Informational Materials: Magazine Articles 263