- [David] Hello, readers.
Today we're going to talk
about how to use text features
to find information in a
piece of nonfiction writing
like a textbook, an encyclopedia
entry or a news article.
Information in these texts
is organized with a
specific purpose in mind.
The author wants you to be
able to read the text features
like a map so you can find
the information that you need.
So the first text feature
I wanna talk about today
is the title and that's just the name
at the top of a piece of writing.
And its purpose is to tell you
really what you're about to read.
Let me give you an example.
We can see this article
here, this text in yellow,
this is the title and it
says, "All about Pets."
What does that tell us about
the content of this writing?
It's gonna be all about pets.
Now below it, in green,
you can see three examples
of the next kind of text
feature that I wanna talk about,
which are called headings.
And we'll go back to that
other screen in a second,
don't worry.
And headings organize
information into sections.
So we can see that there
are three big headings here.
We've got popular pets, unusual pets,
and taking care of your pets.
These are the three headings
that all fall under the main
topic of all about pets.
Smaller than a heading is a subheading,
which organizes text into
even smaller sections.
So if we go back to the text again,
we can see that under the
main heading of popular pets,
there are three subsections,
cats, dogs and fish,
the three most popular
pets in the United States.
Another important text
feature you might see
in a piece of writing is
bold text, bold words.
And that's when a word or phrase
is printed in a thicker darker letter,
and I'll show you exactly
what that looks like.
But the purpose of it,
the reason that an author
might choose to include bold
text in a piece of writing
is to point out important
terms to the reader,
specific words that they want you to know.
And usually that's in the interest
of teaching you, the reader, a new word.
If we scan this page for bold
text, I see three examples.
Do you see how the words are darker
and the letters themselves are thicker?
That's what it means to be bold.
That's what it means
for a word to be bold.
So we've got rare, companions.
Over here in this little sidebar,
we've got the word endangered.
And many times in pieces of writing
that use bold words like
this, there will be a section
at the end of the chapter
called a glossary,
which is really kind of a
holding pen for vocabulary words.
You flip to end, you look at the glossary,
and it lists all the bolded
words and their definitions.
Now I just referred to a sidebar,
which is this little section
here in this orange-yellow box.
Now a sidebar is where an editor
or an author puts information
that doesn't really fit
in the rest of the text.
So this is next to the
unusual pets heading.
And we can see that it begins,
"While having an unusual
pet can be perfectly fine."
It's connected to this section,
but it's not essential to
the point of this paragraph.
Sidebars are where you
put important information
that otherwise wouldn't
fit into the piece.
This teal box here that says
take a peek at what's inside,
grooming tips 3, healthy
treats 5, training your pet 8,
this is a table of contents.
So if this page, all about pets,
is the first page of a magazine,
we've opened the cover,
and now we're looking at the first page,
then this little box here is telling us
what to expect in the
rest of the magazine,
what page numbers we can find
all of these other articles on.
There's also a similar
thing called an index,
which is located in the back of a book.
And that's just a list of
all the topics in the piece
in alphabetical order.
So if I wanna flip to the
back of this piece of writing,
and see if I can find a
place where it mentions pugs,
I would go and start with the
section that begins with P,
look for a mention of pug dogs,
and then I would go to the
page where pugs are listed.
And then this final heading on this page
is called taking care of your pet,
and what's interesting about it
is that it contains a bulleted list.
These little round dots, we call bullets.
Sometimes putting things
in a list like this
is the quickest most efficient
way to share information.
So this is a three point list
that all pets need some
sort of food and water,
a place to sleep and rest,
way to exercise or play,
ba-ba-ba, three different little points.
And lists will either use bullets
like these little round
things, numbered lists,
or sometimes lists that just use
letters of the alphabet for each point.
So A, food and water.
B, a place to rest or sleep.
And C, a way to exercise or play.
Now down here at the
very bottom of the page
it says want to learn more?
Www.avma.org/resourcestools/pet-owners/petcare.
And when I move my cursor over it,
you can see there's a little flag,
the cursor changes to a pointy finger,
and that means it's a hyperlink.
And that's gonna take us to a website.
And here we are on the website
of the American Veterinary
Medical Association.
So this is a website
operated by animal doctors.
And you can see that this
page too is organized
under the title of "Pet Care."
It's got a bunch of different subheadings
like responsible pet
ownership, preventive care,
and keep them healthy.
So to review, the title tells us
what the article is going to be about.
The heading divides up
that article into chunks.
The subheading divides it
up into even smaller chunks.
Sidebars contain text
that wouldn't fit elsewhere in the piece.
Bold type tells us what words
the author thinks are
important for us to learn.
Tables of contents tell us
what content we can expect.
And finally, hyperlinks
connect us to other places
on the internet where we
can learn more things.
You can learn anything, David out.
