Your guide to sophisticated, effective post-secondary writing

PEA: POINT, EVIDENCE, ANALYSIS

PEA PARAGRAPH • Point: Answer the question asked in one or two sentences. Remember the reader’s needs

(reader may not know question, book, article… etc.) so you need to provide context for understanding. BUT NO FLUFF. No book reports, please. No big introductions. Just answer what you were asked.

• Evidence: Use the texts provided to support your point, prove it true. Use at least one, hopefully two, textual quotations in your evidence. Again, remember that reader may need help to understand. Provide context.

• Analysis: End the paragraph with analysis instead of repetition. Analysis means original thought. Do not repeat your point, do not summarize what you read. Instead, think about the subject on your own and come up with something new. Here are some phrases that can trigger analysis:

• If… then, Obviously, It would seem, One may assume, While this is the case here, Looking ahead, Perhaps if…

A SAMPLE PARAGRAPH

• Question:

How are images and words used in Design Layout?

• Answer:

Images and words work together to create a great layout and, over a series of pages, can tell a story.

A SAMPLE PEA PARAGRAPH In Design Layout, images and words are elements that can work together to

create a superior product and, over a series of pages, create a compelling narrative. Images and words have a symbiotic relationship when it comes to good design layout. Which is to say that if separated, neither one—image or words—would succeed in standing alone. The words used in layout, however, “…should never simply repeat what the image is saying” (Adams). Words should not merely serve as a caption, but enhance the image to add another layer to the message. Words serving as caption simply create redundancy in the design and ultimately, it fails. It would seem rather important, then, in studying design layout in Graphic Arts that a certain amount of time be spent on examining the close relationship of words and images.

YOUR “TURN” TO WRITE A PEA PARAGRAPH

• Please use any or all of the segment 1 articles/videos from Ina Saltz’s “Foundations of Typography: Hierarchy” to answer the following question in a PEA response:

How can creating a logical Hierarchy lead to better design choices in an ad?