Saturday, September 12, 2015

QRGs: The Genre

In this post I will be talking about the conventions and style of the quick reference guide (QRG). I will also be discussing the intended audience and purpose of the QRG in order to help explain why the QRD uses such conventions. Finally I will conclude by mentioning the images used in a QRG and why they are used.
0Night-Shade0, "Vegan Food Guide", 21 March 2008 via Deviantart.com, http://0night-shade0.deviantart.com/art/Vegan-food-guide-80619103
1) What are the conventions of the QRG?
The conventions of the QRG include an explanatory title and subheadings and easy to read language. In addition to these, the genre also tends to use lots of white space, infographics, humanizing pictures and sometimes embedded videos. With regards to the arguments, the QRG presents both sides of an argument with limited but present commentary and analysis.

2) How are those conventions defined by the author's formatting and design choice?
The author's formatting plays a key role in the use of these conventions, for example some say a picture is worth a thousand words while a video is worth ten thousand. Some authors may choose to use videos instead of pictures to convey more meaning. The author may also choose to appeal to a wide range of audiences so various types of formatting such as pictures and data may be helpful in casting the net wide. Finally the author's design may be more coherent if there is not as much white space or if there are more pictures and less words.

3)What does the purpose of QRG appear to be?
The purpose of these guides appear to be the ability for a reader to quickly learn all they need to know about a topic.  It is informative with slight commentary, and seems to be a condensed version of a long ongoing debate.

4)Who is the intended audience of these QRGs?
The intended audience of these QRGs are as large of an audience as they are able to get. The use of various types of graphics from picture that are humanizing to graphs and data plots. The net is cast wide to see how many people the QRG can attract.  It is also written in a somewhat layman's language meaning that the average audience member will be able to read it with no problem.

5)How do the QRGs use imagery and visuals? Why?
As I have said before the use of various types of images from pictures of people to inforgraphs is used to catch a wide range of audience members. Another less talked about use of these graphics is to break up chunks of writing with a pleasant image to encourage the audience to keep reading.  Finally the last possible reason is that  QRG is meant to be skimmed through and pictures are a great way to tell an entire story in a very small amount of space. All of these things contribute to the images being important to the QRG.

3 comments:

  1. Hey Elliot! This looks pretty good! I think they all really look similar mainly because we are writing a QRG about QRGs. But your paragraphs don't sound too wordy and everything appears concise and neat! Good job!

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  2. This looks like a pretty good outline of QRGs! I included most of the stuff you talked about in my blog post as well. I noticed that you didn't mention the use of hyperlinks and a brief introduction as a part of the conventions of the QRG. That might just be something to think about in your own QRG. Overall, I thought you did a great job with this!

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  3. I liked your QRG post! It captured everything that needed to be said, and it was beautifully concise. Mine was exactly the same way, in terms of shortness and info. Keep up the good work!

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