1. Non-Fiction
Text Features
&
Text Structure

2. What Do You Need to Know About Form and Style?
People with “style” stand out from the crowd.
Something about the way they dress, walk, or speak is distinctive.
The same is true of writers.
Successful essayists use language in a way that is interesting and memorable and that helps convey an aspect of their personalities.
While maintaining a coherent form and structure, these authors use style to attract, persuade, entertain, and engage their readers.

3. Forms of Nonfiction
Nonfiction—true-life stories of people, things, events, and places—comes in many forms.
Some writers share a personal story, while others write about someone else’s life or reflect on a topic of personal significance.
Working within these forms, writers infuse their writing with their own personal style.

4. Forms of Nonfiction Continued
Personal Essay: A personal essay can be about any topic, serious or humorous. It is usually short and informal and often reveals a great deal about the writer’s personality and tastes.
Expository Essay: An expository essay explains something to the reader by giving information or clarifying an idea. Expository essays are usually formal in tone and generally objective.
Autobiography: An autobiography is a full-length work that gives an account of the writer’s own life.
Memoir: Unlike an autobiography, which is the story of a person’s life, a memoir zeroes in on a particular time period in the writer’s life.
Biography: A biography tells the story of a person’s life. It is written or told by someone other than its subject.

5. A Writer’s Style
Diction: A writer’s style is revealed through word choice, or diction, and through sentence structures. Some authors write in informal English or even in slang. Others prefer to use formal English.
Tone: A key element of style is tone, a writer’s attitude toward a subject, a character, or the audience. Tone isn’t only what you say but also how you say it.
Mood: When you walk into a room full of people, you can often sense the mood—for example, a feeling of celebration or mourning, concern or relaxation. Writers create mood, or emotional atmosphere, by choosing their words carefully. The use of imagery—words or phrases that appeal to one or more of our senses—also helps establish mood.
As you analyze the selections in this collection, you might find the following words helpful in describing tone and mood.
Tone (description of attitude): sarcastic; serious; vengeful; admiring; amused; bitter; forgiving
Mood (description of atmosphere): grim; joyous; ominous; eerie; tense; lighthearted

6. What are Text Features?
Text features are to non-fiction what story elements are to fiction. 
Text features help the reader make sense of what they are reading and are the building blocks for text structure.
So what exactly are non-fiction text features?

7. Text Features and Comprehension
Text features go hand-in-hand with comprehension.
Without them, comprehension could be greatly compromised.
For example, if the author wants a reader to understand where a country is in the world, then providing a map helps the reader visualize and understand the importance of that country’s location.
If the anatomy of an animal is extremely important to understanding a text, a detailed photograph with labels gives the reader the support he/she needs to comprehend the text.

8. Text Features and Comprehension Continued
Text features also help readers determine what is important to the text and to them.
Without a table of contents or an index, readers can spend wasted time flipping through the book to find the information they need.
Special print helps draw the attention of the reader to important or key words and phrases.

9. Text Features and Comprehension Continued
Readers of all ages, especially if reading is difficult, tend to skip over many of the text features provided within a text.
To help readers understand the importance of text features, take some time before reading to look through the photographs/illustrations, charts, graphs, or maps and talk about what you notice.
Make some predictions about what you will learn or start a list of questions you have based off of the text features.

10. Some Common Text Features within Non-Fiction
Captions: Help you better understand a picture or photograph
Comparisons: These sentences help you to picture something {Example: A whale shark is a little bit bigger than a school bus.}
Glossary: Helps you define words that are in the book
Graphics: Charts, graphs, or cutaways are used to help you understand what the author is trying to tell you
Illustrations/Photographs: Help you to know exactly what something looks like

11. Maps: help you to understand where places are in the world
Some Common Text Features within Non-Fiction Continued
Index: This is an alphabetical list of ideas that are in the book. It tells you what page the idea is on.
Labels: These help you identify a picture or a photograph and its parts
Maps: help you to understand where places are in the world
Special Print: When a word is bold, in italics, or underlined, it is an important word for you to know
Subtitles: These headings help you to know what the next section will be about
Table of Contents: Helps you identify key topics in the book in the order they are presented

12. What is Text Structure?
Simply put, text structure is how the author organizes the information within the text.

13. Why do text structures matter to readers?
Tells readers what kind of structure to expect, it helps them connect to and remember what they have read better.
It gives readers clues as to what is most important in the text.
It helps readers summarize the text. 
For example, if we are summarizing a text that has a sequence/time order structure, we want to make sure we summarize in the same structure.  (It would not make sense to tell an autobiography out of order.)

14. Examples of Non-Fiction Text Structure
1. Problem/Solution
The author will introduce a problem and tell us how the problem could be fixed. 
There may be one solution to fix the problem or several different solutions mentioned.
Real life example: Advertisements in magazines for products (problem-pain; solution-Tylenol)
2. Cause and Effect
The author describes something that has happened which has had an effect on or caused something else to happen.  
It could be a good effect or a bad effect. 
There may be more than one cause and there may also be more than one effect. (Many times, problem/solution and cause and effect seem like “cousins” because they can be together.)
Real life example: A newspaper article about a volcano eruption which had an effect on tourism

15. Texts are written in an order or timeline format.
Examples of Non-Fiction Text Structure Continued
3. Compare/Contrast
The author’s purpose is to tell you how two things are the same and how they are different by comparing them.
Real life example: A bargain hunter writing on her blog about buying store-brand items and how it compares with buying name-brand items.
4. Description/List
Although this is a very common text structure, I think it’s one of the trickiest because the author throws a lot of information at the reader (or lists facts) about a certain subject. 
It is up to the reader to determine what he/she thinks is important and sometimes even interesting enough to remember.
Real life example: A soccer coach’s letter describing to parents exactly what kind of cleats to buy for their kids.
5. Time Order/Sequence
Texts are written in an order or timeline format.
Real life examples: recipes, directions, events in history