First Sentence: Who, Where, When, and What? Let’s look more closely at those four parts. The fourth and final sentence describes the “for whom” of the text by clarifying who the intended or assumed audience of this text is.The third sentence explains why the author wrote this, her purpose or intended effect.The second sentence explores how the text is developed and organized.
The first sentence identifies who wrote the text, where and when it was published, and what its topic and claim are.Woodworth and described in her 1988 article “The Rhetorical Précis” (published by Rhetoric Review), consists of four dense but direct sentences. Parts of a Rhetorical PrécisĪ rhetorical précis, as developed by Margaret K. A rhetorical précis can even help you structure your annotated bibliography annotations or provide you with summary sentences to include in a paper as you account for your sources. Précis writing prepares you to discuss a text and sets you up for that important next step: analysis. Writing a précis guides your reading and directs your attention to the key aspects of a text. However, even if you aren’t required to write a précis for a class, writing one can help you in a number of ways. Sometimes rhetorical précis writing is a course requirement. If you are writing a précis as a course assignment, be sure to follow your instructor’s guidance on what this should consist of and how it should be formatted. Some précis are longer or shorter than others. A legal précis is different from what we’re talking about here. Writing a précis is an excellent way to show that you’ve closely read a text.ĭisclaimer: There are different kinds of précis for different contexts. If you write a successful précis, it is a good indication that you’ve read that text closely and that you understand its major moves and arguments. When you write a précis you have to exactly and succinctly account for the most important parts of a text. “Précis” is French for “specific” or “precise.” It’s also a particular kind of writing. Specifically, we recommend that you use your reading to generate a rhetorical précis. In addition to these strategies, we firmly believe that one of the best ways to understand a book, article, essay, blog post, etc. Notes will help you remember and process what the text is about and what you think about it. Take notes about the text’s key ideas and your responses to those ideas.ĭepending on the text and your preferences, these notes could be made on your copy of the text or article or in a separate place.This overview will help you to understand the context, genre, and purpose of this piece as well as help you gauge how long it will take you to read it and how it might be relevant to your class, paper, or project. Use the title to help you predict what the text is about and what it argues. Look to see how long it is, where it’s published, how it may be divided into sections, what kind of works cited list it has, whether there are appendices, etc. Much has been written about active reading, but generally we recommend that when you read you: When you read actively, you can’t just flip pages and daydream about tomorrow’s plans. Using a Rhetorical Précis to Guide AnalysisĪctive reading requires you to slow your reading down, engage more intentionally with the text, think about it, and focus your attention on its ideas.This page provides a guide to these strategies and practical ways to help you evaluate, compare, and reflect upon nonfiction texts. We believe two productive strategies for approaching this kind of reading and analysis are active reading and rhetorical précis writing. When you’ve read a text well, you can then discuss it in class, think critically about it, incorporate it into your writing, consider it in light of other texts, and advance or push against its ideas. This page is about how you can read and analyze nonfiction texts. In order to do these things, they have to read complex texts carefully and understand them clearly. They summarize and critique published articles, evaluate papers’ arguments, and reflect on essays. Academic writers across all disciplines analyze texts.
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