Illustration Essay

An illustration is a picture that offers some clarification or insight. Newspapers use illustration to make their stories seem more immediate or more human; magazines use illustration to attract the readers' attention, create an atmosphere, or provide information; textbooks use illustration to add information or clarify the concepts. However, not all illustration are visual: in writing, an illustration is an example, a "verbal picture" that "illustrates" the point the writer is making.

Written illustration can be brief, a word or a phrase, or they can be extended, one to several paragraphs in length. Writing an extended illustration often requires using techniques for narration or description.

To use illustration to support a thesis, follow these guidelines:

1. Select relevant examples. Be sure your examples support the point you want to make and are not merely interesting anecdotes on the topic. Unless your thesis highlights the unusual ("Some truly bizarre customers shop at Sam's Surplus'), your examples should focus on the typical, not the unusual. For example, if you intend to demonstrate that your workplace has too many barriers for the disabled, you would be more persuasive if you described typical obstructions, such as heavy doors, rather than obstacles only rarely encountered.

2. Describe examples using specific details. Your examples will be more interesting and more convincing if you include specific details. "My Aunt Doris" is more specific, and more interesting, than "a relative of mine." Explaining that "last week three customers in wheel chairs were unable to maneuver their chairs through the aisles because the displays of sale items were crowded in the middle of the store" is more persuasive than saying that "the store is hard for disabled people to move through."

3. Make your examples appropriate in length. Although you need to add enough details to make your examples clear, be sure you do not add irrelevant details that might mislead or bore the readers.