Essential Concepts: Language, Media, and Punctuation

Vocabulary

• Wren: A small, brown bird.
• Thrush: A brown bird with strong wings and a powerful beak.
• Blackbird: A bird with dark plumage, a yellow beak, and a pleasant, domesticable song.
• Attached: Committed to a job or a place.
• A weakness: A minor, age-related ailment.
• Cherub: An angel close to God.
• Bohemian: An artist living an informal and loosely organized life.

Argumentative Texts in Media

The main purpose of the media is to inform, but sometimes media outlets interpret information and seek to influence the opinion of their audience.

Types of Argumentative Texts Used in Media:

• An editorial is a journalistic text that expresses the ideology of a media outlet on a given topic. It is unsigned.
• A chronicle is a type of journalistic text (newspaper, television, or radio) that presents news and reflects upon it.
• An opinion article expresses the views of readers on a topical issue. The text must be brief, clear, accurate, signed, and sent with identification data to the newspaper for publication. The editorial team reviews and selects which articles to publish.
• A Letter to the Editor expresses the views of readers on a current issue and is addressed to the publication's director.
• Advertising uses verbal and nonverbal elements across various media (press, radio, television, film, etc.) to convince and influence the recipient.

Elements of Advertising:

• Text: A verbal element that is brief, easy to memorize, and surprising. It is called a slogan (a brief, striking, and memorable verbal element of an advertisement).
• Image: A visual element that supports the slogan, though sometimes it can be more important.
• Sound: An auditory element that supports the slogan, but sometimes can be more important.

Punctuation

The function of punctuation in writing is to reflect intonation and clarify the meaning of a text.

Common Punctuation Marks:

• The period (full stop): Punctuation that completely closes meaningful statements.
• The comma: Punctuation that indicates a brief pause.
  • To separate elements in a list.
  • To separate the name of a person being addressed from the rest of the sentence.
  • To isolate expressions such as 'that is,' 'therefore,' etc.
• The semicolon: Punctuation that separates related parts of a sentence, indicating a pause greater than a comma but less than a period.
  • To separate items in a list when those items are already long phrases or clauses.
  • Before expressions like 'but,' 'however,' 'so,' etc., when the clauses are extensive.
  • To separate sentences with a close relationship in content.