Writing Topic: Rules for Writers chapter 46

     In chapter 46 of "Rules For Writers" by Diana Hacker, she explains all of the steps to writing a summary or making an analysis of a written text or visual.  She begins with explaining a few different types of texts, then moves into what is expected when you're given an assignment to write about a text or visual.  According to the author, "Most assignments that ask you to respond to a text call for a summary or an analysis or both."(346)  According to the author, in order to write an essay or an analysis, you must first actively read the text several times.  She also gives a list of guidlines to follow in order to succesfully actively read including asking questions to familiarize yourself with the basic structure of the text, noting details that you find interesting, and applying critical thinking strategies.
 
     The author also goes into developing a brief outline after actively reading and annotating the text several times.  In the outline she states that you should, "put the author's thesis and key points in your own words."(350)  The outline does not need to be in paragraph form, more importantly it should bring the texts central points together.  She then gets into writing the summary or analysis.  "The goal when your summarizing a text is to state the ideas and key points simply, briefly, and accurately."(351)  To do this she recommends using the outline that you've made as a draft for the summary, finding the central point of the text, and splitting the summary up into major and minor ideas.  When analyzing a text, she recommends instead of hitting the text in a whole, as you would in a summary, you should try to determine how the text makes it's points.  An analysis should be set up in essay format, with an introduction that summarizes the text, your own thesis on what you think about the text, and a body of paragraphs that support your thesis.  When analyzing a visual text, you should begin by analyzing the visual as a whole, then break it down and analyze how the individual details add to the whole effect of the visual.
 
     I plan on referring to this chapter in "Rules for Writers" whenever I have a writing assignment to do from now on.  Before reading this I had heard about taking notes or highlighting as you go along with your reading, but the active reading guidelines included in this chapter are far more detailed than anything I've been taught.  That is what I will refer to the most after reading this chapter, all of the questions in the guideline will help me to really explore what's actually in the text that I'm reading, and why the text was written.  Another of the guidelines in the chapter that I will use frequently is the guidelines for writing a summary.  Before reading this, I never totally grasped the expectations of a summary, now that I've read it I am totally confident that I can hit every point that is expected when I summarize a written text.  The one thing that I didn't get too much out of from this chapter, which I'm sure it went over enough, but I didn't take it in well enough was analyzing visual texts.  I'm sure it's simple enough, but I've never done it before so I'm more than likely unconfident in my abilities to do something I've never done.