Check out this slide show about Text Features

Helpful Sites and Activities

TEXT FEATURES GLOSSARY

1.  Bold face print:  Helps emphasis importance to a word or actin.  It is darker than the rest of the text.  When creating a document or presentation, the symbol is usually a capital B.

2.  Bullets:

  •  it is a special shape
  • often a checkmark or dot
  • helps emphasis key ideas
3.  Diagrams/maps/graphs:  a summarized text support the text.  If you read words in the visual, you should look for labels and captions that help explain it.
4.  Captions:  Words that go with a picture or illustration that add more information to the picture or illustration.
5.  Highlighted Print:  a portion of text that has been highlighted with a color to emphasize an important idea, word or point.  It is used frequently in textbooks.  When creating a presentation or document, you should click and drag over text you want to highlight and look for the text highlight color feature.  (It is the same as taking a highlighting marker and coloring significant words, points or ideas.)
6.  Italic Print:  italicized-a print option that makes the letters looked slanted.  Often used to show emphasis or to denote that it is the title of a book, newspaper or magazine, movie, etc.  If you were to use this in a presentation or word processing program, the symbol is usually a slanted capital I.  
7.  Pictures/illustrations/graphics-This is additional information added to the book that is not text related.  It helps build your visual understanding of the main idea of the text.  It may include thought bubbles, drawings, photographs, etc.
9.  "Quotations":  
Quotes are designed to emphasize the EXACT words of the speaker.  "I love to think about quotes!"  he exclaimed.  Note that each time a new speaker talks, a new paragraph starts.
8.  Sidebar or Framed Text:  
It is often a box of text set apart to emphasize an important idea in the story.  It often repeats key words or sentences and helps the reader remember and understand the information better.
9.  Subtitles:  
usually smaller than a title or a heading, but not as small as the regular text size.  It helps organize information that fits under or part of the main heading.
10.  Text Organizers:  
These are extra parts of the book designed to help the learner and support existing text.  It includes glossary, appendix, table of contents, index, etc.  A non-fiction story may have a glossary or discussion questions at the end of the book.

 11. Title or Heading
Type is usually larger and often bold or a different color..  It is a summary word that describes the next section of reading.  
All the important words in the title should be capitalized...always the first word and everything except and, for, of, the, with, it, a, an, etc.

NOTE:  As technology increases, there are a wide variety of additional options:  i.e. an app, an online book that reads the information to you, links to videos and helpful websites are often included as well. Some students may read their book on their digital device.

Related Assignments:

Go to Tagxedo.com and type every text feature listed above, print it out and/or email it.  See example in slide at top of the page.
Open a word processing or presentation document and try to create the following demonstrations of the features listed above in one document:  Italic, graph, bold, highlight, quotations, sidebar, bullets, captions, and titles.