English 101
Heuristic for Gathering Observations of Essays
Instructions: Before beginning to think of ideas about an essay, first you must gather the information that will
help you find those ideas. Collect your observations according to every point on the outline below. Use the twocolumn form attached as your template for taking notes. All the things you notice go in the left column, labeled
“What.” Include page numbers so that you kind find these details again.
At the word level:
 Does the author use fancy words? Plain words? Words connected to certain areas of knowledge? Words
in foreign languages?
 Do the words imply emotions or attitudes?
 What is the sound of the words?
 Do some of the words have connotations that add to their denotative meaning?
At the sentence level:
 Are the sentences long, short, or of mixed length?
 Are there a lot of subordinate clauses? Or does the author use more coordinate clauses than subordinate
ones?
 What are the rhythms of the sentences when you read them out loud?
At the paragraph level:
 Are there bridge and topic sentences?
 Does the writer use transitions and signpost words?
 Does the writer move abruptly, without specific signpost words?
 Are the paragraphs long or short?
Overall structure:
 Is the material in chronological order?
 Does it move back and forth in time?
 Does it contain narrative? (storytelling)
 Is there a logic to the order, for example moving from big to small, example to conclusion, etc?
 Whose point of view is the essay from? Who’s telling the story?
Intended audience:
 Does the author state who the piece is intended for?
 What does the language and content suggest about who the intended audience might be?
Main idea:
 Is there a specific thesis sentence?
 Is the thesis implied rather than overtly stated?
 Is the thesis stated or presented in more than one place, and is it the same each time, or does it gather
additions or adjustments as the essay proceeds?
Content:
 Does the essay contain historical background?
 Does the essay allude to historical events?
 Does the essay contain literary allusions?
 Do people interact in the essay?
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Is there dialogue?
Who are the characters?
What words characterize these characters?
What does the author choose not to say? (And how do you know?)
What sensory images are present?
What objects are present?
What actions occur?
What is the main conflict? Is it within a character or is it between characters, or between a character and
a larger group or situation?
Are there other conflicts besides the main one?
Patterns:
 Repetitions: Are certain ideas, words, phrases, or grammatical structures repeated?
 Imagery: Are images or groups of related images repeated?
 Contradictions: Are there contradictions, places where the writing disagrees with itself or doesn’t seem
to make sense? These are often fruitful places to focus your inquiry.
 Binaries, or patterns of opposites: For example, are there patterns of dark and light, private and public,
individual and national, rich and poor, ignorance and knowledge, etc?
 Are there patterns—repetitions or dyads—in the dialogue, or in the behavior of the characters?
Name of Essay: _____________________
What?
Record everything you notice about the essay,
whether it seems significant or not. Include
quotations and the page numbers. Fill out this
column before you begin thinking about the
column on the right. Continue on paper of your
own: You will definitely need more room if you
cover all the points on our heuristic.
So What?
Speculate about the possible significance of the
“what” that you’ve noticed. What might it mean or
imply?