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Purpose
What is your topic?
Why do you want to write about this topic?
What assertion or claim do you want to make?
How do you want to affect your readers' attitudes or behavior?
P. L. A.C.
E.
Language
How can you use language to accomplish your purpose with your target
audience?
What style writing should you use?
Should your style be formal, professional, academic, conversational,
friendly, or casual? How close are you to your reader?
What is the tone of your voice? Are you serious, funny, pleading,
angry, thoughtful, musing, assertive? How do your word choices and statements
convey this tone?
Should your diction (word choices) be learned, standard, popular,colloquial,
catchy?
Will your reader be distracted by grammar, spelling, and punctuation
errors?
P. L. A.C.
E.
Audience
Who are your readers?
Why should they care about your topic? How is it relevant to them?
What do they already know about it?
What are their current positions on the issue(s)?
What do they need to know?
P. L. A.C.
E.
Context
Context of the writer includes:
- What genre (letter, editorial, ad, report, research paper, essay, etc.)
are you planning to write?
- What is the appropriate length (depth)?
- What is your deadline?
- What other considerations affect your writing situation (funds available
for research, computer technology available, photography, media support,other
resources)?
Context of the reader includes:
- What is your readers’ purpose?
- What are your readers’ expectations of the genre and the presentation?
- What is the physical situation of the reader encountering this writing?
Context of the subject includes:
- What have others (including your readers) been saying about this topic?
- How are you entering into and adding to the "conversation"
about this topic that is already in progress?
P. L. A.C.
E.
Evidence
Why do you think the way you do about this topic?
What knowledge and experience do you have with this topic that have
led you to write?
What support do you have for your claim?
- Information, facts, and statistics
- examples and case studies
- Expert’s testimony
- personal experience
- research
- library
- internet
- interviews
- surveys
- experiments
- examples and case studies
- Values and beliefs (both yours and your readers’)
- Assumptions (warrant)
- Counterarguments
- Rebuttal
After considering the counterarguments, should you qualify the claim?
P. L. A.C.
E.
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