Chapter 7
ILLUSTRATING YOUR IDEAS
Chapter overview
This chapter shows how students can convert paragraphs full of words into images readers can
understand more quickly.
Brief outline of the chapter
I. Tables. Tables aren’t really graphics, but they are a good way to visually present a lot of
information.
II. Flow charts. Flow charts are very useful for business writing — and a way to replace what
many people do using bullets.
III. Decision trees. These are usually wonderful help to readers.
IV. Clip art. Some clip art is quite good today.
V. Simple drawings. Students can do a lot with boxes, circles, and arrows.
VI. Graphs. Students know these are valuable, but this section helps students do them well.
VII. Exercises.
General comments
I try to reassure students that they don’t need to be artists to illustrate their ideas: boxes, circles,
and arrows can do great things. Or standard clip art. But students do need to know how to do
those basic things on a computer.
An important learning objective of this chapter is for students to learn how to integrate
illustrations into their paper, helping readers rather than asking them to stop and study
illustrations…
Notes on the exercises
Exercises A – C (finding illustrations)
Exercise D (analyzing an illustration)
Students typically have trouble thinking of enough to say to analyze illustrations. There is plenty
Exercise E (defining a term)
I consider this the most important exercise in my course (except the final project). Students who
•Help students brainstorm a term. I tell students that I don’t want them to describe
something we all know about (like a telephone). And I don’t want to read about
•Allow the class to write about a term from a hobby, from another country, or from
anything else. Some students really don’t know much about terms from business or
•Insist on illustrations. Learning to explain an illustration is a key challenge of the