Writing to Inform
Blog: Writing a Profile of a Place
INSTRUCTIONS:
The primary purpose of a profile is to inform readers about a living person, a place visited, or an event attended. For this assignment, choose a place that you have visited. For example, your profile might describe a local business, restaurant, or landmark; your backyard garden; a foreign country; a recent duty station; a specific airport, train, or bus terminal, your child’s classroom, a museum, a sports arena, or field, etc.
To potentially receive full credit, you should:
- Write a profile essay of 400 – 450 words in which you describe your selected place. Reminder: an essay should contain an introduction, body, and conclusion.
- Include a thesis statement at the end of the introduction that focuses on some aspect of the place that the reader will find intriguing or unusual.
- Rely on showing via sensory impressions (sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations) rather than telling. Hint: use action verbs (i.e., explode, roared, bloomed, ran, etc.) rather than passive verbs of being (i.e., is, was, were, are, etc.)
- Bring attention to the uniqueness of the place, showing what is remarkable about it.
- Present a portrait of the place through a specific angle of vision. That is, convey a dominant attitude toward the subject, an attitude (i.e., fascination, disgust, amusement, detachment, joy, etc.) that can be implied through details or stated explicitly.
Although it is not required, you may need to conduct library research to gather additional information about the place. If you use outside sources, you must give credit to your sources. However, since we have not yet covered APA-style documentation in class, no deductions will be made for violations of format. You must, however, name the source of your information in your paper and list the source at the end of your paper. Deductions will be made if no attempt is made to cite the source. You must also double-space your assignment.
If you use your own experiences as support for your thesis, this is fine—and you may use first-person words (I, me, my, mine). This tone is appropriate since you do not want to refer to yourself in the third person.
