Reading Profiles

Basic Features

Detailed Information about the Subject

Read first to identify the subject of the profile.Profiles are about the following subjects:

  • a place where something interesting happens (such as a hospital emergency room)
  • an activity (such as the mural project in the second scenario)
  • a person (such as the CEO profiled in the third scenario)
  • a group of people (such as the students profiled in the first scenario)

Much of the pleasure of reading a profile comes from the way the writer presents detailed information about the subject. To make the information entertaining as well as readable and interesting, profile writers interweave bits of information into a tapestry that includes vivid descriptions, lively anecdotes, and arresting quotations.

Because profile writers get their information primarily from observing and interviewing, and because they try to give readers a vivid picture of the subject, describing is perhaps the most important writing strategy for presenting information.

Describing includes the following activities:

  • detailing what people look like, how they dress, gesture, and talk
  • showing what the observer saw, heard, smelled, touched, and tasted
  • quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing the people interviewed

Look also for these other ways of presenting information about the subject: classifying, defining new terms, comparing and contrasting, identifying causes or effects, and giving examples.

A Clear Organizational Plan

Profiles can be organized according to two different plans:

  • a narrative plan that interweaves the information with elements of a story
  • a topical planthat groups the information into topics and moves from one topic to another

Whereas a narrative plan may be more engaging, a topical plan may deliver information more efficiently. As you read the profiles in this chapter, consider why the writer might have chosen one plan or the other. What was gained? Was anything lost?

A Role for the Writer

Look also at the role that the writer assumes in relation to his or her subject.

  • As a spectator or detached observer, the writer’s position is like that of the reader, an outsider looking in on the people and their activities (such as the college student in the first scenario).
  • As a participant observer, the writer participates in the activity being profiled and acquires insider knowledge (such as the reporter in the second scenario profiling the mural project).

A Perspective on the Subject

All of the basic features listed above—detailed information; the plan of the profile; and the writer’s role—support the writer’s perspective on the subject, the main idea or cultural significance that the writer wants readers to take away from reading the profile. Profiles, like remembered event essays, seldom state the thesis directly. Instead, they convey it by creating a dominant impression from the descriptive details and other kinds of information together with the writer’s thoughts and comments.