How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor/Infozones Terminology

Definition: information that gives a particular perspective and persuades you, ideally through the use of fact-based evidence, to adopt a specific point of view about an issue or event.

• dedication

• opinion

• claim

• bias

"Here are the numbers, and here's what they say."

• source: personal experience

• source: statistics

• source: eyewitness testimony

• source: expert source

Definition: usually on the back of the title page, this is the home for publication particulars, including date of publication, publisher's address, and number of edition or printing, and, finally, the Library of Congress publication data. This page is critical to students (and others) who may be writing a piece that will use the book at hand.

• copyright page

• bibliography

• title

• table of contents

Definition: a collection of primary and secondary sources

• tertiary source

• table of contents

• opinion

• dedication

The actual list of sources, arranged alphabetically by author, that went into the writing of this book. Full details—not just title and subtitle but publisher, place of publication, and year of publication—appear here.

• appendix

• foreword

• bibliography

• index

Tells about a picture.

• heading

• title

• sidebar

• caption

Information that is created to amuse, please, relax or distract people.

• entertainment

• advertising

• commercial

• propaganda

Definition: to give information or facts to the reader.

• to sell

• to persuade

• to entertain

• to inform

Definition: the stuff that goes at the beginning of the book before its main content; it is either unnumbered or numbered using lowercase Roman numerals.

• front matter

• body paragraph

• opinion

• back matter

Definition: to interest and amuse.

• to persuade

• to sell

• to entertain

• to inform