Identifying the Main Message
In this activity, you will see how a main message makes its way from a dialogue with the reader to a finished document. When you apply this practice to your own writing, keep the following principles about the main message in mind:
- It must reflect the writer’s purpose.
- It must answer the reader’s main question.
- It should provoke further questions from the reader.
- It must be a complete sentence — or perhaps two sentences.
Read each of the following extracts. Only the first part of the document appears, but it should be enough for you to identify the main message from a list of choices.