A Profile in Composition

A Profile in Composition A profile is a  biographical essay, usually developed through a combination of anecdote, interview, incident, and description. James McGuinness, a staff member at  The New Yorker  magazine in the 1920s, suggested the term profile (from the Latin, to draw a line) to the magazines editor, Harold Ross. By the time the magazine got around to copyrighting the term, says David Remnick, it had entered the language of American journalism (Life Stories, 2000). Observations on Profiles A Profile is a short exercise in biographya tight form in which interview, anecdote, observation, description, and analysis are brought to bear on the public and private self. The literary pedigree of the profile can be traced from Plutarch to Dr. Johnson to Strachey; its popular modern reinvention is owed to The New Yorker, which set up shop in 1925 and which encouraged its reporters to get beyond ballyhoo to something more probing and ironic. Since then, with the wacky proliferation of media, the genre has been debased; even the word itself has been hijacked for all kinds of shallow and intrusive journalistic endeavors.(John Lahr, Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles. University of California Press, 2002)In 1925, when [Harold] Ross launched the magazine he liked to call his comic weekly [The New Yorker], he wanted something differentsomething sidelong and ironical, a form that prized intimacy and wit over biographical completeness or, God forbid, unabashed hero worship.  Ross told his writers and editors that, above all, he wanted to get away from what he was reading in other magazinesall the Horatio Alger stuff. . . .The New Yorker Profile has expanded in many ways since Rosss time. What had been conceived of as a form to describe Manhattan personalities now travels widely in the world and all along the emotional and occupational registers. . . . One quality that runs through nearly all the best Profiles . . . is a sense of obsession. So many of these pieces are about people who reveal an obsession with one corner of human experience or another.  Richard Prestons Chudnovsky brothers  are obsessed with the number pi and finding the pattern in randomness; Calvin Trillins Edna Buchanan is an obsessive crime reporter in Miami who visits the scenes of disaster four, five times a day; . . . Mark Singers Ricky Jay is obsessed with magic and the history of magic. In every great Profile, too, the writer is equally obsessed. Its often the case that a writer will t ake months, even years, to get to know a subject and bring him or her to life in prose.(David Remnick, Life Stories: Profiles From The New Yorker. Random House, 2000) The Parts of a Profile One major reason writers create profiles is to let others know more about the people who are important to them or who shape the world in which we live. . . . [T]he introduction  to a profile needs to show readers that the subject is someone they need to know more aboutright now. . . . Writers also use the introduction of a profile to highlight some key feature of the subjects personality, character, or values . . ..The body of a profile . . . includes descriptive details that help readers visualize the subjects actions and hear the subjects words. . . .Writers also use the body of a profile to provide logical appeals in the form of numerous examples that show that the subject is indeed making a difference in the community. . . .Finally, the conclusion of a profile often contains one final quote or anecdote that nicely captures the essence of the individual.(Cheryl Glenn,  The Harbrace Guide to Writing, concise 2nd ed. Wadsworth, Cengage, 201) Expanding the Metaphor In the classic Profile under [St. Clair] McKelway, the edges were smoothed out, and all effectsthe comic, the startling, the interesting, and occasionally, the poignantwere achieved by the choreography, in characteristically longer and longer (but never rambling) paragraphs filled with declarative sentences, of the extraordinary number of facts the writer had collected. The Profile metaphor, with its implicit acknowledgment of limited perspective, was no longer appropriate. Instead, it was as if the writer were continually circling around the subject, taking snapshots all the way, until finally emerging with a three-dimensional hologram.(Ben Yagoda, The New Yorker and the World It Made. Scribner, 2000)

How to Write a Sample Conclusion to Women in Othello

How to Write a Sample Conclusion to Women in OthelloIn writing a sample conclusion to women in Othello, the first thing to do is to determine what to say. For this reason, it is important to decide on how you will proceed. Do you intend to write only one summary or should you also write a longer, more detailed ending?So you've decided that you want to write a sample conclusion to women in Othello. One of the first decisions you need to make is to know how much time you have available. Depending on the time you have available, you will want to decide how and when you are going to include an ending. If you have less time, you may be better off with a single ending.If you have plenty of time, you can start writing and finishing an entire thesis on Othello. However, if you're not quite as flexible, you may need to either leave out the actual Othello scene (in which case you will just need to provide a summary) or condense the plot in a couple of pages. Either way, your effort to write a sample conclusion to women in Othello is going to be much more difficult and time-consuming.If you are writing a short work such as an essay or thesis, then the best option for you is to give yourself some breathing room. As you read through the action of the play, you are going to run into scenes that you don't know much about. In these instances, your goal is to summarize what happened, but keep your summary brief enough so that you don't lose readers.That's why you shouldn't try to go all out with your end; just remember that you will probably find yourself missing some details in the middle of the play. Just make sure that you include the most important details at the end of your summary, so you don't have to put everything down at the beginning of the essay. After all, most readers will not spend much time going back and reading your summary, but if they do, you want to make sure that they get the most information from your final statement.The ending to women in Othello can als o be divided into several parts. When choosing which portion to use, you will want to look for the following things:To learn more about this topic, it would be best to consult a professional who is more versed in Othello topics. In fact, most academic advisers, particularly those who specialize in this field, are trained to write sample conclusions to women in Othello. They can also help you with other concerns, including: