difference between close reading essay

A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis

Use the guidelines below to learn about the practice of close reading.

When your teachers or professors ask you to analyze a literary text, they often look for something frequently called close reading. Close reading is deep analysis of how a literary text works; it is both a reading process and something you include in a literary analysis paper, though in a refined form.

Fiction writers and poets build texts out of many central components, including subject, form, and specific word choices. Literary analysis involves examining these components, which allows us to find in small parts of the text clues to help us understand the whole. For example, if an author writes a novel in the form of a personal journal about a character’s daily life, but that journal reads like a series of lab reports, what do we learn about that character? What is the effect of picking a word like “tome” instead of “book”? In effect, you are putting the author’s choices under a microscope.

The process of close reading should produce a lot of questions. It is when you begin to answer these questions that you are ready to participate thoughtfully in class discussion or write a literary analysis paper that makes the most of your close reading work.

Close reading sometimes feels like over-analyzing, but don’t worry. Close reading is a process of finding as much information as you can in order to form as many questions as you can. When it is time to write your paper and formalize your close reading, you will sort through your work to figure out what is most convincing and helpful to the argument you hope to make and, conversely, what seems like a stretch. This guide imagines you are sitting down to read a text for the first time on your way to developing an argument about a text and writing a paper. To give one example of how to do this, we will read the poem “Design” by famous American poet Robert Frost and attend to four major components of literary texts: subject, form, word choice (diction), and theme.

If you want even more information about approaching poems specifically, take a look at our guide: How to Read a Poem .

As our guide to reading poetry suggests, have a pencil out when you read a text. Make notes in the margins, underline important words, place question marks where you are confused by something. Of course, if you are reading in a library book, you should keep all your notes on a separate piece of paper. If you are not making marks directly on, in, and beside the text, be sure to note line numbers or even quote portions of the text so you have enough context to remember what you found interesting.

Design I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth— Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth— A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite. What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?— If design govern in a thing so small.

The subject of a literary text is simply what the text is about. What is its plot? What is its most important topic? What image does it describe? It’s easy to think of novels and stories as having plots, but sometimes it helps to think of poetry as having a kind of plot as well. When you examine the subject of a text, you want to develop some preliminary ideas about the text and make sure you understand its major concerns before you dig deeper.

Observations

In “Design,” the speaker describes a scene: a white spider holding a moth on a white flower. The flower is a heal-all, the blooms of which are usually violet-blue. This heal-all is unusual. The speaker then poses a series of questions, asking why this heal-all is white instead of blue and how the spider and moth found this particular flower. How did this situation arise?

The speaker’s questions seem simple, but they are actually fairly nuanced. We can use them as a guide for our own as we go forward with our close reading.

• Furthering the speaker’s simple “how did this happen,” we might ask, is the scene in this poem a manufactured situation?
• The white moth and white spider each use the atypical white flower as camouflage in search of sanctuary and supper respectively. Did these flora and fauna come together for a purpose?
• Does the speaker have a stance about whether there is a purpose behind the scene? If so, what is it?
• How will other elements of the text relate to the unpleasantness and uncertainty in our first look at the poem’s subject?

After thinking about local questions, we have to zoom out. Ultimately, what is this text about?

Form is how a text is put together. When you look at a text, observe how the author has arranged it. If it is a novel, is it written in the first person? How is the novel divided? If it is a short story, why did the author choose to write short-form fiction instead of a novel or novella? Examining the form of a text can help you develop a starting set of questions in your reading, which then may guide further questions stemming from even closer attention to the specific words the author chooses. A little background research on form and what different forms can mean makes it easier to figure out why and how the author’s choices are important.

Most poems follow rules or principles of form; even free verse poems are marked by the author’s choices in line breaks, rhythm, and rhyme—even if none of these exists, which is a notable choice in itself. Here’s an example of thinking through these elements in “Design.”

In “Design,” Frost chooses an Italian (or Petrarchan) sonnet form: fourteen lines in iambic pentameter consisting of an octave (a stanza of eight lines) and a sestet (a stanza of six lines). We will focus on rhyme scheme and stanza structure rather than meter for the purposes of this guide. A typical Italian sonnet has a specific rhyme scheme for the octave:

a b b a a b b a

There’s more variation in the sestet rhymes, but one of the more common schemes is

c d e c d e

Conventionally, the octave introduces a problem or question which the sestet then resolves. The point at which the sonnet goes from the problem/question to the resolution is called the volta, or turn. (Note that we are speaking only in generalities here; there is a great deal of variation.)

Frost uses the usual octave scheme with “-ite”/”-ight” (a) and “oth” (b) sounds: “white,” “moth,” “cloth,” “blight,” “right,” “broth,” “froth,” “kite.” However, his sestet follows an unusual scheme with “-ite”/”-ight” and “all” sounds:

a c a a c c

Now, we have a few questions with which we can start:

• Why use an Italian sonnet?
• Why use an unusual scheme in the sestet?
• What problem/question and resolution (if any) does Frost offer?
• What is the volta in this poem?
• In other words, what is the point?

Italian sonnets have a long tradition; many careful readers recognize the form and know what to expect from his octave, volta, and sestet. Frost seems to do something fairly standard in the octave in presenting a situation; however, the turn Frost makes is not to resolution, but to questions and uncertainty. A white spider sitting on a white flower has killed a white moth.

• How did these elements come together?
• Was the moth’s death random or by design?
• Is one worse than the other?

We can guess right away that Frost’s disruption of the usual purpose of the sestet has something to do with his disruption of its rhyme scheme. Looking even more closely at the text will help us refine our observations and guesses.

Word Choice, or Diction

Looking at the word choice of a text helps us “dig in” ever more deeply. If you are reading something longer, are there certain words that come up again and again? Are there words that stand out? While you are going through this process, it is best for you to assume that every word is important—again, you can decide whether something is really important later.

Even when you read prose, our guide for reading poetry offers good advice: read with a pencil and make notes. Mark the words that stand out, and perhaps write the questions you have in the margins or on a separate piece of paper. If you have ideas that may possibly answer your questions, write those down, too.

Let’s take a look at the first line of “Design”:

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white

The poem starts with something unpleasant: a spider. Then, as we look more closely at the adjectives describing the spider, we may see connotations of something that sounds unhealthy or unnatural. When we imagine spiders, we do not generally picture them dimpled and white; it is an uncommon and decidedly creepy image. There is dissonance between the spider and its descriptors, i.e., what is wrong with this picture? Already we have a question: what is going on with this spider?

We should look for additional clues further on in the text. The next two lines develop the image of the unusual, unpleasant-sounding spider:

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—

Now we have a white flower (a heal-all, which usually has a violet-blue flower) and a white moth in addition to our white spider. Heal-alls have medicinal properties, as their name suggests, but this one seems to have a genetic mutation—perhaps like the spider? Does the mutation that changes the heal-all’s color also change its beneficial properties—could it be poisonous rather than curative? A white moth doesn’t seem remarkable, but it is “Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth,” or like manmade fabric that is artificially “rigid” rather than smooth and flowing like we imagine satin to be. We might think for a moment of a shroud or the lining of a coffin, but even that is awry, for neither should be stiff with death.

The first three lines of the poem’s octave introduce unpleasant natural images “of death and blight” (as the speaker puts it in line four). The flower and moth disrupt expectations: the heal-all is white instead of “blue and innocent,” and the moth is reduced to “rigid satin cloth” or “dead wings carried like a paper kite.” We might expect a spider to be unpleasant and deadly; the poem’s spider also has an unusual and unhealthy appearance.

• The focus on whiteness in these lines has more to do with death than purity—can we understand that whiteness as being corpse-like rather than virtuous?

Well before the volta, Frost makes a “turn” away from nature as a retreat and haven; instead, he unearths its inherent dangers, making nature menacing. From three lines alone, we have a number of questions:

• Will whiteness play a role in the rest of the poem?
• How does “design”—an arrangement of these circumstances—fit with a scene of death?
• What other juxtapositions might we encounter?

These disruptions and dissonances recollect Frost’s alteration to the standard Italian sonnet form: finding the ways and places in which form and word choice go together will help us begin to unravel some larger concepts the poem itself addresses.

Put simply, themes are major ideas in a text. Many texts, especially longer forms like novels and plays, have multiple themes. That’s good news when you are close reading because it means there are many different ways you can think through the questions you develop.

So far in our reading of “Design,” our questions revolve around disruption: disruption of form, disruption of expectations in the description of certain images. Discovering a concept or idea that links multiple questions or observations you have made is the beginning of a discovery of theme.

What is happening with disruption in “Design”? What point is Frost making? Observations about other elements in the text help you address the idea of disruption in more depth. Here is where we look back at the work we have already done: What is the text about? What is notable about the form, and how does it support or undermine what the words say? Does the specific language of the text highlight, or redirect, certain ideas?

In this example, we are looking to determine what kind(s) of disruption the poem contains or describes. Rather than “disruption,” we want to see what kind of disruption, or whether indeed Frost uses disruptions in form and language to communicate something opposite: design.

Sample Analysis

After you make notes, formulate questions, and set tentative hypotheses, you must analyze the subject of your close reading. Literary analysis is another process of reading (and writing!) that allows you to make a claim about the text. It is also the point at which you turn a critical eye to your earlier questions and observations to find the most compelling points, discarding the ones that are a “stretch.” By “stretch,” we mean that we must discard points that are fascinating but have no clear connection to the text as a whole. (We recommend a separate document for recording the brilliant ideas that don’t quite fit this time around.)

Here follows an excerpt from a brief analysis of “Design” based on the close reading above. This example focuses on some lines in great detail in order to unpack the meaning and significance of the poem’s language. By commenting on the different elements of close reading we have discussed, it takes the results of our close reading to offer one particular way into the text. (In case you were thinking about using this sample as your own, be warned: it has no thesis and it is easily discoverable on the web. Plus it doesn’t have a title.)

Frost’s speaker brews unlikely associations in the first stanza of the poem. The “Assorted characters of death and blight / Mixed ready to begin the morning right” make of the grotesque scene an equally grotesque mockery of a breakfast cereal (4–5). These lines are almost singsong in meter and it is easy to imagine them set to a radio jingle. A pun on “right”/”rite” slides the “characters of death and blight” into their expected concoction: a “witches’ broth” (6). These juxtapositions—a healthy breakfast that is also a potion for dark magic—are borne out when our “fat and white” spider becomes “a snow-drop”—an early spring flower associated with renewal—and the moth as “dead wings carried like a paper kite” (1, 7, 8). Like the mutant heal-all that hosts the moth’s death, the spider becomes a deadly flower; the harmless moth becomes a child’s toy, but as “dead wings,” more like a puppet made of a skull. The volta offers no resolution for our unsettled expectations. Having observed the scene and detailed its elements in all their unpleasantness, the speaker turns to questions rather than answers. How did “The wayside blue and innocent heal-all” end up white and bleached like a bone (10)? How did its “kindred spider” find the white flower, which was its perfect hiding place (11)? Was the moth, then, also searching for camouflage, only to meet its end? Using another question as a disguise, the speaker offers a hypothesis: “What but design of darkness to appall?” (13). This question sounds rhetorical, as though the only reason for such an unlikely combination of flora and fauna is some “design of darkness.” Some force, the speaker suggests, assembled the white spider, flower, and moth to snuff out the moth’s life. Such a design appalls, or horrifies. We might also consider the speaker asking what other force but dark design could use something as simple as appalling in its other sense (making pale or white) to effect death. However, the poem does not close with a question, but with a statement. The speaker’s “If design govern in a thing so small” establishes a condition for the octave’s questions after the fact (14). There is no point in considering the dark design that brought together “assorted characters of death and blight” if such an event is too minor, too physically small to be the work of some force unknown. Ending on an “if” clause has the effect of rendering the poem still more uncertain in its conclusions: not only are we faced with unanswered questions, we are now not even sure those questions are valid in the first place. Behind the speaker and the disturbing scene, we have Frost and his defiance of our expectations for a Petrarchan sonnet. Like whatever designer may have altered the flower and attracted the spider to kill the moth, the poet built his poem “wrong” with a purpose in mind. Design surely governs in a poem, however small; does Frost also have a dark design? Can we compare a scene in nature to a carefully constructed sonnet?

A Note on Organization

Your goal in a paper about literature is to communicate your best and most interesting ideas to your reader. Depending on the type of paper you have been assigned, your ideas may need to be organized in service of a thesis to which everything should link back. It is best to ask your instructor about the expectations for your paper.

Knowing how to organize these papers can be tricky, in part because there is no single right answer—only more and less effective answers. You may decide to organize your paper thematically, or by tackling each idea sequentially; you may choose to order your ideas by their importance to your argument or to the poem. If you are comparing and contrasting two texts, you might work thematically or by addressing first one text and then the other. One way to approach a text may be to start with the beginning of the novel, story, play, or poem, and work your way toward its end. For example, here is the rough structure of the example above: The author of the sample decided to use the poem itself as an organizational guide, at least for this part of the analysis.

• A paragraph about the octave.
• A paragraph about the volta.
• A paragraph about the penultimate line (13).
• A paragraph about the final line (14).
• A paragraph addressing form that suggests a transition to the next section of the paper.

You will have to decide for yourself the best way to communicate your ideas to your reader. Is it easier to follow your points when you write about each part of the text in detail before moving on? Or is your work clearer when you work through each big idea—the significance of whiteness, the effect of an altered sonnet form, and so on—sequentially?

We suggest you write your paper however is easiest for you then move things around during revision if you need to.

Further Reading

If you really want to master the practice of reading and writing about literature, we recommend Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain’s wonderful book, A Short Guide to Writing about Literature . Barnet and Cain offer not only definitions and descriptions of processes, but examples of explications and analyses, as well as checklists for you, the author of the paper. The Short Guide is certainly not the only available reference for writing about literature, but it is an excellent guide and reminder for new writers and veterans alike.

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How to Do a Close Reading

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Close Reading Fundamentals

How to choose a passage to close-read, how to approach a close reading, how to annotate a passage, how to improve your close reading, how to practice close reading, how to incorporate close readings into an essay, how to teach close reading, additional resources for advanced students.

Close reading engages with the formal properties of a text—its literary devices, language, structure, and style. Popularized in the mid-twentieth century, this way of reading allows you to interpret a text without outside information such as historical context, author biography, philosophy, or political ideology. It also requires you to put aside your affective (that is, personal and emotional) response to the text, focusing instead on objective study. Why close-read a text? Doing so will increase your understanding of how a piece of writing works, as well as what it means. Perhaps most importantly, close reading can help you develop and support an essay argument. In this guide, you'll learn more about what close reading entails and find strategies for producing precise, creative close readings. We've included a section with resources for teachers, along with a final section with further reading for advanced students.

You might compare close reading to wringing out a wet towel, in which you twist the material repeatedly until you have extracted as much liquid as possible. When you close-read, you'll return to a short passage several times in order to note as many details about its form and content as possible. Use the links below to learn more about close reading's place in literary history and in the classroom.

"Close Reading" (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia's relatively short introduction to close reading contains sections on background, examples, and how to teach close reading. You can also click the links on this page to learn more about the literary critics who pioneered the method.

"Close Reading: A Brief Note" (Literariness.org)

This article provides a condensed discussion of what close reading is, how it works, and how it is different from other ways of reading a literary text.

"What Close Reading Actually Means" ( TeachThought )

In this article by an Ed.D., you'll learn what close reading "really means" in the classroom today—a meaning that has shifted significantly from its original place in 20th century literary criticism.

"Close Reading" (Univ. of Washington)

This hand-out from a college writing course defines close reading, suggests  why  we close-read, and offers tips for close reading successfully, including focusing on language, audience, and scope.

"Glossary Entry on New Criticism" (Poetry Foundation)

If you'd like to read a short introduction to the school of thought that gave rise to close reading, this is the place to go. Poetry Foundation's entry on New Criticism is concise and accessible.

"New Criticism" (Washington State Univ.)

This webpage from a college writing course offers another brief explanation of close reading in relation to New Criticism. It provides some key questions to help you think like a New Critic.

When choosing a passage to close-read, you'll want to look for relatively short bits of text that are rich in detail. The resources below offer more tips and tricks for selecting passages, along with links to pre-selected passages you can print for use at home or in the classroom.

"How to Choose the Perfect Passage for Close Reading" ( We Are Teachers )

This post from a former special education teacher describes six characteristics you might look for when selecting a close reading passage from a novel: beginnings, pivotal plot points, character changes, high-density passages, "Q&A" passages, and "aesthetic" passages. 

"Close Reading Passages" (Reading Sage)

Reading Sage provides links to close reading passages you can use as is; alternatively, you could also use them as models for selecting your own passages. The page is divided into sections geared toward elementary, middle school, and early high school students.

"Close Reading" (Univ. of Guelph)

The University of Guelph's guide to close reading contains a short section on how to "Select a Passage." The author suggests that you choose a brief passage. 

"Close Reading Advice" (Prezi)

This Prezi was created by an AP English teacher. The opening section on passage selection suggests choosing "thick paragraphs" filled with "figurative language and rich details or description."

Now that you know how to select a passage to analyze, you'll need to familiarize yourself with the textual qualities you should look for when reading. Whether you're approaching a poem, a novel, or a magazine article, details on the level of language (literary devices) and form (formal features) convey meaning. Understanding  how  a text communicates will help you understand  what  it is communicating. The links in this section will familiarize you with the tools you need to start a close reading.

Literary Devices

"Literary Devices and Terms" (LitCharts)

LitCharts' dedicated page covers 130+ literary devices. Also known as "rhetorical devices," "figures of speech," or "elements of style," these linguistic constructions are the building blocks of literature. Some of the most common include  simile , metaphor , alliteration , and onomatopoeia ; browse the links on LitCharts to learn about many more. 

"Rhetorical Device" (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia's page on rhetorical devices defines the term in relation to the ancient art of "rhetoric" or persuasive speaking. At the bottom of the page, you'll find links to several online handbooks and lists of rhetorical devices.

"15 Must Know Rhetorical Terms for AP English Literature" ( Albert )

The  Albert blog   offers this list of 15 rhetorical devices that high school English students should know how to define and spot in a literary text; though geared toward the Advanced Placement exam, its tips are widely applicable.

"The 55 AP Language and Composition Terms You Must Know" (PrepScholar)

This blog post lists 55 terms high school students should learn how to recognize and define for the Advanced Placement exam in English Literature.

Formal Features

In LitCharts' bank of literary devices and terms, you'll also find resources to describe a text's structure and overall character. Some of the most important of these are  rhyme , meter , and  tone ; browse the page to find more. 

"Rhythm" ( Encyclopedia Britannica )

This encyclopedia entry on rhythm and meter offers an in-depth definition of the two most fundamental aspects of poetry.

"How to Analyze Syntax for AP English Literature" ( Albert)

The Albert blog will help you understand what "syntax" is, making a case for why you should pay attention to sentence structure when analyzing a literary text.

"Grammar Basics: Sentence Parts and Sentence Structures" ( ThoughtCo )

This article provides a meticulous overview of the components of a sentence. It's useful if you need to review your parts of speech or if you need to be able to identify things like prepositional phrases.

"Style, Diction, Tone, and Voice" (Wheaton College)

Wheaton College's Writing Center offers this clear, concise discussion of several important formal features. Although it's designed to help essay writers, it will also help you understand and spot these stylistic features in others' work. 

Now that you know what rhetorical devices, formal features, and other details to look for, you're ready to find them in a text. For this purpose, it is crucial to annotate (write notes) as you read and re-read. Each time you return to the text, you'll likely notice something new; these observations will form the basis of your close reading. The resources in this section offer some concrete strategies for annotating literary texts.

"How to Annotate a Text" (LitCharts)

Begin by consulting our  How to Annotate a Text  guide. This collection of links and resources is helpful for short passages (that is, those for close reading) as well as longer works, like whole novels or poems.

"Annotation Guide" (Covington Catholic High School)

This hand-out from a high school teacher will help you understand why we annotate, and how to annotate a text successfully. You might choose to incorporate some of the interpretive notes and symbols suggested here.

"Annotating Literature" (New Canaan Public Schools)

This one-page, introductory resource provides a list of 10 items you should look for when reading a text, including attitude and theme.

"Purposeful Annotation" (Dave Stuart Jr.)

This article from a high school teacher's blog describes the author's top close reading strategy: purposeful annotation. In fact, this teacher more or less equates close reading with annotation.

Looking for ways to improve your close reading? The articles, guides, and videos in this section will expose you to various methods of close reading, as well as practice exercises. No two people read exactly the same way. Whatever your level of expertise, it can be useful to broaden your skill set by testing the techniques suggested by the resources below.

"How to Do a Close Reading" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, part of Harvard's comprehensive "Strategies for Essay Writing Guide," describes three steps to a successful close reading. You will want to return to this resource when incorporating your close reading into an essay.

"A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis" (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center)

Working through this guide from another college writing center will help you move through the process of close reading a text. You'll find a sample analysis of Robert Frost's "Design" at the end.

"How to Do a Close Reading of a Text" (YouTube)

This four-minute video from the "Literacy and Math Ideas" channel offers a number of helpful tips for reading a text closely in accordance with Common Core standards.

"Poetry: Close Reading" (Purdue OWL)

Short, dense poems are a natural fit for the close reading approach. This page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab takes you step-by-step through an analysis of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.

"Steps for Close Reading or Explication de Texte" ( The Literary Link )

This page, which mentions close reading's close relationship to the French formalist method of  "explication de texte," shares "12 Steps to Literary Awareness."

You can practice your close reading skills by reading, re-reading and annotating any brief passage of text. The resources below will get you started by offering pre-selected passages and questions to guide your reading. You'll find links to resources that are designed for students of all levels, from elementary school through college.

"Notes on Close Reading" (MIT Open Courseware)

This resource describes steps you can work through when close reading, providing a passage from Mary Shelley's  Frankenstein  for you to test your skills.

"Close Reading Practice Worksheets" (Gillian Duff's English Resources)

Here, you'll find 10 close reading-centered worksheets you can download and print. The "higher-close-reading-formula" link at the bottom of the page provides a chart with even more steps and strategies for close reading.

"Close Reading Activities" (Education World)

The four activities described on this page are best suited to elementary and middle school students. Under each heading is a link to handouts or detailed descriptions of the activity.

"Close Reading Practice Passages: High School" (Varsity Tutors)

This webpage from Varsity Tutors contains over a dozen links to close reading passages and exercises, including several resources that focus on close-reading satire.

"Benjamin Franklin's Satire of Witch Hunting" (America in Class)

This page contains both a "teacher's guide" and "student version" to interpreting Benjamin Franklin's satire of a witch trial. The thirteen close reading questions on the right side of the page will help you analyze the text thoroughly.

Whether you're writing a research paper or an essay, close reading can help you build an argument. Careful analysis of your primary texts allows you to draw out meanings you want to emphasize, thereby supporting your central claim. The resources in this section introduce you to strategies suited to various common writing assignments.

"How to Write a Research Paper" (LitCharts)

The resources in this guide will help you learn to formulate a thesis, organize evidence, write an outline, and draft a research paper, one of the two most common assignments in which you might incorporate close reading.

"How to Write an Essay" (LitCharts)

In this guide, you'll learn how to plan, draft, and revise an essay, whether for the classroom or as a take-home assignment. Close reading goes hand in hand with the brainstorming and drafting processes for essay writing.

"Guide to the Close Reading Essay" (Univ. of Warwick)

This guide was designed for undergraduates, and assumes prior knowledge of formal features and rhetorical devices one might find in a poem. High schoolers will find it useful after addressing the "elements of a close reading" section above.

"Beginning the Academic Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Harvard's guide discusses the broader category of the "academic essay." Here, the author assumes that your essay's close readings will be accompanied by context and evidence from secondary sources. 

A Short Guide to Writing About Literature (Amazon)

Sylvan Barnet and William E. Cain emphasize that writing is a process. In their book, you'll find definitions of important literary terms, examples of successful explications of literary texts, and checklists for essay writers.

Due in part to the Common Core's emphasis on close reading skills, resources for teaching students how to close-read abound. Here, you'll find a wealth of information on how and why we teach students to close-read texts. The first section includes links to activities, exercises, and complete lesson plans. The second section offers background material on the method, along with strategies for implementing close reading in the classroom.

Lesson Plans and Activities

"Four Lessons for Introducing the Fundamental Steps of Close Reading" (Corwin)

Here, Corwin has made the second chapter of Nancy Akhavan's  The Nonfiction Now Lesson Bank, Grades 4 – 8 available online. You'll find four sample lessons to use in the elementary or middle school classroom

"Sonic Patterns: Exploring Poetic Techniques Through Close Reading" ( ReadWriteThink )

This lesson plan for high school students includes material for five 50-minute sessions on sonic patterns (including consonance, assonance, and alliteration). The literary text at hand is Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays."

"Close Reading of a Short Text: Complete Lesson" (McGraw Hill via YouTube)

This eight-minute video describes a complete lesson in which a teacher models close reading of a short text and offers guiding questions.

"Close Reading Model Lessons" (Achieve the Core)

These three model lessons on close reading will help you determine what makes a text "appropriately complex" for the grade level you teach.

Close Reading Bundle (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This top-rated bundle of close reading resources was designed for the middle school classroom. It contains over 150 pages of worksheets, complete lesson plans, and literacy center ideas.

"10 Intriguing Photos to Teach Close Reading and Visual Thinking Skills" ( The New York Times )

The New York Times' s Learning Network has gathered 10 photos from the "What's Going on in This Picture" series that teachers can use to help students develop analytical and visual thinking skills.

"The Close Reading Essay" (Brandeis Univ.)

Brandeis University's writing program offers this detailed set of guidelines and goals you might use when assigning a close reading essay.

Close Reading Resources (Varsity Tutors)

Varsity Tutors has compiled a list of over twenty links to lesson plans, strategies, and activities for teaching elementary, middle school, and high school students to close read.

Background Material and Teaching Strategies

Falling in Love with Close Reading (Amazon)

Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts aim to show how close reading can be "rigorous, meaningful, and joyous." It offers a three-step "close reading ritual" and engaging lesson plans.

Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading (Amazon)

Kylene Beers (a former Senior Reading Researcher at Yale) and Robert E. Probst (a Professor Emeritus of English Education) introduce six "signposts" readers can use to detect significant moments in a work of literature.

"How to Do a Close Reading" (YouTube)

TeachLikeThis offers this four-minute video on teaching students to close-read by looking at a text's language, narrative, syntax, and context.

"Strategy Guide: Close Reading of a Literary Text" ( ReadWriteThink )

This guide for middle school and high school teachers will help you choose texts that are appropriately complex for the grade level you teach, and offers strategies for planning engaging lessons.

"Close Reading Steps for Success" (Appletastic Learning)

Shelly Rees, a teacher with over 20 years of experience, introduces six helpful steps you can use to help your students engage with challenging reading passages. The article is geared toward elementary and middle school teachers.

"4 Steps to Boost Students' Close Reading Skills" ( Amplify )

Doug Fisher, a professor of educational leadership, suggests using these four steps to help students at any grade level learn how to close read. 

Like most tools of literary analysis, close reading has a complex history. It's not necessary to understand the theoretical underpinnings of close reading in order to use this tool. For advanced high school students and college students who ask "why close-read," though, the resources below will serve as useful starting points for discussion.

"Discipline and Parse: The Politics of Close Reading" ( Los Angeles Review of Books )

This book review by a well-known English professor at Columbia provides an engaging, anecdotal introduction to close reading's place in literary history. Robbins points to some of the method's shortcomings, but also elegantly defends it.

"Intentional Fallacy" ( Encyclopedia Britannica )

The literary critics who developed close reading cautioned against judging a text based on the author's intention. This encyclopedia entry offers an expanded definition of this way of reading, called the "intentional fallacy."

"Seven Types of Ambiguity" (Wikipedia)

This Wikipedia article will introduce you to William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity  (1930), one of the foundational texts of New Criticism, the school of thought that theorized close reading.

"What is Distant Reading" ( The New York Times)

This article makes it clear that "close reading" isn't the only way to analyze literary texts. It offers a brief introduction to the "distant reading" method of computational criticism pioneered by Franco Moretti in recent years.

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How to do a close reading essay [Updated 2024]

Close reading refers to the process of interpreting a literary work’s meaning by analyzing both its form and content. In this post, we provide you with strategies for close reading that you can apply to your next assignment or analysis.

What is a close reading?

Close reading involves paying attention to a literary work’s language, style, and overall meaning. It includes looking for patterns, repetitions, oddities, and other significant features of a text. Your goal should be to reveal subtleties and complexities beyond an initial reading.

The primary difference between simply reading a work and doing a close reading is that, in the latter, you approach the text as a kind of detective.

When you’re doing a close reading, a literary work becomes a puzzle. And, as a reader, your job is to pull all the pieces together—both what the text says and how it says it.

How do you do a close reading?

Typically, a close reading focuses on a small passage or section of a literary work. Although you should always consider how the selection you’re analyzing fits into the work as a whole, it’s generally not necessary to include lengthy summaries or overviews in a close reading.

There are several aspects of the text to consider in a close reading:

• Literal Content: Even though a close reading should go beyond an analysis of a text’s literal content, every reading should start there. You need to have a firm grasp of the foundational content of a passage before you can analyze it closely. Use the common journalistic questions (Who? What? When? Where? Why?) to establish the basics like plot, character, and setting.
• Tone: What is the tone of the passage you’re examining? How does the tone influence the entire passage? Is it serious, comic, ironic, or something else?
• Characterization: What do you learn about specific characters from the passage? Who is the narrator or speaker? Watch out for language that reveals the motives and feelings of particular characters.
• Structure: What kind of structure does the work utilize? If it’s a poem, is it written in free or blank verse? If you’re working with a novel, does the structure deviate from certain conventions, like straightforward plot or realism? Does the form contribute to the overall meaning?
• Figurative Language: Examine the passage carefully for similes, metaphors, and other types of figurative language. Are there repetitions of certain figures or patterns of opposition? Do certain words or phrases stand in for larger issues?
• Diction: Diction means word choice. You should look up any words that you don’t know in a dictionary and pay attention to the meanings and etymology of words. Never assume that you know a word’s meaning at first glance. Why might the author choose certain words over others?
• Style and Sound: Pay attention to the work’s style. Does the text utilize parallelism? Are there any instances of alliteration or other types of poetic sound? How do these stylistic features contribute to the passage’s overall meaning?
• Context: Consider how the passage you’re reading fits into the work as a whole. Also, does the text refer to historical or cultural information from the world outside of the text? Does the text reference other literary works?

Once you’ve considered the above features of the passage, reflect on its relationship to the work’s larger themes, ideas, and actions. In the end, a close reading allows you to expand your understanding of a text.

Close reading example

Let’s take a look at how this technique works by examining two stanzas from Lorine Niedecker’s poem, “ I rose from marsh mud ”:

I rose from marsh mud, algae, equisetum, willows, sweet green, noisy birds and frogs to see her wed in the rich rich silence of the church, the little white slave-girl in her diamond fronds.

First, we need to consider the stanzas’ literal content. In this case, the poem is about attending a wedding. Next, we should take note of the poem’s form: four-line stanzas, written in free verse.

From there, we need to look more closely at individual words and phrases. For instance, the first stanza discusses how the speaker “rose from marsh mud” and then lists items like “algae, equisetum, willows” and “sweet green,” all of which are plants. Could the speaker have been gardening before attending the wedding?

Now, juxtapose the first stanza with the second: the speaker leaves the natural world of mud and greenness for the “rich/ rich silence of the church.” Note the repetition of the word, “rich,” and how the poem goes on to describe the “little white slave-girl/ in her diamond fronds,” the necessarily “rich” jewelry that the bride wears at her wedding.

Niedecker’s description of the diamond jewelry as “fronds” refers back to the natural world of plants that the speaker left behind. Note also the similarities in sound between the “frogs” of the first stanza and the “fronds” of the second.

We might conclude from a comparison of the two stanzas that, while the “marsh mud” might be full of “noisy/ birds and frogs,” it’s a far better place to be than the “rich/rich silence of the church.”

Ultimately, even a short close reading of Niedecker’s poem reveals layers of meaning that enhance our understanding of the work’s overall message.

How to write a close reading essay

Getting started.

Before you can write your close reading essay, you need to read the text that you plan to examine at least twice (but often more than that). Follow the above guidelines to break down your close reading into multiple parts.

Once you’ve read the text closely and made notes, you can then create a short outline for your essay. Determine how you want to approach to structure of your essay and keep in mind any specific requirements that your instructor may have for the assignment.

Structure and organization

Some close reading essays will simply analyze the text’s form and content without making a specific argument about the text. Other times, your instructor might want you to use a close reading to support an argument. In these cases, you’ll need to include a thesis statement in the introduction to your close reading essay.

You’ll organize your essay using the standard essay format. This includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Most of your close reading will be in the body paragraphs.

Formatting and length

The formatting of your close reading essay will depend on what type of citation style that your assignment requires. If you’re writing a close reading for a composition or literature class , you’ll most likely use MLA or Chicago style.

The length of your essay will vary depending on your assignment guidelines and the length and complexity of the text that you’re analyzing. If your close reading is part of a longer paper, then it may only take up a few paragraphs.

Citations and bibliography

Since you will be quoting directly from the text in your close reading essay, you will need to have in-text, parenthetical citations for each quote. You will also need to include a full bibliographic reference for the text you’re analyzing in a bibliography or works cited page.

To save time, use a credible citation generator like BibGuru to create your in-text and bibliographic citations. You can also use our citation guides on MLA and Chicago to determine what you need to include in your citations.

Frequently Asked Questions about how to do a close reading

A successful close reading pays attention to both the form and content of a literary work. This includes: literal content, tone, characterization, structure, figurative language, diction, sound, style, and context.

A close reading essay is a paper that analyzes a text or a portion of a text. It considers both the form and content of the text. The specific format of your close reading essay will depend on your assignment guidelines.

Skimming and close reading are opposite approaches. Skimming involves scanning a text superficially in order to glean the most important points, while close reading means analyzing the details of a text’s language, style, and overall form.

You might begin a close reading by providing some context about the passage’s significance to the work as a whole. You could also briefly summarize the literal content of the section that you’re examining.

The length of your essay will vary depending on your assignment guidelines and the length and complexity of the text that you’re analyzing.

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Close Reading

Close reading as analysis.

Close reading is the technique of carefully analyzing a passage’s language, content, structure, and patterns in order to understand what a passage means, what it suggests, and how it connects to the larger work. A close reading delves into what a passage means beyond a superficial level, then links what that passage suggests outward to its broader context. One goal of close reading is to help readers to see facets of the text that they may not have noticed before. To this end, close reading entails “reading out of” a text rather than “reading into” it. Let the text lead, and listen to it.

The goal of close reading is to notice, describe, and interpret details of the text that are already there, rather than to impose your own point of view. As a general rule of thumb, every claim you make should be directly supported by evidence in the text. As the name suggests this technique is best applied to a specific passage or passages rather than a longer piece, almost like a case study.

Use close reading to learn:  

• what the passage says
• what the passage implies
• how the passage connects to its context

Why Close Reading?

Close reading is a fundamental skill for the analysis of any sort of text or discourse, whether it is literary, political, or commercial. It enables you to analyze how a text functions, and it helps you to understand a text’s explicit and implicit goals. The structure, vocabulary, language, imagery, and metaphors used in a text are all crucial to the way it achieves its purpose, and they are therefore all targets for close reading. Practicing close reading will train you to be an intelligent and critical reader of all kinds of writing, from political speeches to television advertisements and from popular novels to classic works of literature.

Wondering how to do a close reading? Click on our Where to Begin section to find out more!

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Elaine Showalter describes close reading as:

...slow reading, a deliberate attempt to detach ourselves from the magical power of story-telling and pay attention to language, imagery, allusion, intertextuality, syntax and form.

It is, in her words, ‘a form of defamiliarisation we use in order to break through our habitual and casual reading practices’ (Teaching Literature, 98).

As readers, we are accustomed to reading for plot, or allowing the joy of the reading experience to take over and carry us along, without stopping to ask how and why a particular passage, sentence, or word achieves its effects.

Close reading, then, is about pausing, and looking at the precise techniques, dynamics, and content of the text. It’s not reading between the lines, but reading further and further into the lines and seeing the multiple meanings a turn of phrase, a description, or a word can unlock.

It is possible to close read an extended passage, but for essays it is often a good technique to do the close reading first and then to use very short extracts or even single words to demonstrate your insights. So instead of doing a close reading of twenty lines from A Midsummer Night’s Dream *in* your essay, you would do it independently, and then cite and explain three key phrases, relating them clearly to your developing argument. 

Close reading is also sometimes known as Practical Criticism, rooted in the techniques espoused by the Cambridge critic I. A. Richards.

He felt it was essential that students put aside their preconceptions and learn to appreciate the liveliness and multiplicity of language.

With that in mind, he gave students poems without any information about who wrote them or why they were written.

In the hands of subsequent critics, like William Empson, the technique became a way to offer virtuoso accounts of particular poems and literary works, with an emphasis on ambiguity and the multiplication of possible meanings.

In essence, close reading means taking a step back from the larger narrative and examining the constituent parts of a text.

Think of close reading as something that you do with a pencil and book in your hand. Mark up the pages; fill the margins.

“Annotate to appreciate; annotate to understand… It builds reading confidence; it helps us understand how literature is made—because it puts us there among the phrases.” Sometimes the Best Way to Read is to Mark up the Book - on the revelatory power of annotations

And then transcribe the poem, the passage, the quotation.

Accurate transcription of quotations is, for some, the first and last rule of close reading. If your passage isn’t transcribed meticulously, down to the last comma and (with poetry) spacing on the page, you can’t read it closely.

Careful transcription will also help you get inside a passage: you’ll get a feel for its rhythms, its twists and turns, its breathing. Look at the words.

Don’t take your eyes off the words. Work from the actual text in front of you, not from a sort of mental paraphrase of what the text says. As you do so, remember to think carefully about sound, not only when reading poetry but also when analysing prose.

Read the passage aloud, paying close attention to the rhythms of sentences. You might be surprised by what you hear: the eye can often glide over aspects of a text that the ear is keen to pick up. Remember, too, that it’s important not only to detect certain features but also to consider their effects. If you need to pause to catch your breath in the middle of a sentence, ask yourself why. How are form and content working together?

Close, not closed readings

Close reading has been criticised for being divorced from context and for pulling away from the historical and political engagements of the literary text.

Partly for that reason, it is important to think about the purpose behind your close reading – we are looking for close readings, not closed readings. Essentially, the close reading is the starting point for your essay, letting you find what is interesting, intricate, and unexpected about a literary text.

In the essay itself, you need to stitch that revelation about the complexities and ambiguities of particular terms, phrases and passages into a larger argument or context – don’t simply list everything you have found; craft it into an argument, and be prepared to downplay or leave out some of the elements you have spotted if they don’t relate to the larger picture.

For this reason, you might want to follow the “Rule of 2”. Your analysis of your quotation should be twice as long as the quotation itself. It's a nice reminder that we always need to go back and explain the textual evidence that's being cited.

Each piece of textual evidence needs and deserves detailed analysis if it's being used to support the argument's claims. It also helps to remind us to vary the lengths of quoted textual evidence so that an essay doesn't end up with only very brief quotations or long block quotations, but includes a mixture of different lengths that will best suit the claim being developed at any given point in the argument.

Some questions you may like to ask

• Who is speaking? Who is being spoken to? What is the reader assumed to know/not know? (University essays aren't written for an interested aunt or friend on a different course, but for an audience familiar with the themes and readings under discussion. Students are writing for an audience of engaged and interested peers. This means that the writer can assume that their reader knows the text and doesn't need extensive plot summary in the introduction or start of the essay. This frees up space for analysis and the laying out of each section's claims. It also helps to develop an authoritative voice: you are an expert speaking to other experts.)
• What is the point of the details included in the passage (eg if mundane things are mentioned, why is that; if there are elements of description that don’t seem to contribute to the plot what do they do instead)? 
• What generic clues are here (what kinds of writing are hinted at)? 
• Are there words or phrases which are ambiguous (could mean more than one thing)? If so, are we directed to privilege one reading over the other or do we keep both in play? Does one meaning open up an alternative story/history/narrative? What are the connotations of the words that are chosen? Do any of them open up new or different contexts? 
• Are there patterns which emerge in the language (the repetition of words or of certain kinds of words? Repeated phrases? Rhymes or half-rhymes? Metrical patterns?). What effects do they create? 
• Is there any movement in the passage you are reading? Are there any shapes or dominant metaphors? 
• What kind of rhythm does the passage have? What is its cadence?
• Is there anything that troubles you about the passage or that you’re not sure you fully understand? 
• Have you been to the dictionary (remember the full Oxford English Dictionary is available online through the library)?

For more specific advice, you might want to read our Ways of Reading series

• Ways of Reading a Novel
• Ways of Reading a Poem
• Ways of Reading a Film
• Ways of Reading a Play
• Ways of Reading a Translation

Extra Reading (and remember you can close read secondary as well as primary texts)

Thomas A. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: a Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (Harper, 2003). Elizabeth A. Howe, Close Reading: an Introduction to Literature (Prentice Hall, 2009). George Lakoff and Mark Turner, More than Cool Reason: a Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago, 1989). Frank Lentricchia and Andrew DuBois (eds), Close Reading: the Reader (Duke, 2002). Christopher Ricks, The Force of Poetry (Oxford, 1995). Elaine Showalter, Teaching Literature (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002).

For more on Practical Criticism, with some useful online exercises, try the Virtual Classroom on Practical Criticism

There’s a neat example by Patricia Kain at Harvard College’s Writing Center .

Trev Broughton , Alexandra Kingston-Reese , Chloe Wigston-Smith , Hannah Roche , Helen Smith , and Matthew Townend April 2018

This article is available to download for free as a PDF for use as a personal learning tool or for use in the classroom as a teaching resource.

Department of English and Related Literature University of York , York , YO10 5DD , UK Tel: work +44 (0) 1904 323366 | [email protected]

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Write a Close Reading

Choose a passage, step 1: read the passage, step 2: analyze the passage, step 3: develop a descriptive thesis, step 4: construct an argument about the passage., step 5: develop an outline based on your thesis.

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If you have not been assigned a passage or poem, then you must select a text and a specific passage.

Limit your selection to a paragraph or two at the most. In some cases, a sentence or two (or a few lines, if you are dealing with a poem) will be sufficient. Keep in mind that literature (and especially poetry) can be very dense. You will be surprised at how much you can glean from a short section – and how easily you can be overwhelmed by selecting a section that is too long.

Look for unusual or repetitive images or themes and passages with rich imagery or language.

Also pay particular attention to passages that relate to central characters or definitions of keywords; you may decide to focus on one section and how it helps you understand a character, relationship, issue, or idea.

Take notes as you read. Mark anything that seems relevant or interesting to you – even if you are unsure why a particular section of the text stands out.

Ask yourself: How is language and/or argument being used? Take notes about your observations of the passage, even if these observations seem simplistic or self-evident. Also pay attention to how language use changes over the course of your passage. For example, if the same word appears at the beginning and end, does it mean different things in both places? Does the author's tone or attitude change?

After you have read the entire text, you can return to these sections to look for repeated patterns, themes, or words. Often, a close reading will focus on one example of a theme or pattern to study the significance of this theme or pattern more in depth.

Begin by writing answers to some of the following questions, focusing on the kinds of rhetorical and literary devices you see in the passage.

• What words are being used here? 
• Are any words repeated in this passage? 
• What adjectives are used? What nouns do they describe?  How do they alter your understanding of these nouns? 
• Are any two (or more) words used in this passage connected in some way?

If any words are unfamiliar, look them up. If you are analyzing an older text, keep in mind that words may mean different things at different points in history—so be sure to look up any words that may be familiar but used in an unfamiliar way. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) will provide you with definitions as well as histories of word use.

Whether you are looking at an historical or contemporary text, remember that words can be used in different ways. Ask yourself: Are any words being used in unusual ways? Are any words referring to something more than what is simply stated? Are any two (or more) words in the passage connected in some way?

Narrative Voice

• Who is speaking in this passage?
• What narrative perspective is being used in this passage?
• What does the narrative voice tell you?
• What characters does it give you access to?
• Is the speaker being straightforward, factual, open?
• Is the speaker being direct or ambiguous with their message?
• Does the voice carry any emotion? Or is it detached from its subject?
• Do you hear irony (what is said is different from what is meant)? If so, where?

Rhetorical and Literary devices:

• Do you notice any figurative language, such as metaphors and similes?
• Do you observe any imagery?
• Is the sound of the language and sentences important (e.g., rhyme, repetition, choppy or long sentences)?
• What is the effect of these devices and techniques? (e.g., do they add emphasis or connect key ideas?)

Once you have finished looking at the language in detail, you can use your observations to construct a descriptive thesis. For example, you could argue that a passage is using short, simple sentences, or that it is using irony or a combination of these things. Your descriptive thesis should attempt to summarize the observations you have made about HOW language is being used in your passage.

Remember, this is not your final thesis statement. It's just your first step to arriving at an analytical thesis.

Now that you have some idea of HOW language is being used in your passage, you need to connect this to the larger themes of the text. In other words, you now need to address WHY language is being used in the way (or ways) you have observed.

This step is essential to a successful close reading.  It is not enough to simply make observations about language use – you must take these observations and use them to construct an argument about the passage.

Transform your descriptive thesis into an argument by asking yourself WHY language is used in this way:

• What kinds of words are used (intellectual, elaborate, plain, or vulgar)?  Why are words being used in this way?
• Why are sentences long or short?  Why might the author be using complicated or simple sentences?  What might this type of sentence structure suggest about what the passage is trying to convey?
• Who is the narrator? What is the narrative voice providing these particular descriptions? Why are we given access to the consciousness of these particular characters?  Why not others?
• What images do you see in the passage? What might they represent? Is there a common theme?
• Why might the tone of the passage be emotional (or detached)?
• To what purpose might the text employ irony?
• What effect/impact is the author trying to create?

After you have established your thesis, you’ll need to write an essay that supports this argument with examples and analysis.

For example, you might argue that in the novel Jane Eyre , Jane’s friend Helen Burns uses language and imagery to describe God in a very different way from characters who represent religious authority. To prove your argument, you must organize your essay to show examples of how Helen Burns describes God and interpret her description. You must also analyze how her description differs from the status quo in the novel and tell readers why this difference matters to our understanding of the novel.

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Distant Reading

About distant reading.

"Distant reading" has a specific meaning (coined by Franco Moretti), but can also generally refer to the use of computational methods to analyze literary texts. To learn more, start with Debates in the Digital Humanities , or explore this HOLLIS search for scholarly guides to the Digital Humanities and this MLA search for "distant reading" and related terms .

Ngram Viewers: Chart word usage over time

Beware: ngram counts are only as relevant or interesting as the corpus of texts they're measuring. Is the spike or drop you're observing attributable to a change in how language is used, or just material circumstances that make something likely to be included or excluded from your corpus? Think about the long-term durability of various kinds of paper, library collection policies, wartime effects on publishing, etc.

• Google Ngram: choose a sample of the Google Books corpus, including the "Google million." Search up to 5 consecutive words. Visit About Google Ngram for details and advanced features.
• HathiTrust Bookworm : samples the HathiTrust Digital Library. Unigrams (single words) only. More precise options for specifying type of publication. Select a plot point to see a snapshot of texts with "hits."
• Mediacloud : lots of options for visualizing topics in the news. Requires creating a free account.

Databases and Datasets

• HarvardKey-restricted : the library licenses access to many kinds of databases that provide data , searchable full-text corpora , and other kinds of tools.
• Free to access : the web abounds in open-access portals that encourage you to explore texts on a macro scale. Some big ones include the Digital Public Library of America , HathiTrust and its HathiTrust Research Center , Europeana , and the Internet Archive . There are many, many more.
• Specialized datasets , such as the ECCO corpus, may be available by request
• For details and specific recommendations , ask me!
• For additional leads and ideas , see library research guides that mention data

Build Your Own Project: Campus Resources

• Digital Scholarship Group
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Close Reading

About close reading.

Close reading is an activity that keeps you focused on and within a text—appraising individual words, shapes of thought, rhetorical devices, patterns of description and characterization, and so forth, in order to understand the text's artistic achievement. For more on the history and practice, see the JHU Guide's article on Practical Criticism or this HOLLIS search for "close reading" and literary criticism .

Trace Word Meanings over Time

• The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) : widely accepted as the most complete record of the English language ever assembled. Each entry includes a pronunciation key and etymology (in Old or Middle English, for example), identifies a word's earliest known use, and lists the word's changing meanings (including those now obsolete). Quotations from literary texts and other historical records illustrate different usages over time. The OED has a  fascinating history of its own .

Trace Occurrences of a Word across Texts

• Concordances : These are published, alphabetized lists of individual words used in a single text (e.g.Thoreau's  Walden  ) or larger oeuvre (e.g.  Ezra Pound's  Cantos  or  Milton's English prose ). In HOLLIS, add "concordances" to the author's name, e.g. concordances AND "Keats, John" . Many concordances are now published online instead: examples include the  Victorian  Literary Studies Archive Hyper-Concordance , the  Open Source Shakespeare Concordance ,  and the  Online Concordance to  Wallace Stevens' Poetry .
• Searchable full-text   collections : When a concordance isn't available, there may be digital editions of the literary text(s) you're studying. For English and American authors, try  LION (Literature Online) : it contains a library of 350,000 texts from the 8th century through the 20th. For more, see our guide to Finding Full Text Books Online .
• Variorum editions : Some texts exist in multiple versions. The differences between these versions, from the removal or addition of whole passages to subtle changes in punctuation, can make enormous differences in interpretation. A variorum edition collates textual variants and attempts to account for them, in some cases, by including the critical conversations they have engendered. A HOLLIS search for an author's name plus "variorum" or "variants" ( "Shakespeare, William" AND (variorum OR variants) will bring up variorum editions as well as literary criticism that focuses specifically on textual variants. 

Understand Literary and Rhetorical Terms

These special terms provide literary scholars with a shorthand for describing the formal properties of language, but they can also give you new lenses with which to view texts. The word "chiasmus" is shorter than "repetition of ideas in reverse order"; the concept of chiasmus might make you more alert to the order in which ideas are repeated within a sentence or a paragraph.

• The Reference Works collection in Literature Online is an excellent selection of searchable guides specific to literary studies. Pro tip : you can use the general search box and then filter your results to "Reference."
• Silva Rhetoricae : An award-winning website, maintained at Brigham Young University, that provides overviews of rhetorical practice, definitions of rhetorical figures, and very helpful examples of each.
• Individual guides and dictionaries: a HOLLIS search for dictionaries of poetics and literary terminology is a good way to see what's out there. For a helpful selection, start at call number RR 3005.31 in the Loker Reading Room.
• << Previous: Foreign Language Literatures

Except where otherwise noted, this work is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , which allows anyone to share and adapt our material as long as proper attribution is given. For details and exceptions, see the Harvard Library Copyright Policy ©2021 Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College.

Writing Studio

How to do a close reading of fiction, close reading questions answered.

In an effort to make our handouts more accessible, we have begun converting our PDF handouts to web pages. Download this page as a PDF: See page 2 of How to Do a Close Reading of Fiction Return to Writing Studio Handouts

What is a close reading?

A close reading is a systematic and attentive approach to understanding a text. Often called “unpacking” a text, a close reading helps separate the working parts of a text, explain them, and put them back together into a new understanding of the whole. When writing a critical analysis of literature, implementing this skill enables us to make more precise arguments about the things we read.

What is the point of a close reading?

A close reading helps us to attain our own understanding and interpretation of the text, taking us beyond plot summary.

In paying close attention to what we are reading, we can make an argument about how a small fragment of the text illuminates something about the whole.

What should I avoid in a close reading?

The first mistake we often make in close reading is imposing our own presuppositions on the text. Some of these presuppositions might include the following: assuming that we know more than we actually know about the historical context of the novel (i.e., a certain text by an American author was written before 1800, therefore it is an extended metaphor for the formation of a new nation); automatically assuming that the “point” of the text is to say something about “today’s society.”

Sometimes the greatest obstacle to understanding is the assumption that our own worldview can adequately explain what we are reading. Instead, to develop your own interpretation, first immerse yourself in the world of the text and try to follow its unique logic.

How do I begin a close reading?

Unpacking an entire novel would take a lot of time, probably more time than most of us have to spend on a short analytical paper. However, if we choose a few key scenes, episodes, or conversations within that novel for our close reading, we then have a more manageable portion of text at hand and can make a more sophisticated argument about it.

You might consider choosing: a turning point in the conflict, an illuminating moment of characterization, a subtle shift in the tone within the novel that carries implications for what comes after it, or interesting language or syntax.

How do I proceed after I select a passage? What am I suppose to do with it?

Good question! It is advisable to read the passage twice, maybe even three times, to ensure you do not miss any details that could help you form an argument. While you are reading, look for interesting stylistic patterns, repetitions of themes, or references to other parts of the text. If none of those things are in play, you can still look at the language the author uses and consider how it might compare to or depart from other parts of the novel. (Hint: Check in other parts of the work).

If you are dealing with a descriptive passage of a particular setting, for example, you might think about how the physical space of the story affects the movement of the characters. Are they trapped in a small space that keeps them constantly colliding and conflicting with one another? Are they in the middle of the desert where the openness of the landscape leaves them feeling isolated and alone? Asking these kinds of questions while you read will help you to not only decipher what the text is saying but also to understand it from several different angles. Then, once you are through this stage, you might decide to incorporate some of your own outside knowledge or insights if you feel they are applicable.

Last revised: 07/2009 |  Adapted for web delivery: 04/2021

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Close Reading a Text and Avoiding Pitfalls

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Also see the OWL handout on Writing about Literature and the OWL handout on Literary Terms .

Writing about a story or novel can be difficult because fiction is generally very complex and usually includes several points or themes. To discover these interwoven meanings, you must read the work closely. Below are three techniques for reading fiction actively and critically. Close reading takes more time than quick, superficial reading, but doing a close reading will save you from a lot of frustration and anxiety when you begin to develop your thesis.

Close Reading a Text

Use these "tracking" methods to yield a richer understanding of the text and lay a solid ground work for your thesis.

Pitfalls: Highlighting too much Highlighting without notes in the margins

These should be questions, comments, dialogue with the text itself.

A paragraph from Doris Lessing's short story "A Woman on a Roof" serves as an example:

The second paragraph could have a note from the reader like this:

Write quickly after your reading: ask questions, attempt answers and make comments about whatever catches your attention. A good question to begin with when writing response entries is "What point does the author seem to be making?"

After close reading and annotating, can you now make a statement about the story's meaning? Is the author commenting on a certain type of person or situation? What is that comment?

Avoiding Pitfalls

These four common assumptions about writing about fiction interfere with rather than help the writer. Learn to avoid them.

Assumes that the main task is simply recalling what happened in detail. Plot summary is just one of the requirements of writing about fiction, not the intended goal.

Assumes that writing about fiction is a "no win" game in which the student writer is forced to try to guess the RIGHT ANSWER that only the professor knows.

Assumes that ANY interpretation of any literary piece is purely whimsy or personal taste. It ignores the necessity of testing each part of an interpretation against the whole text, as well as the need to validate each idea by reference to specifics from the text or quotations and discussion from the text.

Assumes that writing the paper is only a way of stating the answer rather than an opportunity to explore an idea or explain what your own ideas are and why you have them. This sometimes leads to "padding," repeating the same idea in different words or worse, indiscriminate "expert" quoting: using too many quotes or quotes that are too long with little or no discussion.

Pasco-Hernando State College

• Literary Analysis Essay - Close Reading
• The Writing Process
• Parts of an Academic Essay
• Rhetorical Modes as Types of Essays
• Stylistic Considerations
• Unity and Coherence in Essays
• Proving the Thesis/Critical Thinking
• Appropriate Language

Related Pages

• Essay Organization

The purpose of a literary analysis essay is to carefully examine and sometimes evaluate a work of literature or an aspect of a work of literature. Examining the different elements of a piece of literature including plot, character, setting, point of view, irony, symbolism, and style to see how the author develops a theme is not an end in itself but rather a process to help you better appreciate and understand the work of literature as a whole. The focus of a literary analysis essay is as expansive as the writers’ interests. For example, a short story analysis might include identifying a particular theme and then showing how the writer suggests that theme through the point of view of the story. It is important to remember that literary analysis does not merely demonstrate a particular literary element. The focus is explaining how that element is meaningful or significant to the work as a whole. See Essay Organization in Related Pages on the right side bar for more information.

Close Reading

Close reading is a deep analysis of how a literary text functions; it is both a reading process and something you include in a literary analysis paper. When you read a text paying specific attention to certain literary elements, looking for particular patterns, or following the development of a particular character, you are practicing close reading. Likewise, when you watch a film with a particular emphasis on a certain element, you are doing a close reading. Of course, when one writes an essay that teases out a certain element, this is the beginning of a close reading. Like literary analysis more generally, close reading is not a means in and of itself. Close reading helps inform the larger meaning or import of a work.

Literary analysis involves examining the components of a literary text, which allows us to focus on small parts of the text, and clues to help us understand the work as a whole. The process of close reading should produce questions. When you begin to answer these questions, you are ready to participate thoughtfully in class discussions or write a literary analysis paper. Close reading is a process of finding as much information as you can in order form to as many questions as you can.

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"What is Close Reading?" || Definition and Strategies

"what is close reading": a literary guide for english students and teachers.

View the full series: The Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms

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• BA in English Degree
• BA in Creative Writing Degree
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What is Close Reading? Transcript (English and Spanish Subtitles Available in Video, Click HERE for Spanish Transcript)

By Clare Braun , Oregon State University Senior Lecturer in English

24 October 2022

You may have encountered the term “close reading” in high school or university settings. It’s been thrown around a lot in recent years thanks to its inclusion in the Common Core Standards for K12 education in the United States.  But the practice of close reading has been around a lot longer than the Common Core, and at this point the term has been used in so many different contexts that its meaning has gotten a little muddled.

So how does the Common Core’s use of “close reading” compare to a literary scholar’s use of the term?

The Common Core Standard mentions citing “specific textual evidence” to “support conclusions drawn from the text,” and this could function as a very basic definition of “close reading” in the way that scholars conceive of the term.

close_reading_common_core.jpg

For scholars, “close reading” is a mode of analysis—one of many possible modes, many of which can be used in conjunction with one another—that moves a reader beyond comprehension of the text to interpretation of the text.

A lot of the time we use close reading to uncover and explore a text’s underlying ideologies—or the ideas embedded in the text’s point of view, ideas that aren’t givens (like the laws of physics) but that are culturally or socially constructed, and usually ideas that aren’t universal even within a given culture or society.

We use close reading to make new knowledge out of our interactions with a text, which is why your instructors in high school and college might ask you to use close reading to write an essay, since the United States higher education system values the production of new knowledge.

So what does it look like to “do” close reading?

When you close read a text, you’re looking at both what the text says (its content), and how the text says what it says—through imagery , figurative language , motif , and so on.  You might have noticed that the Oregon State Guide to Literary Terms includes videos on imagery, figurative language, motif, and so on—most of the videos in this series employ close reading!

close_reading_literary_device_examples.jpg

But how do you look at what the text says and how it says what it says?

I like to think of close reading as a process with two major steps, plus a bonus step if you’re using the process to write a paper.

The first step is to read and observe.  These observations would include the “specific textual evidence” the Common Core Standards mention—concrete things you can point to in the text.  Direct observations are pretty much the defining element that makes close reading close reading.

Usually, you read the text multiple times to make note of as many observations as possible.  And speaking of making notes, close reading usually involves some form of notetaking, which might be annotating in the margins or collecting observations in a notebook or computer file.

close_reading_annotation_example.jpg

The second step is to interpret what you notice.  Look for patterns in your observations, and look for places where those patterns break.  Look for places in the text that snagged your attention, even if at first you don’t know why.  What implicit ideas are embedded in these patterns and anomalies?  What is significant about your observations, and what conclusions can you draw from them?

These questions are pretty broad, but you can ask yourself more specific questions based on the particular text you’re analyzing and on the general direction of your observations.

One thing I want to clarify is that steps one and two of this process aren’t necessarily sequential, as in, “I have completed my observations and I will now interpret them.”  It’s more likely that you’ll interpret as you observe, and continue to observe as you interpret.

close_reading_strategy_example.jpg

If you’re using close reading to write a paper, the third bonus step is to corral your observations and interpretations into a cohesive argument.  This may involve cutting out the observations and interpretations that aren’t relevant, and going back to the text for additional observations you can interpret for the argument you’re developing.

So, what isn’t close reading?  It’s not focused just on what happened in the text—the content; that’s summary.  It doesn’t speculate on the effect of the text on the reader, which is not something you can directly observe in the text.  It typically doesn’t require secondary sources, though you can use close reading with other forms of analysis that do rely on secondary sources.  It’s not the discovery of the one “right” answer of what a text means, because there are many ways to observe and interpret a text.  But it's also not a free-for-all where any reading of a text is correct because everything is interpretation anyway.   

Close reading isn’t the only way to usefully and productively engage with a text.  But it is often a useful mode of analysis because it is so grounded in the text, digging deeply into its layers of meaning.

Want to cite this?

MLA Citation: Braun, Clare. "What is Close Reading?" Oregon State Guide to English Literary Terms, 24 Oct. 2022, Oregon State University, liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/what-close-reading-definition-and-strategies. Accessed [insert date].

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Quotes About Close Reading

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Close reading is a thoughtful, disciplined reading of a text . Also called close analysis and explication de texte.

Though close reading is commonly associated with New Criticism (a movement that dominated literary studies in the U.S. from the 1930s to the 1970s), the method is ancient. It was advocated by the Roman rhetorician Quintilian in his Institutio Oratoria (c. 95 AD).

Close reading remains a fundamental critical method practiced in diverse ways by a wide range of readers in different disciplines. (As discussed below, close reading is a skill that's encouraged by the new Common Core State Standards Initiative in the U.S.) One form of close reading is rhetorical analysis .

Observations

"'English studies' is founded on the notion of close reading, and while there was a period in the late 1970s and early 1980s when this idea was frequently disparaged, it is undoubtedly true that nothing of any interest can happen in this subject without close reading." (Peter Barry, Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory , 2nd ed. Manchester University Press, 2002)

Francine Prose on Close Reading

"We all begin as close readers. Even before we learn to read, the process of being read aloud to, and of listening , is one in which we are taking in one word after another, one phrase at a time, in which we are paying attention to whatever each word or phrase is transmitting. Word by word is how we learn to hear and then read, which seems only fitting, because it is how the books we are reading were written in the first place.

"The more we read, the faster we can perform that magic trick of seeing how the letters have been combined into words that have meaning. The more we read, the more we comprehend, the more likely we are to discover new ways to read, each one tailored to the reason why we are reading a particular book." (Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them . HarperCollins, 2006)

The New Criticism and Close Reading

In its analyses, new criticism . . . focuses on phenomena such as multiple meaning, paradox, irony, word play, puns, or rhetorical figures, which--as the smallest distinguishable elements of a literary work--form interdependent links with the overall context . A central term often used synonymously with new criticism is close reading. It denotes the meticulous analysis of these elementary features, which mirror larger structures of a text." (Mario Klarer, An Introduction to Literary Studies , 2nd ed. Routledge, 2004)

The Aims of Close Reading

"[A] rhetorical text appears to hide--to draw attention away from--its constitutive strategies and tactics. Consequently, close readers have to employ some mechanism for piercing the veil that covers the text so as to see how it works. . . .

"The principal object of close reading is to unpack the text. Close readers linger over words, verbal images, elements of style, sentences, argument patterns, and entire paragraphs and larger discursive units within the text to explore their significance on multiple levels." (James Jasinski, Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies . Sage, 2001)

"[I]n the traditional view, close reading does not aim to produce the meaning of the text, but rather to unearth all possible types of ambiguities and ironies ." (Jan van Looy and Jan Baetens, "Introduction: Close Reading Electronic Literature." Close Reading New Media: Analyzing Electronic Literature . Leuven University Press, 2003)

"What, really, does a critical close reader do that the average person on the street does not do? I argue that the close-reading critic reveals meanings that are shared but not universally and also meanings that are known but not articulated . The benefit of revealing such meanings is to teach or enlighten those who hear or read the critique. . . .

"The critic's job is to uncover these meanings in such a way that people have an 'aha!' moment in which they suddenly agree to the reading, the meanings the critic suggests suddenly come into focus. The standard of success for the close reader who is also a critic is therefore the enlightenment, insights, and agreement of those who hear or read what he or she has to say." (Barry Brummett, Techniques of Close Reading . Sage, 2010)

Close Reading and the Common Core

"Chez Robinson, eighth-grade Language Arts teacher and part of the leadership team at Pomolita Middle School, says, 'It's a process; educators are still learning about it. . . .'

"Close reading is one strategy being implemented for teaching students higher level thinking skills, focusing on depth rather than breadth.

"'You take a piece of text, fiction or non-fiction, and you and your students examine it closely,' she says.

"In the classroom, Robinson introduces the overall purpose of the reading assignment and then has students work independently and in partners and groups to share what they have learned. They circle words that are confusing or unknown, write out questions, use exclamation marks for ideas that surprise, underline key points. . . .

"Robinson uses examples from Langston Hughes ' work, especially rich in figurative language , and refers specifically to his poem, 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers.' Together, she and her students investigate each line, each stanza, piece by piece, leading to deeper levels of understanding. She plays an interview with him, assigns a five-paragraph essay on the Harlem Renaissance.

"'It's not that this hasn't been done before,' she says, 'but Common Core is bringing a new focus to the strategies.'" (Karen Rifkin, "Common Core: New Ideas for Teaching--and for Learning." The Ukiah Daily Journal , May 10, 2014)

The Fallacy in Close Reading

"There is a small but immitigable fallacy in the theory of close reading, . . . and it applies to political journalism as well as to the reading of poetry. The text doesn’t reveal its secrets just by being stared at. It reveals its secrets to those who already pretty much know what secrets they expect to find. Texts are always packed, by the reader’s prior knowledge and expectations, before they are unpacked. The teacher has already inserted into the hat the rabbit whose production in the classroom awes the undergraduates." (Louis Menand, "Out of Bethlehem." The New Yorker , August 24, 2015)

• What Is Euphony in Prose?
• Definition and Examples of Explication (Analysis)
• What Is a Red Herring?
• Close, Clothes, and Cloths
• What Are Metonyms? Definition and Examples
• Synonymy Definition and Examples
• Peroration: The Closing Argument
• Reading Speed
• What Is Metonymy?
• Learn How to Use Extended Definitions in Essays and Speeches
• Translation: Definition and Examples
• What Is Digression?
• online reading
• Phatic Communication Definition and Examples
• Definition and Examples in Rhyme in Prose and Poetry
• Mutual Intelligibility

Doyle Online Writing Lab

Close reading assignments.

"A close reading (or Explication de texte) operates on the premise that any artistic creation will be more fully understood and appreciated to the extent that the nature and interrelations of its parts are perceived, and that that understanding will take the form of insight into the theme of the work in question. This kind of work must be done before you can begin to appropriate any theoretical or specific approach." 1

To explicate comes from the Latin explicare, to unfold, to fold out, or to make clear the meaning of. When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. Your aim is to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references or allusions. A close reading should be more than a list of devices, though. The essay should move from observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. What do these data add up to mean? 2

Close reading has three primary objectives.

It encourages you to be a better and more careful reader.

It asks you to employ the tools you heard used in lecture and probably have employed yourself in conference: analysis of speaker, diction, figurative language, sound, and genre to name a few.

• It engages you in the act of synthesis. Even as you divide the passage or object poem into its composite elements, you will want to discuss how those elements come together to form a whole.

Requirements: What does a Close Reading Essay Usually Have?

A thesis that is an assertion about the meaning and function of the text . It must be something you can argue for and prove in your essay.

Evidence from the text . What specific words or phrases led you to have the ideas you express? Quote them.

Analysis of that evidence . If the work were self-evident you could just turn in the book or image as your proof. Literally thousands of people have had thousands of different ideas about the words or details you mention. Explain how you arrived at your ideas.

Need More Help?

See the following pages:

• How to Annotate
• Close Readings of Passages
• Close Readings of Visual Artifacts

1 The Literary Link. Ed. Janice E. Patten. June 2, 1998. San Jose State University Web Site. 17 Sept. 2003. . 2 Patricia Kain, "How to Do a Close Reading," 1998. Harvard University Writing Center Web Site . 17 Sept. 2003. 3 Diane Hacker. The Bedford Handbook for Writers, 3rd. ed. Boson: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1991. 91.

What Close Reading Actually Means

The goal of close reading is to analyze the text and interpret why details–and the text itself–are significant.

Close Reading: A Definition

by  Grant Wiggins , Ed.D,  Authentic Education

On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought’s approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Occasionally, we are going to go back and re-share his most memorable posts. So today and tomorrow we’re going to share two of his posts on literacy, starting with what it means to ‘close read.’ Per his usual, Grant took a deep dive on the topic, with lots of great examples.

What is close reading? As I said in my  previous blog post , whatever it is it differs from a personal response to the text.

Here is what the Common Core ELA Standards say:

Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. (p. 3)

What Is The Meaning Of Close Reading?

Here is Anchor Standard 1:

Key Ideas and Details

1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. (p. 10)

Here is how Nancy Boyles in an excellent  Educational Leadership  article defines it: “Essentially, close reading means reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension.”

Thus, what “close reading” really means in practice is disciplined re-reading of inherently complex and worthy texts. As Tim Shanahan puts it, “Because challenging texts do not give up their meanings easily, it is essential that readers re-read such texts,” while noting that “not all texts are worth close reading.”

The close = re-read + worthy assumption here is critical: we assume that a rich text simply cannot be understood and appreciated by a single read, no matter how skilled and motivated the reader.

The next five ELA anchor standards make this clearer: we could not possibly analyze these varied aspects of the text simultaneously:

• 2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas.
• 3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
• 4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone.
• 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.
• 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text.

College readiness and close reading.  Since a key rationale for the Common Core Standards is college readiness, let’s have a look at how college professors define it. Here is what Penn State professor Sophia McClennen says at the start of her extremely  helpful resource  with tips on close reading:

“Reading closely” means developing a deep understanding and a precise interpretation of a literary passage that is based first and foremost on the words themselves. But a close reading does not stop there; rather, it embraces larger themes and ideas evoked and/or implied by the passage itself.

What Is The Goal Of Close Reading?

Here is how the Harvard Writing Center defines it:

When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a particular passage, or on the text as a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be to notice only selected features of the text—for instance, oppositions and correspondences, or particular historical references. Either way, making these observations constitutes the first step in the process of close reading.

The second step is interpreting your observations. What we’re basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to.

A  University of Washington handout  for students summarizes the aim of close reading as follows:

The goal of any close reading is the following:

• an ability to understand the general content of a text even when you don’t understand every word or concept in it.
• an ability to spot techniques that writers use to get their ideas and feelings across and to explain how they work.
• an ability to judge whether techniques the writer has used to succeed or fail and an ability to compare and contrast the successes and failures of different writers’ techniques.

Remember—when doing a close reading, the goal is to closely analyze the material and explain why details are significant. Therefore, close reading does not try to summarize the author’s main points, rather, it focuses on ‘picking apart’ and closely looking at the what the author makes his/her argument, why is it interesting, etc.

What Are Some Examples Of Close Reading Questions?

Here are a few of the helpful questions to consider in close reading, from the  handout by Kip Wheeler , a college English professor:

II. Vocabulary and Diction:

• How do the important words relate to one another? Does a phrase here appear elsewhere in the story or poem?
• Do any words seem oddly used to you? Why? Is that a result of archaic language? Or deliberate weirdness?
• Do any words have double meanings? Triple meanings? What are all the possible ways to read it?

III. Discerning Patterns:

• How does this pattern fit into the pattern of the book as a whole?
• How could this passage symbolize something in the entire work? Could this passage serve as a microcosm, a little picture, of what’s taking place in the whole narrative or poem?
• What is the sentence rhythm like? Short and choppy? Long and flowing? Does it build on itself or stay at an even pace? How does that structure relate to the content?
• Can you identify paradoxes in the author’s thought or subject?
• What is left out or silenced? What would you expect the author to say that the author seems to have avoided or ignored? What could the author have done differently—and what’s the effect of the current choice?

Of note is that in all these college examples the focus is on close reading as a prelude to writing. This is an important heads-up for students: close reading invariably is a means to an end in college, where the aim is a carefully-argued work of original thought about the text(s). And, in fact, the second part of Anchor Standard #1 makes this link explicit: the expectation is that students will communicate the fruits of their close reading to others in written and oral forms.

Close Reading vs. Reader Response

A key assumption implicit in all these quotes as well as in the Common Core – a controversial one, perhaps – is thus what I briefly argued in the previous post: ‘close reading’ has implicit priority over ‘reader response’ views of the aim of literacy instruction. The reader’s primary obligation is to understand the text. That emphasis is clear from the anchor standards in the Common Core, as noted above: the goal is to understand what the author is doing and accomplishing, and what it means; the goal is not to respond personally to what the author is doing.

As I noted in my previous post, this does not mean, however, that we should ignore or try to bypass the reader’s responses, prior knowledge, or interests. On the contrary, reading cannot help but involve an inter-mingling of our experience and what the author says and perhaps means. But it does not follow from this fact that instruction should give equal weight to personal reactions to a text when the goal is close reading. On the contrary: we must constantly be alert to how and where our own prejudices (literally, pre-judging) may be interfering with meaning-making of the text.

Here is how the caution is cast in a college handout (ed note: the link is now broken and removed) on close reading for students:

One word of caution: context needs to be examined with care. Don’t assume that the context of your own class or gender or culture is informing you correctly. Read context as actively and as rigorously as you read text!

This is especially true when reading rich, unusual, and controversial writings. Our job is to suspend judgment as we read – and be wary of projecting our own prior experience.

Let me offer one of my favorite sections of text to illustrate the point – two early sections from Nietzsche’s  Beyond Good and Evil :

SUPPOSING that Truth is a woman–what then? Is there not ground for suspecting that all philosophers, in so far as they have been dogmatists, have failed to understand women–that the terrible seriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usually paid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemly methods for winning a woman?…

5. That which causes philosophers to be regarded half-distrustfully and half-mockingly, is not the oft-repeated discovery how innocent they are–how often and easily they make mistakes and lose their way, in short, how childish and childlike they are,–but that there is not enough honest dealing with them, whereas they all raise a loud and virtuous outcry when the problem of truthfulness is even hinted at in the remotest manner. They all pose as though their real opinions had been discovered and attained through the self-evolving of a cold, pure, divinely indifferent dialectic (in contrast to all sorts of mystics, who, fairer and foolisher, talk of “inspiration”), whereas, in fact, a prejudiced proposition, idea, or “suggestion,” which is generally their heart’s desire abstracted and refined, is defended by them with arguments sought out after the event. They are all advocates who do not wish to be regarded as such, generally astute defenders, also, of their prejudices, which they dub “truths,”–and VERY far from having the conscience which bravely admits this to itself, very far from having the good taste of the courage which goes so far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule.

This is a  classic  close reading challenge: one has to read and re-read to make sense of things – even though all the words are familiar. And one has to put many prejudices and associations aside – about august philosophers, about scholarship, about “reason,” about truth and our motives in seeking it, about manhood! – to understand and appreciate what Nietzsche is driving at.

Examples Of Close Reading Questions

Oh, c’mon Grant: I teach little kids ! No matter. The same close reading needs to be done with every Frog and Toad story. Let’s consider my favorite, “Spring.” Frog wants Toad to wake up from hibernation to play on a nice April spring day. Toad resists all entreaties to wake up and play. The climax of the story comes here:

“But, Toad,” cried Frog, “you will miss all the fun!”

“Listen, Frog” said Toad.  “How long have I been asleep?” “You have been asleep since November,” said Frog. “Well then,” said Toad, “a little more sleep will not hurt me.  Come back again and wake me up at about half past May.  Good night, Frog.” “But, Toad,’ said Frog, “I will be lonely until then.” Toad did not answer.  He had fallen asleep.

Frog looked at Toad’s calendar.  The November page was still on top. Frog tore off the November page. He tore off the December page. And the January page, the February page, and the March page.

He came to the April page.  Frog tore off the April page too. Then Frog ran back to Toad’s bed.  “Toad, Toad, wake up.  It is May now.”

“What?” said Toad.  “Can it be May so soon? “Yes,” said Frog.  “Look at your calendar.”

Toad looked at the calendar.  The May page was on top. “Why, it  is  May!” said Toad as he climbed out of bed.

Then he and Frog ran outside to see how the world was looking in the Spring.

All sorts of interesting questions can re-raised here – all of which demand a close (re-) reading:

• Why did Frog try to wake Toad? How selfish or selfless was he being?
• How did Frog eventually get Toad to get up? Why did he do that (i.e. trick him)?
• Why didn’t the other attempts work to rouse Toad?
• What convinced Toad? Why did it convince him?
• Is Frog being a good friend here? Is Toad? (The title of the book, of course, is Frog and Toad Are Friends ).

Notice that we could ask the following reader-response-like questions:

A. Have you ever been tricked like that, or tricked someone else? Why did you trick them or they trick you?

B. Do real friends trick friends? Is Frog really being a good friend here?

From my vantage point, however, in light of what we have said so far, the first question pair is less fruitful to consider – less ‘close’ –  than the second pair. The first pair takes you away from the text; the second pair takes you right back to the text for a closer read.

The Openness Required In Close Reading

Close reading, then, requires openness to being taught. Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren in their seminal text  How To Read A Book  make this issue of openness quite explicit at the outset. When the goal is understanding (instead of enjoyment or information only), we must assume that there is something the writer grasps that we do not:

The writer is communicating something that can increase the reader’s understanding… What are the conditions under which this kind of reading – reading for understanding –takes place? There are two. First, there is an initial inequality in understanding. The writer must be “superior” to the reader in understanding…second, the reader must be able to overcome this inequality in some degree…To the extent that this equality is approached, clarity of communication is achieved.

In short, we can only learn from our “betters.” We must know who they are and how to learn from them. The person who possesses this sort of knowledge possesses the art of reading.

The essence of such open reading is active questioning of the text. As the authors say, the “one simple prescription is… Ask questions while you read – questions that you yourself must try to answer in the course of reading.”

Here are the four questions at the heart of the book:

What is the book about as a whole?  You must try to discover the leading theme of the book, and how the author develops this theme in an orderly way…

What is being said in detail, and how?  You must try to discover the main ideas, assertions, and arguments that constitute the author’s particular message.

Is the book true, in whole or in part?  You cannot answer this question until you have answered the first two. You have to know what is being said before you can decide whether it is true or not. When you understand a book, however, you are obligated to make up your own mind. Knowing the author’s mind is not enough.

What of it?  If the book has given you information, you must ask about its significance. Why does the author think it is important to know these things? Is it important to you to know them?

Note the caution: you shouldn’t jump to judging the merit or significance of the work before understanding it – a maxim of close reading.

The bulk of the book describes dozens of practical tips, with examples, for how to annotate texts and develop better habits of active reading in pursuit of the answers to these reader questions. I can heartily recommend  How To Read a Book  as one the best resources ever written for learning close reading. Hard to argue with the facts: written in 1940 and a longtime best-seller, it has had over 30 printings and is still used today.

Most importantly, to yours truly,  How To Read a Book  taught me how to read properly. It was in a brief skim of Adler’s book, while lounging in a friend’s dorm room when I was a junior at St. John’s College – the Great Books school – that I realized with a terrible shock that I had never really learned how to read actively and carefully up until that moment. The book changed my life: I became more skilled, confident, and willing as a reader; I went into teaching in part motivated by the simple yet powerful lessons taught me about the joys of reading and thinking in the book.

What St. John’s also taught me is the power of so-called Socratic Seminar – the way all of our classes were run – for learning close reading. Indeed, that’s all a good seminar is: a shared close reading of a complex text in which students propose emerging understandings, supported by textual evidence, with occasional reminders and re-direction by teacher-facilitators.

So, ELA and English teachers – and history, math, art, and science teachers too: let’s teach kids the joys that come from discerning the richness in a great text, be it Frog and Toad, Plato’s Apology, Euclid’s Elements, or Picasso’s Guernica. I think you’ll be surprised how much a wise text can teach and reach even the most unruly kid – and, in the end, make them feel wiser, too.

This post first appeared on  Grant’s personal blog ; image attribution flickr users katerha and deepcwind

DEAN’S BOOK w/ Prof. CONNIE GRIFFIN

Honors291g-cdg’s blog, how to write a close reading essay.

CLOSE READING The purpose of close reading is to suspend personal judgment and examine a text in order to uncover and discover as much information as we can from it. In close reading we ask not just “what does this passage say?” but also “how does it say it?” and even “what does it not say?” Close reading takes us deeper into the passage, below its surface to the deeper structures of its language, syntax and imagery, then out again to its connections with the whole text as well as other texts, events, and ideas. Desired Outcomes: • Identify and reflect on major themes in the book. • Analyze specific details, scenes, actions, and quotations in the text and discuss how they contribute to your interpretation of the meaning of the larger text. • Extract as much information from a chosen passage of writing as possible. • Listen to and understand others’ differing (perhaps) interpretations of the same text. • Generate questions and topics for further inquiry.

Assignment One: A Close Reading Instructions Now that you’ve finished the book, choose a passage from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and compose your own close reading of it. Apply the same techniques to this paper that were applied in in-class close readings and discussions, now taking into account the context of your chosen passage, additional selections from the text, as well as the book as a whole. Following MLA documentation style, correctly cite your chosen passage and any other quotations from the text that support your interpretations and claims. For help with MLA style, go to the Commonwealth College website (www.comcol.umass.edu) and search for “MLA format.” Organizing your close-reading essay In writing your close-reading essay, you may wish to start by introducing the book and describing your chosen passage’s importance within it. You could then offer relevant details to support your thesis. Questions you raise may appear as part of your conclusion, suggesting avenues for further thought and study. Paper length Your paper should be 650-750 words long, maximum. Be detailed but concise. Edit out unnecessary words and redundancies. (Include your selected passage in your paper, but do not count it as part of the total length.) A sample close reading essay is available online. Search the Commonwealth College website (www.comcol.umass.edu) for “close reading essay.” Questions to consider as you prepare to compose your close reading Examine the passage by itself • What does this passage explicitly say? • Is there a meaning beneath or beyond the explicit message? What is it? How is it communicated? • What might the passage suggest about the writer’s motivations? • How do the writer’s style, imagery and choice of language create a tone or intensify a meaning? • What specific examples in the passage (and additional passages) support these observations? Examine the passage in light of surrounding passages and the rest of the book • What themes running through the book are evoked explicitly and implicitly in this passage? • How does this passage fit—or not fit—into its immediate context as well as the book as a whole? What insights into the book does it reveal? • What questions does the passage raise about the story being told? • What conclusions can be drawn from this passage about the author and the text? A note about writing You should consider this paper a final version: pay attention to the quality of your writing and proofread your work. Strive to be concise and clear as well as correct. This means writing in a style that’s both academic and accessible. Always keep your audience in mind. You are writing for your interested peers. Grading This essay will be worth 15% of your final grade. Note: You will submit your paper at next week’s class. You will also be asked to summarize your paper and present its main points orally during class discussion. Therefore, you may want to jot down a few “talking points” in preparation.

• Writing Worksheets and Other Writing Resources
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Close Reading and Analysis

About the slc.

• Our Mission and Core Values

This worksheet treats Upper Sproul as a text for students to read and form arguments about. It is intended to provide a clear example of how one effectively uses observations to support analysis.

Part one: observations.

Please describe Upper Sproul on a busy day (e.g. a weekday at 12:00pm). These observations could include (but are not limited to) type of people, building, plants, and activities. In other words, who is there and what is happening?

Part Two: Analysis

The Prompt: Imagine that I am a potential Cal student. I just got my acceptance letter, but I am not sure whether or not I want to attend. Should I visit Upper Sproul on a busy day to get a feel for the school?

Please argue both sides of the question:

Yes, you should visit because… [list three observations from part one]

No, you should not visit because… [list three observations from part one]

Part Three: The Argument

If the some of the observations that you used in Part Two overlap, that’s fine (and even likely). For example, you might say that people should not visit because there are a lot of students handing out fliers, but you might also say that people should visit for this very reason.

The difference, of course, lies not in the observation but in your argument. Thus, if you say that a potential student should not visit Upper Sproul because of the fliers, then you need to answer the question why not? (Similarly, if you think that a potential student should visit Upper Sproul, then you need to answer the question why?)

So, the next step is to provide the why or why not to your answers in part two. Use a descriptive word or phrase that captures the effect of the three observations you chose. Why do these observations lead you to tell a potential student to visit (or not to visit) Upper Sproul when its busy?

Now, form your argument (you can just pick your favorite—yes or no):

Yes, a potential student should visit Upper Sproul because it _____________________

(descriptive word or phrase). The observations that support this are:

1. ________________________ 2. ________________________ and

3. ________________________.

No, a potential student should not visit Upper Sproul when it is busy because it

__________________________ (descriptive word or phrase). The observations that

support this are: 1. ________________________ 2. ________________________ and

Part Four: Using Evidence in a Paragraph

Your argument could easily be made into a paragraph about Upper Sproul (or even a whole essay). So far you’ve thought about the overall effect of your three observations and made an argument about them (e.g. they make Sproul seem fun; they make Sproul seem crowded). What is the specific effect of each observation? Using your argument as a topic sentence, try to write one or two sentences about each observation afterward.

2. ______________________________________________________________

3. ______________________________________________________________

Part Five: Reflection and Questions

Do you have a stronger understanding of close reading and analysis? Why or why not?

What are some of the differences between “reading” Sproul and reading a piece of literature?

How can these tools of close reading, analysis and argumentation be extended to a literary text? When reading a literary text, what sorts of observations can you make about the text? What sorts of details can you observe?

Hana Metzger
Student Learning Center, University of California, Berkeley
©2009 UC Regents

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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What are the differences between rhetorical analysis and close reading? [closed]

Can someone please explain the similarities and differences between rhetorical analysis and close reading?

• Rhetorical analysis is a form of close reading. –  deadly Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 15:12
• I'm afraid thet the principles and practise of Literary Criticism are explicitly off-topic here. See the faq . –  StoneyB on hiatus Commented Jan 31, 2013 at 18:17

Dr. Douglas Fisher describes close reading as a careful and purposeful re-reading of a text. When you re-read a text, you focus on the author's purpose, the meaning of the words that are used, and the structure of what the text tells you. Dr. Fisher cites Louise Rosenblatt, the originator of Reader-Response Theory, who likens close reading to a transaction between the reader and the text.

Bloom's taxonomy of learning, particularly in the cognitive domain, breaks down close reading (though he does not call it that) into six steps or components, each of which builds on the previous step. With step one being the most basic, and step six being the most advanced or complex, Bloom's hierarchy is as follows: knowledge (such as simple recall of facts), comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

While parents and educators need to emphasize all the levels of learning--even simple knowledge such as times-tables (6 x 6 is 36, 8 x 7 is 56, etc.), most would agree that close reading encourages the higher levels of learning: understanding what is read; applying what is read to everyday situations; analyzing an argument and putting it back together in a way that makes sense; and evaluating a writer's point of view as being either factual, true, helpful, meaningful, useful, persuasive, or their opposites--distorted, false, hurtful, nonsensical, destructive, unconvincing.

Rhetorical analysis , on the other hand, often involves a dance with all six components of Bloom's taxonomy, with particular attention paid to the writer's purpose . If rhetoric as Artistotle defined it is the faculty of determining in a given case the available means of persusasion, then the goal of a reader's (or listener's) rhetorical analysis is to determine how--and how well--a writer (or speaker) accomplishes his or her purpose, whether it is to inform, to entertain, to inspire, or to persuade. Moreover, an astute reader can identify, in addition to the overall purpose, how or how well a writer incorporates elements of each purpose into his or her writing.

When you read something closely you often--though not always--come away with an impression that the writer has attempted primarily to inform you, to entertain you, to inspire you, or to persuade you. The purpose of a given piece of writing is seldom monolithic, however, but often involves an admixture of several purposes. A persuasive piece of writing, for example, requires an element of information, if not entertainment and inspiration.

A well-written piece might "suck you in" with some informative--and purportedly neutral--facts; keep you reading with an entertaining, inspiring, and memorable turn of phrase or element of humor; and then attempt to persuade you of a point of view. That point of view could be one you heretofore did not have, or it could at the very least make you stop and think, "Hmm, I never thought of things that way before," or "Hmm, I agree with this point, but certainly not with that point!"

The same can be said of a well written and "purely" informative piece of writing. Even a recipe, or a book of recipes, contains more than a whiff of entertainment and persuasion. If the recipe writer insists you follow a given step in the recipe in a somewhat unconventional way by using only organic and unprocessed ingredients, then persuasion enters the picture.

A recipe writer who adds personal anecdotes or entertaining stylistic touches is perhaps attempting to lighten up what could be a very mechanistic approach to preparing food. Even entertaining elements can be, indirectly, an attempt at persuasion, in that they might encourage a reader to buy a book of recipes in the first place, and then continue to read and use the recipes contained in the book. A typical reaction of a satisfied recipe-follower might be, "Oh, she makes cooking so much easier and so much more enjoyable!"

Rhetorical analysis can serve you well, whether at a fairly elementary level you are trying to understand a politician's reasons for passing a new law or modifying an old one, or whether at a fairly advanced level you are trying to understand how a scientific revolution occurred through a gradual or sudden paradigm shift in the scientific community. An example of the latter is the Copernican paradigm shift. (See Thomas Kuhn's Structure of a Scientific Revolution for help in understanding the process of a paradigm shift.)

In short, both activities, close reading and rhetorical analysis, involve gaining a deeper understanding of the contents and purposes of any piece of writing, from the noble heights and aspirations of a country's constitution, to the more prosaic and humbler instructions on how best to bake a pecan pie.

Hope this proves helpful.

• do you have any books you can recommend with regards to close-reading and rhetorical analysis? –  seeker Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 17:05
• 1 @seeker: There are millions of such books. For beginners and budding rhetoricians I recommend Richard Weaver's "The Ethics of Rhetoric." For advanced beginners, there's no reason why they should shy away from Aristotle's "Rhetoric" (George Kennedy's translation) and Plato's "The Phaedrus" (translation with notes, glossary, appendices, interpretive essay and introduction by Stephen Scully, translator, and Albert Keith Whitaker, editor). Google the following for contemporary theory: google.com/… . Don –  rhetorician Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 17:32
• Thank you for that! Would you also happen to know a few books on close reading? (They seem harder to come by on Google) –  seeker Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 17:45
• 1 Barry Brummett's 2009 book, "Techniques of Close Reading" might be a good place to start. He probably provides a bibliography in his book which would be a good source for additional works on the subject. Here's the book as I found it on Google: books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1412972655 . A summary of the book: "'Techniques of Close Reading' is a brief, supplemental text that trains students in an ability to see what texts--be they written, oral, visual, or mediated--may be saying." –  rhetorician Commented Jun 24, 2015 at 18:02
• do you know what is the differences between rhetoric device, stylistic device and literary device? What are the differences between the three fields? –  Ooker Commented Nov 1, 2018 at 6:55

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged rhetoric meaning or ask your own question .

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Interaction Culture

Discourse analysis vs. close reading.

Introduction

Textual analysis is fundamental to many kinds of research, from psychology to literature, philosophy to information science. Not surprisingly, different strategies have emerged from within the various disciplines that do textual analysis, and naturally these strategies reflect the epistemologies of the disciplines from which they emerge. And as long as one stays insular to one’s own discipline, there isn’t a problem.

But as soon as a field claims the mantel of “interdisciplinarity,” it faces a dilemma: to protect and preserve what is known to work, or to open itself out to alternative ways of knowing. Now, both of these impulses are in themselves legitimate in themselves, but as they enter everyday life (e.g., the writing, reviewing, and editing of papers), they sometimes appear in clumsy ways. Some of these clumsy ways are as follows:

• Epistemological bigotry : This happens when someone asserts (often without meaning to) that she or he knows the right way and everything else is “fluff” or wrongheaded. In HCI, scientism is often confused for science, to the detriment of both HCI and science.
• Piecemealism : This happens when someone injects a small piece from one tradition uncritically into another, without recognizing that a piece might not represent the whole from which it is drawn, nor recognizing that that piece might be at intellectual odds with the rest. In HCI, I see this with “critical” approaches to HCI where a single concept is ripped from a complex tradition, such as poststructuralism, and applied to traditional design approaches to, say, mobile phones or Web applications.
• Equivocation : This happens when two or more groups of people use the same word in completely different ways, without seeming to be aware that their use is not “natural” or universal. In HCI, “aesthetics” seems to be a word that has almost no relationship to the 2,500 year old tradition of aesthetic theory, as I’ve ranted on before .

All of these involve a combination of dogmatism and muddled thinking. While scientism–by which I refer to as a fetish for scientific ways of knowing, placing it above other forms of intellectualism–is dogmatic and often intellectually muddled, I would stress that neither dogmatism nor muddled thinking is scientific. Scientism so-defined is bad science.

In this post, I will talk about discourse analysis versus close reading. Both are strategies of textual analysis. Both have disciplinary rigor. Both have legitimate benefits. And yet often when I do close reading, I am attacked on the grounds that I am not being “systematic,” not “coding,” and/or just putting forward my “opinion.” And I want to just scream out: I’ve read Virgil in Latin, Proust in French, Dante in medieval Italian, Joyce in whatever language he wrote in: I don’t need you to tell me how to read! But that is self-expression. It doesn’t solve the broader problem, which is that the rigor I bring to text analysis seems to be literally invisible to these reviewers. Instead, 12 years (!) and a doctorate in a Ph.D. program in Comparative Literature comes off as me just putting forward my “opinion.” I need to address this.

Ironically, and no doubt to the detriment of my tenure case, I think a lot more people read my blog than any of my papers, so I want to use this platform to define both discourse analysis and close reading with the hope of making very clear the following:

• They take different epistemological positions. That means that their way of knowing–their assumptions about how to derive meaning from texts, what meanings are supposedly there in texts, the approaches you use to access them–differ.
• They embody different forms of rigor, and if it is your job to evaluate rigor then it is your responsibility to know how to recognize different strategies of textual analysis and to know how to recognize and evaluate their actual or lack of rigor.
• Their outputs are different. What you learn from discourse analysis is not the same thing as what you learn from a close reading, and each approach lends itself to certain kinds of claims–and also fails to lend itself to other sorts of claims.

My Thesis Statement

All of this leads to my thesis statement, and to make sure no one misses it, or if you just skim this post and only see on thing, then let it be this:

1.  Discourse analysis and close reading are NOT interchangeable

And that implies this:

2.  If someone does a close reading, it does not follow necessarily that they should have done a discourse analysis instead.

With my thesis out of the way, I’m ready to blog-defend it. (A “blog defense” means that this is probably a half-baked and half-assed defense; your recourse is to take me on in comments.) Before I start, I want to share one other value: I try to be generous with concepts, theories, and methodologies. That means that I will attempt a fair-minded summary of both approaches, even though everyone reading this knows which one I like better and am more likely to practice (that said, I have done discourse analysis). But my personal preferences are just that: personal preferences. They do not amount to universal claims or pretenses. Stated directly: I respect discourse analysis as much as I respect close reading, even though I personally practice one more than the other.

On Discourse Analysis

Discourse analysis is a scientific and empirical strategy of textual analysis. At its most basic level, it entails a methodology along these lines:

• Identify a phenomenon you are concerned with, whose significance is at least partially embodied in texts. Example: FOX, CNN, and MSNBC written news coverage of Obama; mommy blogs; letters to the editor published in your local paper on topic X; Amazon.com customer reviews of Y.
• Identify the totality of texts available, and identify a significant and representative sample of the whole.
• Develop a coding system that lets you tag instances of a significant textual feature (e.g., the presence or absence of a feature in a given unit of text).
• Preferably with multiple people, code the texts using the framework. (I’m hereby skipping summary of establishing intra- and inter-coder reliability, but if you are curious, go read Krippendorf who lays all this stuff out nicely).
• When you are done with step 4, you now have a numeric representation of your sample. This can now be analyzed statistically.

What this sort of analysis gets you : If you do it well, you have a bona fide empirical snap-shot of your phenomenon. You are in a position to claim what has been said in those texts. You are in a position to observe patterns that are explicitly present, but which may have been hard to see just by reading all the texts. You are also in a position to discover relationships among those patterns: female writers were more likely to A, while male writers were more likely to B; MSNBC coverage was more friendly to liberals, FOX coverage to conservatives, CNN coverage to lipstick celebrities.

Limitations of this analysis : Strongly empirical approaches such as this are very good at exposing what is there. They are less successful at exposing what is “between the lines,” because in a literal way, what is between the lines is not “there” to be found or represented. Now, obvious stuff between the lines is easy enough to unearth–FOX is conservative, MSNBC is liberal, CNN is vapid–but the deeper, juicier stuff can’t be accessed this way. Discourse analysis alone cannot also get at context very well; who said it and why? I’m sure discourse analysis practitioners will contest me on this, but I mean context in much broader and more radical way than I typically see in these sorts of papers: psychoanalytic, ideological, and other complex cultural and/or subcultural contexts are extremely difficult to see using a positivist strategy like discourse analysis.

[Update] : See comments below for a discussion of whether this is a good or fair summary of discourse analysis.

On Close Reading

The term “close reading” is descriptive, not exactly technical. I might have said “humanistic reading” or “interpretive reading” or something like that. Examples of what I am talking about are acts of criticism. Here I don’t mean critical theory but rather close interpretations of single “texts” (“text” here understood as any cultural artifact): Sontag’s interpretation of photographic portraits of herself; Butler’s interpretation of the ethics of torture photographs in the Bush years; Bloom’s interpretation of Plato; Bazin’s interpretation of de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves ; Barthes’ interpretation of a photo on the cover of Paris Match ; and so on.

A close reading doesn’t involve a set methodology and as such it is very hard to describe. Foolishly perhaps, I nonetheless attempted it here . But the gist of this sort of approach is that an expert (which I will leave undefined here) engages with a text with great care. This engagement typically entails a number of activities: multiple readings/viewings of the text; situating the text in its social and historical contexts; deconstructing the text using a variety of critical strategies (e.g., from Marxism, feminism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, structuralism, reception theory, psychoanalysis); bringing to bear what, if anything, everyone else has said about that text, including interviews with the author/creator, its critical tradition, similar texts (e.g., by the same author/creator); and so forth. Note that this sort of approach is holistic and relies for its success on the expertise of the expert doing it; it is unique, individual, and subjective; it does not follow any disembodied abstract methodology but rather the logic of the scholar-expert in whose hands it is being executed.

What this sort of analysis gets you : A close reading of this sort explores and exposes far more sensitively the complex cultural embeddedness of the text. It gets at matters of aesthetics, craft, and ethics in profound ways. It is capable of revealing much about a text and a community that is neither explicit in the text nor even known to its community. A spectacular example of this is Dick Hebdige’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style , whose analysis of the punk subculture explores the specific historical and operational details of the xenophobic working class underpinnings of punk’s emergence and war on mainstream mass culture. At no point does Hebdige claim that his analysis represents the conscious expressed point of view of a subculture; rather, he explores and reasons about what the unconscious, unspoken point of view seems to be, where it comes from, and what evidence justifies this line of thinking.

Limitations of this analysis : Close readings are strongly inductive and speculative in nature, so what it won’t get you is confidence that you have an objective and correct representation of external reality as it is. Rather, a close reading situates the text against a network of complex ideas and reflections, with the hope of cultivating our capacity to appreciate and understand the source text. Close readings of aesthetic works often call attention to theorization of art to help expose (or even create ) its cultural significance–in the most robust possible sense, and for better and/or worse–in the critic’s society. As I have said elsewhere, a critic often models the act of reading, not to reproduce a static understanding in the reader’s head of what is in the critic’s head, but rather to encourage the reader to use similar interpretive strategies both in the original text and in subsequent texts of interest to the reader.

If you interview 1,000 people coming out of a theatre and transcribe the interviews, you can use discourse analysis to get a real sense of how that film was liked, understood, perceived, etc.

If you read a critical essay about that same film (and here I don’t so much mean newspaper movie reviews but rather scholarly film critiques), you will understand that film’s participation in film, mass media, and everyday culture: its craft, its ideology, its construction of concepts that matter: love, social justice, freedom, sexual liberation, identity, politics, beauty, and so on.

It should be obvious at the very least that both of these kinds of knowledge are legitimate and important, if not always to the same people. If I am a film investor, I absolutely want to understand how moviegoers perceive, experience, and evaluate movies. That is fundamentally an empirical question, and empirical strategies are entirely appropriate. If I am a prospective director, a concerned citizen, a film student or teacher, a film buff, someone who makes decisions about which films should be shown as a part of a community film festival,  and so on, then the film critic’s message is much more likely to resonate with me.

In HCI, we combine all of these audiences. We want to design stuff for commercial success. We want to design things that do what they are supposed to do. Our scientific and empirical approaches are already very good at helping us achieve these goals.

But now we also care about sustainability, felt experience, quality of life, social justice. We have Web 2.0 communities whose emergent behavior literally changes the “meaning” of a system over time. As battles between Web 2.0 communities and their software “owners” (e.g., Facebook, Second Life) have shown, it is not even clear who does or should be responsible for these systems. Thanks to APIs and SDKs, software developers from Adobe and Blizzard to Twitter and Yahoo allow users to redesign interfaces. The emergent UI results are sometimes cannibalized and implemented in future releases of the software. What, then, is an “interface” now, anyway?

These broader questions are much more complex than whether a system is usable or whether users prefer this color scheme to that one. Their complexity in large part lies in the un-articulated and often unseen relationships between and among vastly complex phenomena, from human identity practices to social behavior, from globalisation to the history of art, from emergent user-created interfaces to the incomprehensibility of information produced by user-content creators. These issues cannot be adequately described by scientific reductionism, the way predicting task performance can be. This is not at all to say that scientific reductionism can’t contribute to our understandings in powerful ways–of course it can! But drop the scientism, HCI! It’s not going to meet our needs and it’s lousy science anyway (all dogmatism is). Good science and good critique should complement and reinforce each other. But as long as we categorically dismiss non-scientific strategies, we’re only fake-interdisciplinary and we’re going to botch our work.

And today, bad HCI is more than an unusable Web page–it is unsustainable, socially unjust, culturally irresponsible–and a significant majority of our thousand best users just might miss it.

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16 comments.

I’m with you on much of the critique, but I do think that you are giving other traditions of “discourse analysis” short shrift.

Specifically, when people claim to be doing “discourse analysis,” they may be doing the kind of positivist, blunt-instrument coding approach that you describe. Or they could be doing a much more continental (read: French, cf http://sociocritique.mcgill.ca/theorie/discourse%20theorie.htm ) investigation committed to investigating and historicizing movements of power, authority, and resistance through textual analysis. Or they could be doing ethnomethodological conversation analysis, which confusingly *also* gets linked to discourse analysis ( http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/mmethods/resources/links/da_primer.html ).

There’s a multitude of approaches and traditions wrapped up in the term — many of which require quite a bit of close reading. And indeed, much of the usefulness of science and technologies studies to HCI work lies in the unpacking of how scientific “facts” come to be produced and recognized as such. I don’t think the distinction between “science” and “critique,” or “discourse analysis” and “close reading” need be quite as much of a binary as you suggest.

Wonderful comment, Elizabeth, thank you for the added nuance! The links are great as well!

I really appreciated your description of the work that goes on in what you have described as “close reading.” It’s a battle that needs to be fought (and not just in HCI communities) and it’s great that you are doing a lot of the hard work on this front.

My only concern is that in your excellent account and defense of “close reading” you have offered up a misleading account of “Discourse analysis.” I am a bit out of the loop to know what counts as “Discourse analysis” in the HCI world these days, but as Liz points out there are a lot of other methods that some call discourse analysis that are not what you describe.

I have heard what you were describing as discourse analysis at times referred to more generically as “content analysis.” One scholar presented it as one method (of many) that use texts in answering questions posed in the social sciences. It was also used to show how qualitative data could be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively.

All that being said, again, found your overall point well put and your discussion of close reading illuminating.

Thanks again Dan and Liz for these helpful contextualizations. There is indeed a trend in discourse analysis that seems Foucauldian (Foucault! Sigh! Flutter! Pitter-patter!), and of course that practice of DA is not about coding but rather reflects a more hermeneutically engaged strategy of understanding discourses as representing complex knowledge constructs and institutions.

This is a problem of equivocation, where the term “discourse analysis” itself is used to mean different things by different people.

I will only say in my defense that I have never been shot down for being insufficiently Foucauldian! (I did once use Foucault in a paper on experience design, and I had an anonymous reviewer ask me who Foucault was, and if he was such an important HCI researcher, why the reviewer hadn’t heard of him. You can’t make this s–t up.) So when I am criticized for just offering my “opinion” when I do close reading, what they want is discourse analysis as I have described it in the post: objective coding and a sanctioned methodology correctly implemented.

That said, I do appreciate that you both have added contextualization to this post and enriched it with a better treatment of DA and also some great links!

One other note: There seems to be a trend where HCI and STS are coming together. I don’t think we’re all the way there yet, but I think it will help both fields enormously. STS can help HCI do its work more ethically, more reflectively, and with greater sensitivity to its own consequences. HCI can help STS get away from the sidelines and actually get engaged in changing the world through design. So rah rah!

Thanks for this post, I am interested in.

I have to say… I tend to review at least 2 papers per year that claim their method is discourse analysis, and then i see no discussion of methods at all and just close reading. Now close reading does play into some forms of discourse analysis, once you’ve defined the corpus as a discourse, you have to interpret it, you can do that by close reading, you can do that by coding, you can do it by hermeneutic analysis, you can do it by semiotic analysis, you can do it by linguistic analysis but you have to be clear about how ‘close reading’, coding or whatever you are doing actually interacts with that corpus to produce the evidence from which you will draw conclusions. I tend to think that many people don’t really do the ‘analysis’ part of discourse analysis, and tend to do…. ‘this is what i saw’. they skip the way that they came to see that, which is what makes the work replicable and can make it scientific if that is a goal.

as for hci and sts, i’d say they’ve not been apart in some time, but i think sts or at least the major research programs in the field have moved away from computers and hci in interesting ways leaving behind a huge corpus of material related to hci, but substantively concerned with issues that hci wasn’t until recently interested in taking on, so I’d tend not to describe it as a ‘coming together’ and to use a technical term from hci…. the fields intertwingle….

Thanks for the message, Jeremy.

Certainly no one is suggesting that shoddy work be accepted as long as it calls itself “close reading.”

The complication is that you have proposed a binary: between “this is what I saw” (which is subjective impressionism and no good) and “replicable” and “scientific” “analysis.”

My point is that close reading is none of these. It is not merely subjective impressionism, because it is disciplined, scholarly, and intellectually rigorous.

It is not “replicable” because it is grounded in the subjectivity of the critic. Now, this subjectivity is a special one. I just read a critique of Bergman’s Seventh Seal. Its author is a Swedish-speaking, feminist trained, film scholar. So first of all, her subjectivity is educated and sophisticated; she is in a privileged position to do this analysis. But second of all, what she says is the outcome of a process of reflection; it is a process that is unique to her. It is evidence-based, to be sure. But dozens of critiques of the Seventh Seal will only “replicate” the most banal observations about the film. What is interesting in each scholarly essay is precisely what is not and is never replicated: the critic’s original take. And what makes it original is its situatedness in that expert’s reflective processes, processes which cannot be abstracted and modeled like a proper scientific methodology.

It is not “scientific” because it is not replicable, it is not objective, and its claims to accurately represent reality as it is are weak. Its contribution is not ontological. Its contribution is rather toward our ongoing cultivation of our reflective practices and sensibilities.

It is not “analysis” in the sense that social science works by identifying a “body” of data and then using proven (by which I also mean to emphasize abstract, generalized) methodologies to cut up, discover relationships among, discover trends among the data. The data is understood to just be there. Thus, there is the claim that a different scientist using the same methodology on the same data should get the same result (this is replicability).

But a close reading has no “data” and denies the possibility of data. I got a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and we never, ever used the word “data” in literary analysis. Neither did we use the word “methodology” (indeed, Derrida is famous for going into a hissy fit when people referred to deconstruction as a method). These terms–and the epistemological assumptions that they absolutely depend on–are not a part of our world. The reasons are philosophical and I won’t rehearse them here, but the gist is that humanist analysis and close reading in particular foreground the unique subjectivity of the critic.

So it is categorically invalid to criticize a close reading on the grounds that it lacks analysis, its methodology is underarticulated, it is unreplicable, and/or it is unscientific. I say “categorically invalid” because I mean quite literally these are the wrong criteria. You’re declaring a tree dead on the basis of its lack of a heartbeat.

This is not to suggest that one has no basis to critique a close reading! It is only to suggest that replicability, methodology, data integrity, and all that are the wrong basis.

Close readings are constructed out of arguments. Arguments are much more important in critical writings than in scientific writing. 75% of CHI papers have the same structure, while most humanist papers have highly idiosyncratic structures. Scientific contributions are not generally their arguments (when what you value is objectivity and replicability it is not hard to see why), but rather the new data that they have collected and the representation of reality that they afford (there is an argument to that, but it is relatively direct and simple, in part because of established methodologies and standards in scientific rigor). There is a major difference between an essay and a description of a scientific research project. An essay is the presentation of an original argument, where the chain of reasoning, the connections made, the interrelations and resonances uncovered are the point, not the “brute data.”

An argument is an extended chain of interrelated claims. In an essay, this argument expresses the essayist’s individual point of view on a complex phenomenon. A “point of view” is an interpretation; to be worthwhile, this interpretation should be insightful, original, creative, speculative, interesting, relevant, skeptical, and evidence-based. It is about proposing and justifying creative, novel, and fruitful connections that hermeneutically reframe how we even think about something (which is why I keep asserting that close readings are epistemological and not ontological in their goal: they are less interested in say what reality is and more interested in proposing new strategies for interpreting it) As I noted above, it typically situates a phenomenon against a rich body of theory *that is robustly and powerfully understood*. (Piecemealism is a dire weakness in critical writing.)

There are many ways to critique this point of view. One can argue that the critic’s use of theory is piecemeal, confused, or wooden. One can assert that the point of view is obvious (this is the kiss of death). One can say that the critic has cherry-picked aspects of the text to suit her or his needs. (But this is complicated by different attitudes toward “evidence”: a humanist considers quotes “resonant” rather than “representative.” Establishing resonance is a very different kind of problem than establishing representativeness. Thus, when I tease out an interesting train of thought from a resonant passage, and someone says, “but you haven’t proven that this is representative” then we have another category violation).

I could go on, but I think I’ve gone on long enough. I’ll restate my point as clearly and emphatically as I can: good close reading is neither “this is what I saw” nor is it “scientific.” The fact that all textual analysis is forced into that binarism (in HCI) is the reason I wrote this post and so many others in the first place.

I think there is likely more modes of criticism than perform close reading that yield replicable results than one might assume.

I also think that there is a huge field of literary computing that uses data for analysis.

So in the end, well I just think we have to be careful, I don’t think that replicability is a demarkating principle of science. The definition of science that i generally accept is that science performs the acts of dividing and describing the world. Sometimes that will be perfectly replicable, but as we know sometimes it isn’t, and the non-replicative divisions/descriptions are just as scientific as the ones that are insofar as they add to knowledge of what exists in that world.

I think if you want a more scientific criticism, we have that in marxism, in new criticism, etc. etc. there were many attempts to provide criticism in the past in a formal scientific manner. People still do it today.

I think that we also need to distinguish critique and critical theory, which is generally methodologically sound from the passing criticism that seems to be perhaps the problem of amethodologicalism or as you call it subjective perspective. my current perspective on ontology and epistemology doesn’t allow for ‘objective’ categories, which don’t seem to exist, so much as universal subjectives which do seem to exist so perhaps the problem of the critic is less the evidence yielding the agreed conditions as much as it is the evidence yielding to the dissensual conditions.

as for ‘resonance’ i would say switch to the term … ‘salience’ which has been long debated in ethics, and has been picked up by sts in various ways. Salience is an epistemological practice that is learned, you can’t just immediately enter a context and know what is salient, but you might feel all kinds of resonance, but resonance doesn’t really convey much, salience, the important bits of the situation, that conveys, that we can agree is important, or even if we disagree we can have substantive arguments about its relational properties that make it salient or not.

anyway, like you i’m bumbling along thinking

I think one can do a close reading that is scientific, but it is a rare thing, and to make it scientific one has to be very clear about the mode of analysis.

well you weren’t bumbling, i was bumbling 🙂

I’m in meetings all day today so I can’t put in a proper reply yet. But regarding “bumbling,” I can’t disagree more. We are “muddling through.” Haha.

Seriously, this is a comment thread on a blog post. As such, it is (and this is a good thing) about 3% higher quality discourse than if we were hashing this out over drinks. I use the blog to practice working out and framing problems, and comments help me realize where I am oversimplyfing and/or when I don’t frame things quite right. So no worries on the “bumbling” comment, but that said, you are completely wrong and I will fix your wagon … later. 😉

In case it wasn’t obvious, “you are completely wrong” and all threats of wagon-fixing are meant as humorous banter. In actuality, in my substantive message, I have had an insight that emerged through this interaction, and I suspect you’ll agree with it, at least broadly. But we’ll see.

OK, I have a mult-part response to Jeremy.

The first part regards his contention that criticism attempts to work in a scientific manner, and his examples were Marxism and the New Criticism. To those he might also have added Russian Formalism and structuralism. These are all reasonable counterexamples and so they have a place here. But it is a place at the margins.

The New Criticism began in the 1920s and was more or less finished by the end of the 1960s. Russian Formalism also was around the 1920s. Marxism was considered a science in the 19th century. And structuralism was also popular from the 1930s through the mid-1960s. In short, all of these might be considered modernist modes of critique and all of them were dead by the end of the 1960s, at least in terms of their scientific pretensions. Roland Barthes, the great structuralist who wrote the scientistic work, The Fashion System in the mid-1960s had this to say of it in 1971: he was under the delusions of a “euphoric dream of scientificity.”

So while you are technically correct that some forms of criticism had scientific yearnings, your examples are now half a century out of date. So it is possible to aspire toward objective criticism–E.D. Hirsch even more recently pushed that agenda–but it is far from mainstream and not even really a respected position in literary theory and cultural studies–nor has it been since 1970.

So I maintain the original point, which is that most serious cultural, literary, film, and art criticism is not about being objective or replicable, but is in fact about the reflective processes of the expert subject. This is not to suggest that their significance is limited to an individual subjectivity; certainly, feminist, Marxist, queer theoretic and other socially activist theoretic traditions clearly are oriented towards verifiable change in the real world. Yet I would still argue that when these appear in critical essays, they are presented not as replicable science but rather as modeling a critical engagement to a phenomenon that typically exposes some hidden aspect of it (e.g., ideology, repressive hierarchy, etc.) to expose it to some further, subsequent intervention (which could happen through science or some other discourse).

Finally, my use of the word “resonance” is not my own. I cribbed it from Stephen Greenblatt, who was a key figure in the emergence of New Historicism, which in turn was a major strategy in the emergence of cultural studies. Resonance and salience are different precisely as you describe: salience seems to have a certain intersubjective quality: X isn’t salient unless someone agrees with you that it is. Whereas resonance is much more personal. One might say that the move from criticism to social science is a move from an initial resonance to a demonstrative salience. I definitely need to think more about that, however.

I have one other point, but I think it is worth its own post, so I’ll just give a teaser here. I return to what got Jeremy and I going in the first place. Jeremy wrote his objection to many doing sloppy discourse analysis and/or close reading is that “they skip the way that they came to see that, which is what makes the work replicable and can make it scientific if that is a goal.” In my responses, I reacted to the last 2/3 of that statement (the part about science and replicability). But actually, the most important part was the first third: “they skip the way they came to see that.” In that regard, I absolutely agree; a good close reading has no trouble establishing how they came to their final understanding; indeed, a good essay is an expression of that very process. Where I differ (and to be fair, Jeremy was writing a comment on a blog post, not a carefully crafted statement for the Cambridge Companion To ___) is that I see replicability and science as representing one legitimate direction among others. And my original thesis in this post (and which I still maintain) is that in HCI, there is a silent bias that it is the only one. And that, not these quibbles with Jeremy about the active decades of the New Criticism, that was the real target of my diatribe here.

[…] Essay and HCI In my recent post on discourse analysis versus close reading, I got into a discussion in the comments on the origin of the critic’s understanding and the role of subjectivity, […]

Hi everyone… I’ve just read this blog and am a bit confused… After my readings on “discourse analysis”, it seems to be that what is described here as “discourse analysis” sounds more like “content analysis” and “close reading” sounds more like what I’ve read about “discourse analysis”. Am I wrong, or are people simply using/mixing terms?

I found this post really helpful thank you.

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2024 Election

The debate between harris and trump wasn’t close — and 4 other takeaways.

Domenico Montanaro

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, participate during ABC News' presidential debate Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption

Well, that was different from the June 27 debate between President Biden and Donald Trump.

If that June debate was a five-alarm fire for Democrats that eventually forced Biden from the race, after Tuesday’s debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s proponents should probably check the temperature in their own house.

What happened — and what could it mean going forward?

Here are 5 takeaways:

1. This debate wasn’t close.

The majority of the focus coming into Tuesday was about how Harris would handle her first-ever presidential debate with someone who had been on this stage many times. Could she answer questions about her position shifts; parry attacks from Trump, someone who tries to be the alpha on these stages; could she answer the attack that she’s light on policy; and could she appear “presidential”?

NPR fact-checked the Harris-Trump presidential debate. Here's what we found

She may have seemed nervous at first, but she quickly found her voice and more than acquitted herself well. All of those questions were quickly dispatched:

• She explained her shift on fracking (“My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy, so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil”).
• Harris was far more dominant than Trump, from beginning to end. She called him “weak and wrong,” inverting the political cliché that “strong and wrong” beats “weak and right.” Harris answered questions, then redirected and baited him on a host of issues.
• She got under Trump’s skin — something he usually tries to do — by saying that people at his rallies leave “early out of exhaustion and boredom,” painting him as out of touch and a bad businessman for inheriting $400 million “on a silver platter and then filed for bankruptcy six times,” and chiding him for being “fired by 81 million people” in the 2020 election and now being “confused” about losing.
• Harris addressed policy, including tax breaks for small businesses and parents and touting her idea for a first-time home-buyer credit for down payments. She repeatedly said, “I have a plan,” while Trump was left saying, “I have concepts of a plan” when it comes to replacing the Affordable Care Act.
• And on the presidential question — Harris was calm, in command and in control and looked to the future, distinguishing herself from both Biden and Trump.

Trump’s team ahead of the debate equated the Republican standard-bearer to boxing great Muhammad Ali. If he was a boxer, Trump was cut and bleeding in the middle of the fight, and by the end, was TKO’d. Or as a Democratic strategist texted afterward, it was more like Ali vs. Berbick , Ali’s last fight, decided unanimously — for Berbick.

Trump made the unusual move for a presidential candidate to go into the spin room after the debate and talk to reporters. That’s not something that’s normally done when someone has a good debate. That’s usually reserved for low-polling primary candidates, who felt they didn’t get enough time or attention during the debate.

2. The spotlight should now be on Trump’s incoherence and general lack of any serious grasp on policy.

Coming into the debate, we noted that if Harris is “able to acquit herself passably, the spotlight and scrutiny should be heavily on Trump.”

That’s because Trump did not have a very good debate against Biden in June, but his serious problems — his lack of substance and repeated lies — were overshadowed by Biden’s disastrous performance, maybe the worst of any presidential candidate in history.

Taylor Swift endorses Kamala Harris in Instagram post after the debate

With a more-than-competent performance from Harris Tuesday, Trump’s lies, meandering, conspiracies and often general incoherence was made even more glaring.

He wandered through conspiracies about, not just the election, but also about who is currently president (Joe Biden), the usual about immigrants who (aren’t actually) coming from “mental institutions and insane asylums” and the newly unusual ( and debunked ) about immigrants who (are not) “eating the dogs” or “cats.”

Trump got the conspiracy wrong , though, because it was about ducks, not dogs.

Trump even got wrong the actual facts of Harris’ misleading charge that Trump predicted “a bloodbath” if the outcome of this election is “not to his liking.”

“It was a different term,” Trump said, “and it was a term that related to energy because they have destroyed our energy business.”

It was the correct term. He did say “bloodbath” back in March , but he was talking in the context of Chinese tariffs, the auto industry and a transition to electric vehicles — not “our energy business.”

It’s the very kind of thing that would have had Democrats nervous about their octogenarian former candidate and Republicans “outraged” on cable news about Biden’s mental state.

3. Trump was on the defensive and evasive, even on issues that should benefit him — and didn’t land much, if anything, that stuck.

Harris had Trump on the defensive from the get-go on the economy (about his tax cuts and tariffs), his jobs record, his handling of the pandemic and Jan. 6. There were times, even on immigration, when Trump decided to address a Harris attack instead of talking about the issue he ostensibly wants to talk most about.

For someone who likes to bill himself a straight shooter, Trump didn’t answer questions directly and dumped a greatest hits of lies from this campaign. He declined to say if he wanted Ukraine to win against Russia, wouldn’t answer if he had any regrets about his response to the violence on Jan. 6, and he twice refused to say if he would veto a national abortion ban, like his vice-presidential running mate said he would.

Trump repeats the false claim that Democrats support abortion 'after birth' in debate

In fact, he went out of his way to say essentially that Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance doesn’t speak for him — in a clumsy and meandering way that led him to student loans:

“Well, I didn't discuss it with JD in all fairness. JD — And I, I don't mind if he has a certain view, but I think he was speaking for me, but I really didn't. Look, we don't have to discuss it, because she'd never be able to get it, just like she couldn't get student loans. They couldn't get student loans. They didn't even come close to getting student loans. They taunted young people and a lot of other people that had loans. They can never get this approved. So it doesn't matter what she says about going to Congress. So wonderful, let's go to Congress, do it.”

Never mind that Republicans in Congress would not act to help relieve student loans or that Republican-led states sued to end Biden’s executive action on student-loan forgiveness. But Trump was digging the hole even deeper for himself on abortion rights.

“I did a great service in doing it,” Trump said about the overturning of Roe . “It took courage to do it. And the Supreme Court had great courage in doing it. And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.”

Nearly two-thirds have said they opposed the overturning of Roe .

Trump was also outside the mainstream of public opinion in talking about the Affordable Care Act. He called it “lousy” and “not very good today” when record numbers of people have a favorable opinion of it.

Trump’s best attack was probably this:

“She's gonna do all these wonderful things,” he said. “Why hasn't she done it? She's been there for three-and-a-half years. They've had three-and-a-half years to fix the border. They've had three-and-a-half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn't she done it?”

But a coherent attack line was rare from Trump Tuesday night. And even this one was nearly a concession.

Facial expressions spoke volumes when mics were muted in the presidential debate

4. the moderators fact-checked unlike in the previous debate..

CNN said it was going to leave the fact checking to the candidates during the June debate between Trump and Biden.

ABC took a different approach. Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis interjected with fact checks four times — all were of Trump.

That was not a reflection of bias; it was because of just how many things Trump said there were blatantly false, like on crime statistics, the dogs and cats conspiracy and the 2020 election.

They did it with a mild, but clear tone and maintained control of the debate throughout the evening, getting to lots of topics and not letting either candidate run over them.

Their approach was notable, particularly with viewership expected to be high. When he went to the spin room, Trump added to his pile of grievances, claiming the debate was “very unfair” and called it “three on one.”

5. Harris has done everything right — and could still lose.

Harris arguably handled Trump better than anyone has at a debate, whether it was Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Biden in 2020 — even though most concluded that Clinton and Biden won most, if not all, of those face-offs.

Since getting into this shortened campaign, Harris has done pretty much everything right. She’s tacked to the middle, raised more than half-a-billion dollars, staffed up and opened field offices across the swing states, fired up the Democratic base and now even out-debated Trump.

But the political reality is Harris could still lose.

NPR poll shows why the stakes are so high for Harris and Trump in the debate

Trump has a strong and devoted base, and the seven swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — are more conservative than the country at large.

People still are more pessimistic than optimistic on the economy, even if that’s improved some lately, and polls — including the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll out Tuesday — have shown people trust Trump to handle the economy, immigration and the war in the Middle East more than Harris.

Could this debate have changed some minds? Maybe. But views of Trump have been ingrained. This race is very much a coin flip, according to the polls, and that’s unlikely to change very much even after this debate, because of how hyper-polarized this country is.

Correction Sept. 11, 2024

An earlier version of this story misspelled ABC moderator Linsey Davis' name.

• election 2024