1 The texts you read

Figure 1 Different kinds of text

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Pictures of different kinds of text: a message on a phone; the cover of a magazine; a shopping list; a social media post; a newspaper headline; a book cover; note saying ‘Gone to cinema’; road sign saying ‘reduce speed now’; an email; and a poster for a show.

Figure 1 Different kinds of text

A text is any kind of written material. The word has only recently come to mean a ‘text message’ on a mobile phone. There are lots of different kinds of text. They were all written for a particular reason. Almost all texts are meant to be read by other people.

In this section you look at different types of text, what they aim to do and how to pick out what’s important.