Article Plan: Do’s & Don’ts of Teen Holidays

	Planning Comments
article genre (purpose, type)	The purpose of this article is to inform, explain and warn. The secondary purpose will be to entertain, as it is a magazine article and therefore must entertain the reader.
Narrative voice (1st, 2nd or 3rd person)	As I will be including examples of ‘disaster holidays’ that I found out about in my research, I will be using a lot of the third person voice. However I want this to appear conversation-like therefore I will be using the first person narrative voice to create a bond with the audience. I feel that this way I am mixing the mode of the text, making the written piece seem more like speech. I will be using some second person language also, as I will want to use it to address my audience directly. For example I may want to say: “and you wouldn’t want that to happen”.
Register (informal/formal, colloquial, dialect, taboo words?)	As I want my article to seem conversation like it will be an informal piece. However it will be centred around some issues that need to be addressed seriously, however I will still like to maintain an informal register if possible. Throughout the whole magazine I will be avoiding colloquialisms as it is a national magazine and I feel this may limit my audience. I don’t feel like this article is an exception to this personal rule for Gap Year. The same with taboo language: I do not feel that it is necessary and I will avoid it as much as possible.
Stylistics (repetition, strong verbs, adjectives, alliteration, similes, metaphors, sentencing, rhythm)	There is already an essence of repetition and alliteration in the title of this article. It also provides the audience with binary opposites and opens up for different opinions. I think this will open up each side of the article (the ‘do’ side and the ‘don’t’ side) and I will be able to use strong and opposing adjectives on both. I feel that I will include a range of sentence types and lengths. Minor sentences will create an abrupt tone and may create some suspense in this article. Therefore I think I will include them, minor sentencing is also a non standard sentence type, lowering the formality of my article. I feel like this article will contain lots of facts as to give two sides to the story, therefore it will contain plenty of declaratives and exclamatives. I feel that some parts of the article may be statistical however, not to the point that it is boring for the readers.
Tone of address (hectoring, sarcastic, ‘matey’, ironic, etc)	As I would like to maintain an informal register I think it is fitting for this article to have a ‘matey’ tone to it. I think that some sarcasm will be appropriate: for example when talking about the dangers of teen holidays “and we would obviously love a holiday filled with tragedy”. I think that this tone also lowers the formality, which was what I wanted. However I do not want to appear aggressive and will balance the sarcasm with the ‘matey’ tone. I will not like to hector my audience at all, I want to make sure my audience do not think I am pushing them to agree with me in this article.
Structure and pace (discourse structure, logical paragraphing, connectives, conclusion)	I would like to make this article as open as possible, and to present the facts to my audience for them to make up their own conclusion, therefore I don’t think I should provide one for them. The paragraphing will probably be short as the longer the paragraphs the more text it appears, and I want this article to be attractive to all of my audience.