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Travel Writing

Travel writing is designed to inform people about places. Travel is a personal luxury, so usually, people read travel writing for entertainment. Places and landscapes are visually exciting, so descriptive language is common.

Purpose of travel writing

Purpose of travel writing

  • Travel writing for guide books like Frommers or Lonely Planet involves listing what there is to do in a country and this kind of writing will often be informative.
  • Travel writing for magazines or publications is usually targeted at people who read about travel for leisure. This is more likely to be entertaining.
  • Travel writing for adverts (e.g. the Tourist Board of Bahrain) will often be focused on persuasion because they want people to visit Bahrain.
    • The purpose of the writing will affect the kind of language used.
Tone and style of travel writing

Tone and style of travel writing

  • Travel writers in a magazine trying to entertain people are likely to use a personal tone, write in the first person to narrate their own experience and may even use humour, puns or cyclic repetition to create a relationship with the reader. These will be informal articles.
  • Even travel writing to persuade people to visit a place may be quite informal because most people have an informal mindset and want escapism from a holiday. People want to relax on holiday so a formal tone may not be appropriate.
Features of travel writing

Features of travel writing

  • Lots of descriptive and emotive tone and language to describe the visual and sensory experience.
  • A personalised tone and a final recommendation or opinion on the place.
  • A title and strapline (that builds on the title) to give the reader an idea of what the piece of travel writing is about.
Jump to other topics
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Key Terms

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Language Devices

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Writing Structure

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Section B: Reading & Writing

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Section C: Writing

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