27 Text Features Examples

Text features refer to the organizational and structural elements of a text that generally help with navigating and meaning-making.

There are common text features that span most fiction and non-fiction genres, like the title, subheading, table of contents, captions and images.

Then, there are additional text features of specific genre-texts, such as hyperlinks within digital texts and in-text citations in academic texts.

Below are a range of text features, their description, and the value they provide in organizing written texts.

Text Features Examples

1. Title

The title is the heading at the top of a text, often written in larger or bolder type. It serves to introduce and briefly summarize the topic or theme of the document. The title gives an initial impression of the content, and often determines whether the reader continues to engage with the text.

Generally, a title should engage and intrigue the reader, such as the title “Tomorrow, when the war began” which plays with tense to make the reader pause and wonder, and also indicates that the book will involve a war of some sort.

You’ll find titles in nearly all genres of text, including books, academic papers, articles, blog posts, and emails.

2. Subtitles

Subtitles come after a title either on a new line or following a colon (:). They tend to add more detail and context to the title to help the reader develop a greater understanding of the purpose or contents of the text they’re about to read.

Here are some real-life examples:

• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
• Oliver Twist: The Parish Boy’s Progress
• Cleopatra: A Life

Note how the title is designed to be catchy, brief and ‘punchy’, whereas the subtitle is designed to be more descriptive. For the book “Quiet”, the title is designed to catch our attention while the subtitle explains what the text is about (introverts). Similarly, “Oliver’s Twist” has a subtitle that informs us that Oliver is a parish boy.

It’s also interesting to note that “A life” is a common subtitle to denote that the book is a biography of the book’s namesake person.

3. Cover Image

Also on the front of a book (before we even open the first page!) we have another text feature: the cover image.

This image could be a photograph or an artist’s depiction of a key feature of the text.

A very famous cover image, for example, is from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which depicts Harry and Ron in a flying car. Harry’s scraggy hair, round glasses, and lightning-bolt scar are visible. This image gives a lot of context: the lighting scar being important to the storyline, and the flying car demonstrating that magic will be in the book.

Cover images are common in both fiction and non-fiction texts, with actual photographs more likely on a non-fiction text.

4. Table of Contents

Often, when you open a book, you will not find the text immediately. Instead, you will come across a table of contents. This is here to help you navigate the text in a non-linear fashion.

Tables of contents are found in both fiction and non-fiction texts. For non-fiction texts, they serve a greater purpose, because non-fiction texts are often designed to be read in a non-linear fashion. A classic example is an encyclopedia, where you don’t read it cover-to-cover. Rather, you browse the table of contents (or index, discussed later) to find what you want to red, then only read that section.

5. Chapter Titles

Longer texts, such as novels, tend to have chapters. These are ‘sections’ of a book that each have a coherent theme or reason that they are clustered together. In non-fiction texts, it’s usually because each chapter addresses a particular idea or topic. In fiction texts, it might represent a certain segment of the storyline.

Non-fiction texts will often strategically end a chapter on a cliffhanger or a similar compelling point in the storyline, designed to keep you reading the next chapter, then the next one, then the next one. We’ll often call books that do this well ‘page turners’.

Like a book title, a chapter title might have a compelling name that tries to draw you into the chapter or give you context about what it’s about. Or, it might just be “Chapter 1”.

6. Subheadings

Subheadings are found throughout a text and function to divide a text into sections. They provide a brief summary of the content of each section, allowing readers to scan and locate relevant information quickly.

Generally, subheadings are more common in non-fiction than fiction texts. They might be used in texts such as academic articles, textbooks, business reports, blog posts, and how-to guides.

In these sorts of texts, they allow us to skip a section and scan through to the sub-sections that contain the information we are seeking.

7. Bold Print

Bold print is a stylistic choice in which the text is darkened to stand out from the surrounding text.

It id used to emphasize certain words or phrases that the author might want you to focus on. In other words, bold print highlights the most important information for the reader. It makes it easier for the reader to spot key points.

Most commonly, bold print will be used in instructional texts (e.g. manuals and guides). It’s also common in textbooks to emphasize key terms or concepts which might be returned to later in a glossary. Similarly, in my own blog posts, I use bold print to stress main points.

8. Italics

Italics is a text style where the letters lean slightly to the right. It’s used to emphasize a point, such as if a character yells something! Italic text could also denote titles of works in some referencing style, or indicate foreign or latin words.

Italics provide a visual hint that the text holds special significance, whether it be for emphasis or following a referencing style or other stylistic guidelines.

Italics are widely used in non-fiction writing. They’re common in newspapers and blog posts, where they may be used for emphasis. They can also be found in academic articles, where they often signify the titles of books or journals. In fiction texts like novels, where they might denote a character’s thoughts.

9. Bullet Points/Numbered Lists

Bullet points and numbered lists make it easier for a reader to scan through items, instructions, or other ordered and structured data. It is used to organize information in a clear, concise format.

These formats provide a straightforward way to digest and comprehend information. As a result, they can provide a better reader experience when presenting complex or difficult text.

Bullet points and numbered lists are common in instructional texts where a list of steps or procedures may be required. They’re also prevalent in business reports for listing data or key points. You might also see them at the beginning of a text or blog post to summarize the upcoming information.

10. Tables

Tables are a structured way to present data and complex information, whether numerical or textual.

By aligning data in columns and rows, we can scan, compare and contrast, and order the data easily. It can be a lot faster to present and receive this complex information than if it were presented in textual format. In other words, tabulated data provides a clear, efficient method of receiving data.

You’ll often find tables in academic articles, where they may be used to present research data. They’re also common in textbooks to summarize and compare information, in business reports to present financial data, and in technical manuals to list specifications.

Full List of Text Features

Text Feature	Description	Common Text Types
Graphs/Charts	Visual representations of data. They help to illustrate and explain datasets in a fast and consumable way. Great for demonstrating relationships between data.	Academic work, scientific papers, business reports, textbooks, news articles.
Images/Pictures	Used to supplement textual information, bring descriptive writing to life, sustain user attention, support storytelling, and (for images) add veracity to claims.	Textbooks, children’s books, cookbooks.
Captions	Brief descriptions typically used with images or graphs to provide context or explain what is being shown.	Photography, news articles, research papers, social media.
Footnotes	Notes at the foot of the page used to cite sources or to provide additional information about something mentioned in the main text.	Academic papers, research reports, books.
Hyperlinks	Text or images that provide a link to another page or a different section of the same page. Often underlined and colored differently.	Web pages, digital documents, e-books.
Pull Quotes	A brief, attention-grabbing quotation, typically in a larger or distinctive typeface, taken from the main text.	Magazines, newspapers, blog articles.
Glossary	An alphabetical list of terms with their definitions, usually placed at the end of a book.	Textbooks, technical manuals, academic books.
Index	An alphabetical list of names, subjects, etc. with reference to the pages on which they are mentioned.	Books, reports, technical manuals.
Bibliography/References	A list of the books, articles, websites, etc., used or referred to by the author.	Academic papers, research reports, books.
Infographics	Visual representations of information, data, or knowledge intended to present complex information quickly and clearly.	Websites, magazines, business reports.
Maps	Visual representations of an area of land or sea showing physical features.	Travel books, geography textbooks, research reports.
Sidebars	A short article or information that is adjacent to and complements the main text.	Magazines, academic papers, textbooks.
Textboxes	Boxes containing additional or highlight information, separate from the main text.	Textbooks, presentations, digital documents.
Cover Pages	The first page of a document, often containing the title, author, and publication date.	Books, academic papers, business reports.
Prologues	A separate introductory section in a book that provides background information, often before the start of the main story.	Novels, plays, literary works.
Epilogues	A section or speech at the end of a book or play that serves as a comment on, or a conclusion to, what has happened.	Novels, plays, literary works.
Titles	The name of a book, composition, or other artistic work.	Books, songs, films, articles.
Subtitles	Secondary titles that provide more information about the content. Also, the transcriptions of dialog in films or video.	Books, academic papers, films.
Cover Image	The image presented on the cover of a book or magazine.	Books, magazines, albums.
Table of Contents	A list of titles or chapters and the page numbers where they start, usually located at the beginning of a book.	Books, reports, manuals.
Chapter Titles	The titles given to specific sections of a book to divide the content into manageable parts.	Novels, textbooks, guides.
Subheadings	Titles for sections within a chapter or article, helping to break up and organize content.	Articles, textbooks, reports.
Bold Print	Text that has been made thicker to stand out, often used for emphasis.	Books, articles, websites.
Italics	Text that is slightly tilted to the right, often used for emphasis, titles, or foreign words.	Books, articles, research papers.
Bullet Points/Numbered Lists	A list format that breaks information into easy-to-read, discrete parts.	Presentations, textbooks, articles.
Tables	A structured set of data made up of rows and columns, used to organize information.	Textbooks, scientific papers, business reports.
Footnotes	Notes at the foot of the page used to cite sources or to provide additional information about something mentioned in the main text.	Academic papers, research reports, books.

Conclusion

There are countless text features, and I needed to stop somewhere – so I stopped at 27. A great strategy you can use when teaching about text features is to simply give students a range of different texts (e.g. a textbook, a novel, and an academic paper) and ask them to identify, describe, and even reproduce each text type they can find within the text.