To continue on from earlier work (here), I will be drafting a profile essay of the sort my students are asked to write. For the assignment, students are asked to draft a two- to three-page profile of a person, place, or event familiar to them; the profile should adhere to APA formatting standards, although no outside information is expected or required.

I’ve written profiles before (here, for example), so the idea of one was neither foreign nor intimidating. And in starting one, I first set up my document to align to APA formatting guidelines: double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman on letter-sized paper with one-inch margins. I also set up a cover page with title, my name, and affiliation (for purposes of the assignment), as well as page numbering and running heads. I also opened the planning sheet I had previously drafted; since it was meant as a guide to completing the profile, it made sense to have it open while I worked. And I opened the website that hosted the role-playing game event I meant to profile, which does move a bit away from the assigned guidelines–but I needed the refresher.

With the documents and website open, I began to stub out points I meant to address in the profile. As is my personal practice, I noted the angle I wanted to push in the profile–that the play-by-post role-playing game offers a fulfilling experience well worth undertaking–highlighting it in green so that I could see it easily (and remember to delete it when done composing). Then I sketched out the beginning of an introduction and gave myself informal labels for what would follow, something like section headings that I would later delete (and so highlighted in blue, per my personal practice, to differentiate themselves from the green target of my angle while still noting that they needed to be addressed and then deleted).

That said, I started writing. The topic was one with which I was intimately familiar, so finding things to say was reasonably easy. I did need to review it for concerns of my audience; my putative primary readers are familiar with the kind of thing I discussed, though not the thing itself. Still, that was a relatively minor issue, the more so since I’ve introduced many people to the kind of thing my topic is.

With the content compiled, the formatting was re-checked to ensure ease of reading. A review of content for style was conducted, as was proofreading. All that done, the document was rendered into an accessible format, presented here: G. Elliott Sample Profile November 2018.

I hope, as ever, that the work I do is of use to my students and to others. And I am grateful for the opportunity even to try to be so.

Your kind support remains greatly appreciated.