Think Before You Ink

1. It is clear from the start of this article that Simon Mills is trying to persuade his readers of the pointlessness of Tattoos. Straight away Mills makes his negativity on the topic clear as describing many celebrity tattoos as being ‘badly drawn cod-philosophical/fauxtribal/cloyingly sentimental illustrations’. He goes on to describe celebrities Pete Doherty and Amy Winehouse as being ‘aspirational figureheads’ clearly employing sarcasm and in fact, most likely suggesting the exact opposite. We see the writer constantly give his, clearly, biased opinion about his dislike of tattoos, at one point simply referring to them as an ‘all-pain-no-gain, self-conflicted suffering.

2. Throughout the article, the writer
In one of the first paragraphs he subtly implies through sarcastic tone that the 3 tattoo bearing celebrities he just described are, in his opinion, losers. He follows on to use words such as ‘blighted’, in describing tattoos effects on people, dramatically suggesting he believes tattoos are in some way destroying them. The writer also often makes use of rhetorical question asking throughout the article. Often the premise of these questions are simply surrounding his confusion for why someone feels the need for tattoos, hinting, to an extent, that he believes people with tattoos are unintelligent. At one point he then blatantly describes those with tattoos as being rather pathetic, referring to them as ‘cheap attention seekers’ and ‘barflies’.

6. The formatting of the article is very basic and standard for the type of document it is. A strength of the formatting would be good use of paragraphs, so as not to overwhelm the reader. Nothing particularly stands out, in terms of text formatting, although the writer could have made use of sub-headings for a clearer layout, and possibly an edgier typeface may have been more appealing. The 2nd page doesn’t read quite as smoothly as the first either. The writer seems to jump from one point to the next, resulting in the reader feeling like his thoughts are scattered, not allowing time to digest the text before he moves on to a completely different point.

7. The major strength of the layout of