Agony Over the Agony Aunts

  Reviews,Conventions and Style features

The main comparisons between the three agony aunt pages that I am comparing are their colour schemes, layouts and the formal way they both present and write their responces and advice to the people who have written in with their concerns. "Astro agony", an agony aunt column written by Lucy Hunter for the mind, body and spirit magazine, uses an austrilogical theme in her blog to answer peoples problems, basing her answers on their star signs and comparing how the different star allignments affect people relationships and personality.

This style of agony aunt page is very different to the style of writing and advice given in both "Ask Dr Christian" and  "family Dilemmas", advice pages, where they give their advice in a more professional and personal way, using people actual personalities and professional medical and scientific advice to answer peoples questions and queries. This format is often the more prefered format as it is more likely to be an acurate answer and is often percieved as actual advice rather than the atrological views which most people often brush off as rubbish and stupersticious childs play.

Colour and Layout are also a common factor between all of the three agony aunt pages with each article being layed out in a systematic way, with the questions and answers often being placed in colour boxes and layed out in a more formal way on the page.

Other ways the three articles are similar in layout is:

• Q&A - The three articles are all layed out in a question answer format with the writers question or query written out in a brief over view of their problem or in a detailed point. The agony aunts advice is then posted underneath often in a contrasting colour, font or laybelled with the letter "A" to show that it is an answer.

• Colour Scheme - The colour scheme across all the three articles is very regulated, and all three have used bold and bright colours like Orange, Red or pink to make their articles stand out. The  colours used also give a sort of soft feeling to the articles as well, making the reader feel calm and soothing as they reads the advice given to them, almost willing them to feel that the person is sitting there talking directly to them. However "Closer Advice", has opted for the brighter colours of red, pink and orange, which grab the readers eye and draw in their interest

• Pictures - Once again, all three articles have used picture on their agony aunt pages, this helps the reader identify with the person giving them the advice, comfoting them but also making them feel that they know the agony aunt personaly and that they can trust them with their problems.

The target audience for most agony aunt pages is women with problems, these problems often situate around their close family, like husbands, childrens or mothers in law, or their sex life. it is also most common for the agony aunt to be female but sometimes a magazine will have a male agony aunt if it allows their reader to feel more confident with the advice they are being given.

The main reason that women are often the target audience for an agony aunt page is that they are often the target audience for the main magazine as well, for example and agony aunt page in a fashion magazine would be written and layed out for a women as they are the target audience for the magazine. however if an agony aunt page was printed in a car magazine or a "lads mag" it may be layed out and written slightly differently so that it apeals more to the male audience and male reader as they would be the target audience of the main magazine. 

 
 Agony Aunt Comparisons and Similarities                               Blog No. 1