Smoking cigarettes is one of the most dangerous habits you can have. Every puff you take is a second lost. Cigarettes can negatively affect your body in more ways than you could ever imagine. Some of those ways are stained teeth, wrinkly skin, lung cancer, heart disease, and many more. Smoking cigarettes is a personal choice each individual makes, the sad thing is, almost 17% of adults in the United States smoke even though it’s been known that cigarettes have a negative effect on your body (Smoking Cigarettes). It’s as if your loading an imaginary gun, but instead of bullets its firing cigarette smoke at you. This is exactly what “Smoking Kills” is trying to show us. Cigarettes harm your body in more ways than one, and unless people put cigarettes and death hand in hand then cigarettes will never go away, the author tries to show this through the use of spacing, color, scale, and line.

When looking at the visual text, spacing has the most effect on where your eyes travel across the image. This is important in the beginning because this helps you determine the focal point of the image, which is the set of hands loading the cigarettes into the revolver. The author wants anyone who views this picture to understand that in the long run, smoking cigarettes kills you.

Color also has a huge effect on the tone of this piece. The all black background adds to the “deathly” feeling surrounding the picture. The author also chose an almost all black revolver too, which adds to the “deathly” feeling given off by the all black background. To the left of the revolver there’s a list of some of the ways cancer can harm your body. The color yellow can mean intellect, which is the role it is playing here because the text is informing the audience. Then, right below the revolver, you see the author’s plea to the audience, “Smoking Kills… so why bother starting?’. “Smoking Kills’ is all white. White stands normally stands for innocence and purity. When you look at the authors plea, he’s asking the audience to not lose their innocence or purity to cigarettes. 

Scale is also very important to fully understand the meaning of this visual text. The revolver, cigarettes, and the set of hands take up almost have of the available space. The author wants the audience to focus on the cigarettes being loaded into the revolver before anything else. The list of negative side effects cigarettes can have on the human body take up just under a fourth of the remaining space. This is because the author wants you to notice this after you’ve noticed the cigarettes being loaded into the revolver. Even though the text takes up almost a fourth of the image, the text size is actually very very small. This is to give off the impression that the list is longer than it actually is. “Smoking Kills” though is five times the size of the font of the list of side effects. This is because “Smoking Kills” is the main idea, and the main idea is always the most important idea of a piece.

Line is also used in the visual text, even if you don’t notice it at first. The revolver’s barrel is pointing directly at the phrase “Smoking Kills”. Every cigarette in the visual text is also point downwards toward the line “Smoking Kills… so why bother starting”. Line is also used in the list of negative side effects. Each line of text is pointing directly at the hands loading the revolver with cigarettes. The author wants your eyes to always end up looking at either the revolver or “Smoking Kills… so why bother starting.” The author does this because he knows the only way that the audience will realize just how dangerous cigarettes are is if the tie together cigarettes and death. 

The line at the bottom of the visual text “Smoking Kills…so why bother starting?” ties into the set of hands loading the cigarettes into the revolver. The set of hands appear like they belong a man above forty-five years of age. This is relevant because the line at the bottom says “why bother starting”, and the metaphor given is cigarettes being loaded into a revolver. Every 9 out of 10 adult smokers starting smoking before the age of eighteen (Why People). Cigarettes don’t instantly kill you, which is why the set of hands appear as if they belong to an older individual. This connection was used to show that once you start, it’s almost impossible to quit them. Nearly seventy percent of current smokers want to quit, more than half even tried to quit last year, but only six percent actually succeed (Staff, by). 

Smoking kills you. The author is trying to warn every non-smoker to never pick up cigarettes and hopes to convince current smokers to put the cigarettes down for good. Cigarettes can have a negative effect on every part of your body, whether you notice it or not. They can be addictive, cause high blood pressure, reduce stamina, dull your sense of taste and smell, and lead to depression. Cigarettes can also have a negative effect on your appearance because you can get gum disease, wrinkly skin, and yellow teeth. You’ve been warned, now are you going to load the revolver?
