Visual and verbal literacy operate with different variables. The education of verbal literacy includes activities that ask students to critically examine the use of letters, words, spelling, and grammar to form meaning. Visual learning is a cognitive skill that refers to the use of objects to aid in the learning process. An example of visual learning is the use of manipulatives (such as blocks) in math classes to help show the actual change in value to students.3 Visual literacy asks students to examine the use of shape, form, color, image, texture, dimension, motion and scale juxtaposed with words to form meaning. It is with the understanding of these elements that one can come to understand visual syntax.

Visual literacy is most succinctly defined as the ability to discriminate and interpret visual actions, objects and other images while gaining meaning from them. Many people consider visual literacy as a film and cinematography term, however based on the definition it is apparent that this concept can be broadened to the world at large.