Ethos, pathos, logos
Ethos: do your readers trust you?
To establish a good ethos, you must:
1) Be grammatically correct and stylistically appropriate
2) Back up your claims with plenty of relevant evidence
3) Show that you are informed about your topic, or have special insider’s knowledge
(ie, if you’re writing about college life, don’t hesitate to say you’re IN college right now)
To protect your ethos, you must NOT:
1) Insult your reader: judge your audience and prepare carefully for their feelings.
Don’t insult their intelligence, and don’t belittle their powers of sympathy.
2) Use too much slang or inappropriate slang.
3) Exaggerate.
Pathos: are you pulling your audience’s heartstrings?
Pathos includes anything that provokes a “gut reaction” in your readers: something that’s sad or happy, funny or scary – something that’s emotionally compelling. Be sure to balance your pathos carefully; a good essay has plenty of it, but not too much. Remember to respect your audience when you use pathos.
Logos: are you making logically sound argument?
First of all, does your argument make sense? Between a claim and reason, you must provide the logical connections and links.
Second, are you providing the right amount of information for your audience? (More on this later.)
Third, are you using appropriate technical vocabulary? Are you explaining these words?
Fourth, have you found the proper evidence to make your argument persuasive?
Logical fallacies
Straw man fallacy
: giving a shoddy account of your opponents’ argument. You need to explain your opponents’ viewpoint(s) fairly. This means you must explain the opponents’ view in its full complexity, and you must devote enough room to explaining why their apparently logical conclusions are somehow not convincing enough.
Ad hoc fallacy:
Just because one event comes after another chronologically doesn’t mean you have a causal connection. Remember, correlation is not causation.

Ad hominem fallacy:
Don’t attack a person instead of an argument.
Slippery slope fallacy: The world won’t end because tobacco companies have in the past advertised to children. Don’t invent a new apocalypse every time you write an essay.
False dilemma: Most situations aren’t either/or; don’t pretend they are. Allowing for complexity in your argument doesn’t make it less convincing. Rather, doing so makes you look fair and generous.
Evaluating your audience
You need to know a lot about your audience: age, gender, socioeconomic class, education level, moral/religious/political affiliations, etc. For example, if you write a paragraph on the effects of alcohol on the circulatory system in an essay to college freshman, you might not want to use a heavy hand with the advanced biological terminology. On the other hand, if you’re writing to doctors, you would need to display your familiarity with the terms they use on a daily basis.
You need to know what they will and will not know (logos), you need to know what character qualities they will respect (ethos), and you need to guess how they will emotionally react to your words (pathos).
Exemplification
1.
Have enough examples! (Hint: you can fill up space with examples.)
2.
Make sure that your examples perfectly fit the topic sentence of the paragraph in which they appear.
3.
Vary the types of examples you have. Statistics and numbers are wonderful, but they alone do not make a good argument. Types of examples: anecdote, statistics, logical analysis, quotations from sources, lists, images, graphs, etc.
4.
Use representative examples; that is, do not focus on the extreme ends of the spectrum. If you have a real chestnut on your hands that isn’t quite representative, don’t throw it out. Instead, apologize by saying, “Although this example does not represent the majority of the cases, it does nevertheless illustrate an important point.” Then go on to tell us this point.
Passive voice
Don’t use the passive voice. It wastes words and makes the agent of the sentence suspiciously ambiguous. Now, infrequently, you make use the passive voice strategically
– but only if you want to emphasize the powerlessness of the subject of your sentence.
For example, don’t say, “This homework oppresses me;” instead, say, “I am oppressed by this homework.” It has better pathos.

Thesis
A good thesis is the roadmap to your essay. It should summarize the logical moves you’ll make to prove your argument. Specific examples will not appear in your thesis, but general principles will. A good thesis should be specific, clear, detailed, and balanced. A good thesis will NOT be a laundry-list; that is, it won’t be a thesis for the five-paragraph theme (X is Y because 1, 2, and 3.)
Introduction
The introduction has two basic jobs:
1) Captivate your readers: make them want to read the whole thing.
2) Provide context for, and lead to, your thesis.
Do not begin your intro with, “Since the world has existed, X has been in the world.” I know it’s really easy, but it won’t get you anywhere. Anecdotes or quotations are great ways to begin your essay.
Conclusion
Your conclusion also has two basic jobs:
1. Gives a doggie bag: give your audience something to take home with them. It will probably, but not necessarily, consist of a summary of your argument and some kind of
“call to arms” about what your audience should do, now that they’ve read your essay.
2. Provides some dessert. Give them something sweet while you tell them to do something. This is your “feel good moment;” most good essays have them.
Do NOT introduce new ideas in the conclusion.
Do NOT use the phrase “In summary” or “in conclusion.”
Do NOT write a laundry-list statement that just piles up topic sentences.
B for Boring
Don’t bore me. Of course, you don’t want to bore your hypothetical audience (you know, a group of your peers, the Lyons club, etc), but you really don’t want to bore me.
Remember, I’m grading it, and if I’m happy, I’ll grade more generously. Humor may not be out of line, and creativity never is.
(Note: too much pathos is boring!!! I’ll be bored if you talk about how that conversation with your grandmother caused you to appreciate your mother more.)
Purpose

You can write an essay to inform, to explore, to entertain, or to convince. Most essays will contain a mixture of all of these purposes.
An entertaining argument:
Is relaxed, funny, sarcastic/ironic, cavalier/smooth, buddy-buddy
Uses lots of exclamation or question marks; may use footnotes to good effect.
Uses creative methods of argumentation (comics, for example)
Uses long words or technical words sparingly or for humor rather than specificity
Uses implication and connotation, rather than merely straightforward telling
Often uses short sentences for emphasis and clarity
Is chock-full of examples
An informing argument:
Is authoritative, detached, objective, intelligent, thorough
Uses and defines technical terms
Avoids pathos and emotion-laden words
Uses healthy doses of colons, semi-colons, dashes, parenthesis, etc
Is full of transitions and alternative examples and explanations
Packs in the info: concise but detailed
An exploratory argument:
Is cautious, inventive, fair/balance, analytic, speculative
Is full of hypothetical logical analyses (rather than, say, numbers)
“If…then” often used
Frequently uses “of course,” “nevertheless,” etc in order to address counterargument
Always is aware of counterargument, more than other types
Balances creativity with accountability and ethos
Not as direct as other styles, but should have deep philosophical pay-off
A convincing argument:
Is assertive, logical, audience-bases, persistent, focused
Gets right to the point
Classic mix of ethos, pathos, logos
Heavy on proof and examples
Clarity extremely important
Lots of “actually,” “in fact,” “indeed,” etc – myth-busting language
A couple of pet peeves
Bad paragraph flow: Make sure you have told your audience how one sentence leads to the next. (In fact, indeed, actually, because, although, for example, for instance, first/second/third, finally, therefore, thus, etc.)
Poor paragraph development: Have enough examples and enough logical “cartilage” to connect your “muscular” logical analysis. Are you actually getting deep into the topic, or are you just mentioning it? Each paragraph is one complete thought. Unless you are

changing topics, don’t change paragraphs. If one paragraph is much shorter or much longer than the others, you have a problem. A well-thought-out argument will have similarly sized paragraphs.
Unvaried exemplification: Telling me, in each paragraph, how the paragraph topic relates to the same story of your roommate’s drinking problem, IS NOT ENOUGH. Such a tactic might lend helpful coherence to the entire essay, but add other kinds of examples.
Passive voice: We already talked about this. It is technically correct, but aesthetically it is just ugly and wrong.
Overuse of “to be” verbs:
THIS IS A HUGE POINT. Nothing makes you sound less professional than relying on the ol’ “is” all the time. This verb does not specify your meaning enough. Use it sparingly; don’t exceed one or two “to be” verbs per page.
Missing transitions: You must have detailed, probably sentence-long transitions between paragraphs. If you find that you have a difficult time making a smooth transition, then you may want to rearrange your paragraph order. A good, logically tight, well arranged essay will suggest its own transitions. Also, have plenty of word- or phrase-long transitions inside of paragraphs (“also,” “furthermore,” “naturally,” etc).
Vague referents:
Do not, ever, ever, ever begin a sentence with “it is” or “there are.”
Furthermore, if you use the word “this,” you must follow it by a noun that will make your reference clear. For example, do not say “This shows that I’m right.” Rather, you should say, “This principle,” “this idea,” “this example,” “this trend,” or something similar.
Unnecessary abstraction or formal language:
You don’t sound smarter because you sound like a paralegal or a philosopher. Clarity, clarity, clarity. The more your audience knows, the more they will be on your side. Let me repeat: you will not sound smarter if you use a six-syllable word when you could use a two-syllable word without losing meaning. (On a related on, be careful when you use a thesaurus. Don’t just plunk in the new word you just found out. If you’re happy, you needn’t be “felicitous.”)
Excess fat: If you can sat it in five words or ten words, say it in five. Use the leanest prose at your command. Don’t waste words.
Overgeneralizations and exaggerations: The whole world does not have anorexia, and not everybody likes Raymond.
Hedging: Avoid phrases like, “in my opinion,” “maybe,” “perhaps,” and “I think.” You need a strong, authoritative voice. Don’t apologize for your ideas.
Purposiveness
Each essay should practically emit a strong sense of purpose: both you and your audience should know why this essay should exist. Every paragraph and sentence should as well.