Rhetoric

Rhetoric is a very prevalent form of communication in technical writing. The definition comes in many forms. The one I found to apply best here is "The ability to use language effectively." Rhetoric is also Greek for persuasion. There are three forms of Rhetoric. Ethos comes from ego and is defined as I, we or our. The second form is Pathos and comes from emotion. The final form is Logos which stems from logic. All three are styles of writing that can be used to persuade. Like we learned in class, rhetoric can be found in all forms of technical communications. I use it everyday in my career especially in my e-mails. The form I use most is probably Logos. An example of how I use it in my career is "This project is out of town, we don't have the manpower to staff it and the drawings are not fully engineered." I think when the reader reads that statement they probably understand that I don't think that this is a project we should get involved with. I think I have always used rhetoric and have never really realized it. Now that I understand where it comes from and how to best utilize it I am sure that I will use it even more.