Ethos Pathos Logos

Good writing is an elusive topic that is always changing as we learn. The biggest aspects of good writing are genre, audience, purpose, and the three appeals--ethos, pathos and logos. Good writers need to write within a specific genre and the conventions that come with it. Good writing also considers the audience and potential secondary audiences. Purpose plays into good writing because without purpose writing is pointless, a good writer needs to know what they are trying to accomplish and who their writing is intended for, so this is closely tied to audience. Finally, good writing requires a balance of ethos, pathos, and logos that depends on the situation. There are many aspects of good writing, and they change based on the type of writing.

A good writer knows exactly what they want to accomplish and how they want to do it, and makes this abundantly clear for the audience. Different types of writing accomplish this in different ways, so this is also closely tied to genre. For example, an academic essay states the purpose by having a thesis statement which is usually at about the same place in every essay, the end of the introduction. In my analysis essay my thesis statement was “The most important aspects of composing an effective online source are communication with the audience, achieving a clear purpose, and two of the three appeals, logos and ethos.” This single sentence clearly states exactly what the purpose of writing the essay is by listing every topic that will be addressed in the essay. My blog posts though, stated their purpose a lot more concisely, and usually right in the first sentence of the post. My second post does this by saying “Before you can actually start editing your project, you need to make sure your the most important parts of your setup are configured to get the best experience with Premiere Pro as possible.” This states its purpose just as clearly as the thesis statement does, but does not list every single topic. This is an instance where genre helps to determine how the purpose is stated. A blog post needs a different style from an analysis essay, and these topic sentences clearly show that when they state their