Everyday Use Rhetorical Analysis
Christian Files
R. Alan Kimbrough, Ph.D
ENG 114-W1
October 3, 2008
Examining ETHOS in Essays
It is important to determine whether or not the author is credible when it comes to reading reviews or essay articles. The first thing that is noticeable about this essay was that it is more of a summary than an analytical article. There also is no information or credentials of the author listed, making me question his writing from the beginning. He fails to demonstrate common knowledge dealing with the mechanics of writing and useful information concerning the text itself. There are multiple ways to find out if the article comes from someone of adequate intelligence in dealing with the subject matter. The free essay on Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” exemplifies poor ethos by demonstrating a lack of credentials, the ignorance of the author about the audience, and the carelessness of the writer. …show more content…
Upon reading the free essay and analyzing it, it is surprising to see several simple spelling and grammatical errors.
In line 14, the word “here” is used instead of “her”. On the last line there is a subject verb disagreement that blatantly sticks out in the sentence. These kinds of mistakes can be corrected by a simple editing read.Additionally, there is a pronoun without an antecedent in line 28 and also a simple misuse of an apostrophe. The fact that these errors remain is disturbing because it shows a lack of concern for the audience and plain carelessness. That, along with some punctuation mistakes, proves that there wasn’t an editing or revision
process.
On top of this is the absence of any structure and organization of the essay. The writer fails to use paragraphs to separate ideas and help the readers group the content. Even when he tries to use evidence from the text, he does a poor job citing where the quote came from. The writer fails to properly cite his sources, and does so in different ways, indicating that the writer may have been guessing at how the citations should be done. After dealing with the problems in mechanics, analyzing the content of the essay brought more problems. He made several over generalizations about African-Americans in the North after the civil rights movement that were irrelevant to the article’s development. There is also the lack of emphasis concerning Dee’s sister, Maggie. Maggie plays an integral role in the story, but she is written of in the essay as a minor character although it is her confrontation with Dee that sparks the climax. The author strays away from important points such as the reason behind the argument.
In the end, the author proves to be far to negligent in several key aspects to be of much use to the reader. The article isn’t structured in a manner that accommodates the reader. Instead, the writer states several ideas and puts them together without any organization. While there is a chance that the mistakes made were due to sheer ignorance on the author’s part, a lack of interest in his writing overall could be the cause. Someone with a legitimate interest in his or her writing would take the time to edit and revise their work before submission. While the article isn’t terrible, it doesn’t succeed in providing the audience with any suitable insights on the text and as a result fails to prove a reliable resource.
R. Alan Kimbrough, Ph.D
ENG 114-W1
October 3, 2008
Examining ETHOS in Essays
It is important to determine whether or not the author is credible when it comes to reading reviews or essay articles. The first thing that is noticeable about this essay was that it is more of a summary than an analytical article. There also is no information or credentials of the author listed, making me question his writing from the beginning. He fails to demonstrate common knowledge dealing with the mechanics of writing and useful information concerning the text itself. There are multiple ways to find out if the article comes from someone of adequate intelligence in dealing with the subject matter. The free essay on Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” exemplifies poor ethos by demonstrating a lack of credentials, the ignorance of the author about the audience, and the carelessness of the writer. …show more content…
Upon reading the free essay and analyzing it, it is surprising to see several simple spelling and grammatical errors.
In line 14, the word “here” is used instead of “her”. On the last line there is a subject verb disagreement that blatantly sticks out in the sentence. These kinds of mistakes can be corrected by a simple editing read.Additionally, there is a pronoun without an antecedent in line 28 and also a simple misuse of an apostrophe. The fact that these errors remain is disturbing because it shows a lack of concern for the audience and plain carelessness. That, along with some punctuation mistakes, proves that there wasn’t an editing or revision
process.
On top of this is the absence of any structure and organization of the essay. The writer fails to use paragraphs to separate ideas and help the readers group the content. Even when he tries to use evidence from the text, he does a poor job citing where the quote came from. The writer fails to properly cite his sources, and does so in different ways, indicating that the writer may have been guessing at how the citations should be done. After dealing with the problems in mechanics, analyzing the content of the essay brought more problems. He made several over generalizations about African-Americans in the North after the civil rights movement that were irrelevant to the article’s development. There is also the lack of emphasis concerning Dee’s sister, Maggie. Maggie plays an integral role in the story, but she is written of in the essay as a minor character although it is her confrontation with Dee that sparks the climax. The author strays away from important points such as the reason behind the argument.
In the end, the author proves to be far to negligent in several key aspects to be of much use to the reader. The article isn’t structured in a manner that accommodates the reader. Instead, the writer states several ideas and puts them together without any organization. While there is a chance that the mistakes made were due to sheer ignorance on the author’s part, a lack of interest in his writing overall could be the cause. Someone with a legitimate interest in his or her writing would take the time to edit and revise their work before submission. While the article isn’t terrible, it doesn’t succeed in providing the audience with any suitable insights on the text and as a result fails to prove a reliable resource.