Rhetoric and genre

From the reading at the beginning of the book I was expecting to read about something long and boring but I learned interesting things. In high school composition English class I learned about the use of rhetorical questions as a strategy but in essay writing I don't think I have properly mastered the art. After read the example and explanation I thought about rhetorical questions as an art. The article in Time magazine was interesting. It was a fun read. Instead of writing lots of figures the author found a way to ask a question that the reader would give A short unmeaningful response to. Later he explained the information. I would like to do that in my essays instead of boring the reader with a lot of straight forward boring information.




The next reading was on genre. My first impression was fantasy, and nonfiction because I thought of book genres. After reading about genres as in letters, reports, poems etc. I never thought that webpages were considered as genre. I never took presentation much into consideration. I realized that presentation can have more affect that it leads on. I was a good choice for the writer to give examples on how presentation has an affect on the reader. Also, I haven’t thought about the impact an audience has. The example in the reading was a mother’s reminder note. Since it’s a common thing, I expected it to have short phrases but I have never really thought about how much its intended audience gets out of it. If it was a note that I found on the street I would be left with a lot of questions. I never really thought about it that way.



There were things that I knew in the reading but not the depth of the stuff mentioned. It was less boring that I thought it would be.