Rhetoric · Round I · Foundations · Plain style

Say one idea plainly to one reader

I can explain one idea in about 150 words to a stated kind of reader, using concrete words, and get them to restate my main point.

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1 Learn

You will be able to

State the point in the first sentence.
Replace three vague words with concrete ones.
Check understanding by asking the reader to restate the point.
Revise once where the reader stumbled, and check again.

LibraryEnglish Expression Mastery: Words, Sentences, Paragraphs and Speech · What mastery looks likeThe standard is the reader's understanding, not your impression: the evidence is a listener who accurately repeats your main point.2 min glance · 7 min
LibraryEnglish Expression Mastery: Words, Sentences, Paragraphs and Speech · Core exercisesConnectives that must be earned, the paragraph scaffold, cutting clutter without cutting truth, and speech that puts the point first.2 min glance · 7 min
LibraryTechnical Writing as Reasoning · The handoff testGive the write-up to someone who was not in the room and ask them to explain it back. Wherever they stumble, the text has a hole.2 min glance · 5 min
LibraryTechnical Writing as Reasoning · The five stepsStep 1 defines words that hide a measurement, such as 'slow' and 'secure'. Step 5 leads with the recommendation, then the reasons, then the limits.2 min glance · 5 min
LibraryTechnical Writing as Reasoning · Why writing is the testOn the page, the gaps the mind fills in silently stay empty, so writing shows what you do not yet know.2 min glance · 5 min
LibraryAugustine on Signs, Interpretation and Eloquence · Eloquence that serves wisdomThe golden key that will not open and the wooden key that will: clarity governs teaching, delighting and moving.2 min glance · 6 min
LibraryThe Orator's Education: Cicero and Quintilian on Forming a Speaker · Revise as a strangerPut the draft aside until it reads like another's handiwork, then correct it.2 min glance · 6 min

2 Practise

Answer each card from memory, then grade yourself honestly. The cards join your review deck and come back just before you would forget them.

recall
What four-part paragraph scaffold does the page suggest, and how do you use a reverse outline?

Show answer
Point, explanation, example, consequence, which the page calls useful but not universal. After drafting, a reverse outline records in a few words what each paragraph does: merge two paragraphs that do the same job, and split one that does two.
explain
Why does the page say 'Because the service is running, users cannot log in' is a problem even though the grammar is fine?

Show answer
Connectives such as because, although, therefore and unless assert relationships between ideas, so each must be earned. The facts say only that the service is running, users cannot log in, and the cause is unknown; 'because' invents a causal link the facts do not support.
explain
What is the point of Augustine's golden key and wooden key?

Show answer
A key is for opening what is shut. A golden key that cannot open is useless, and a wooden one that can is fine, so words are judged by whether they make the meaning clear, not by how fine they are.
explain
Why does the page treat writing as a test of understanding, when explaining silently to yourself feels easy?

Show answer
Silent explanation feels easy because the mind fills in the gaps, while on the page they stay empty. When a sentence will not come, you usually do not yet know which beliefs are observed, inferred or assumed.
explain
Why does Quintilian advise putting a draft aside before correcting it?

Show answer
When you come back to it after a time it has the air of novelty and of being another's handiwork, so you read it as a stranger would and see faults you missed while writing.

3 Prove it: the mastery check

5 questions drawn from a pool of 12. The pass mark is 80%. There is no time limit, and you can retake it with new questions; your best result counts.

4 Prove it: the performance task

Explain one idea to one kind of reader

Choose one idea you understand well from something you have studied or a skill you use, for example how a fuse protects a circuit, how a pendulum keeps time, or what a bus timetable's frequency means. Avoid anything about your own health, money or private life. Name your reader as a kind of person, not a named individual, such as 'a twelve-year-old who has never wired a plug'. (1) Write about 150 words for that reader, with the point in the first sentence. (2) Underline three vague words in that draft and replace each with a concrete one. Keep both versions. (3) Give the text to someone who can read it as that reader, without explaining it, and ask them to say your main point in one sentence. Write down their sentence, not their name. (4) Revise once where they stumbled, then ask again. Allow 40 to 50 minutes.

What to hand in: The named kind of reader, both drafts with the three replaced words marked, the reader's one-sentence restatements before and after the revision, and one line on what you changed. Save it on the page or download it.

Check your work against the rubric The first sentence states the main point, and the final text is about 150 words (between 120 and 180). The reader is named as a kind of person, and every term that reader may not know is defined, replaced or cut. Three vague words from the first draft are shown with their replacements, and each replacement names something a reader could check or picture. The reader's one-sentence restatement is recorded and compared with the intended point, and any difference is named. The revision changes the text where the reader stumbled, and a second restatement shows whether the change worked.

Your work Or a link to it (optional)

Saved only in this browser. To keep a copy, download it or export your progress.

5 Discuss: the seminar

Read the text, then think, write or talk through the question with someone. There is no answer key: the aim is a better question.

Rhetoric · Round 1

Gorgias, Encomium of Helen, sections 6 to 10, with the summary at section 15 (Diels-Kranz 82 B11)LaRue Van Hook's 1913 translation (Classical Weekly 6, no. 16), public domain in the United States, but partial: it gives sections 1 to 10, 15 and 19 to 21, so sections 11 to 14 are not on the page. Section 6 lists the four possible causes of Helen's flight; section 8 begins the account of the power of speech.
Plato, Gorgias, 447a-466aW. R. M. Lamb's Loeb translation with the Greek, on Perseus. Socrates sets out to learn the function of Gorgias's art from 447c; belief and knowledge are separated at 454c-455a; the orator is more convincing than the doctor only to those who do not know at 459a-c; rhetoric is called no art at all but a 'habitude or knack' and a branch of flattery at 462b-466a.

Gorgias calls speech a powerful potentate that can put an end to fear and increase compassion (section 8), and he uses that power to excuse Helen. Plato's Socrates says that rhetoric is no art at all but a knack, a branch of flattery that convinces those who do not know (459a-c, 462b-466a). Is the power of speech a reason to trust the speaker or to distrust him?

Socrates separates persuasion that produces belief from persuasion that produces knowledge (454c-455a). Which kind does the Helen produce in its hearer?
Gorgias sums up that if Helen was won over by persuasion she deserves commiseration, not condemnation (section 15). Is a listener ever responsible for being persuaded?
At 462b-466a Socrates compares rhetoric with cookery, and calls such flattery no art because it 'has no account to give of the real nature of the things it applies' (465a). What would rhetoric need to have in order to count as an art in his sense, and does the Helen have it?

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Self-administered checks and self-assessed tasks: no credential is awarded. The design borrows from Khan Academy (mastery levels), WGU (competencies proved by assessment) and St. John's College (seminars on primary texts); this site is not affiliated with any of them.