12.2: Ethos in the Essay

Ethos in the Essay

Aristotle himself said that "Ethos may be the most effective means of persuasion." What does ethos look like in a college essay? Aristotle often used the term ethos in place of character.  Some define ethos as credibility, some define it as goodwill, some as competence, some as authority, and some as charisma. Ethos is all of those things. But what does that look like in an essay?

Some students complain about having to use proper academic style, formatting, and structure. "What's the point of a running header?" "Who cares if I use a hanging indent?"

We know from our forays into rhetorical analysis that a huge part of effective speaking and writing is knowing the audience. In the case of an essay, your audience is typically a professor or a graduate student assistant. Academia is a teacher's world; we teachers have pledged our careers and a big chunk of our lives to the institution of higher learning. Proper style is our wheelhouse. It is a hallmark of competence in academic writing. A properly formatted paper speaks loudly of your attention to detail and boosts your credibility as a student writer. Proper formatting also speaks – perhaps more softly – of your character: you took the time to format your paper properly. You were conscientious. That says something about you as a writer.

Students often wonder why they have to find "academic" or "scholarly" sources for their papers. Although research can feel like cruel or unusual punishment, researching and finding solid sources improves your ethos. Two ways that a writer can establish credibility/authority is to either be an expert on a subject or to cite experts on a subject. Since most students are not yet experts (but seeking to become them!), academic research is needed. Some students think that anything they find on the Internet is a good source. Not true! Not even close to true! Case in point: when writing about various persuasion theories, several of my students have cited un-authored pop psychology websites or various PowerPoint presentations that they've found online. If no person or author is associated with a work, how can we determine that the work was written by an expert? Students will also cite sources authored by journalists and writers. Journalists and writers are experts in journalism and writing, but they may not be subject matter experts. As for those PowerPoint presentations, a lot of those are student assignments that have been submitted for class assignments. Not only are students rarely experts quite yet, but we have no way of determining if that assignment even received a passing grade!

"And why do professors get so worked up about in-text citations?"

Again, Aristotle: "Character may be the most effective means of persuasion." A person of good character will always attribute borrowed words and ideas to their source. It's not enough to list a bunch of sources at the end of your paper; your readers have no idea what words or ideas came from which source. When you quote a source, or paraphrase it, or borrow the gist of it, giving credit where credit is due helps establish your character, your competence, your ethos.

Charisma? In a paper?

Yes! How you come across in your writing definitely speaks to your ethos.; Using appropriate language for the academic context, writing in an interesting and/or compelling manner, and editing your spelling, punctuation, mechanics, etc., all contribute to your style, credibility, and competence as a writer.

This checklist may help guide you in determining if ethos is on-point in your essay:

• Is your paper polished, proofread, and presented in an academic manor?
• Are your sources credible?  Are your quotations and paraphrases documented correctly and as they're presented?
• Have you established your own credibility?  Do you have experience with the subject?  Have you done a lot of research on the subject?
• If your paper includes multiple viewpoints or counterarguments, is respect for those viewpoints present in the paper?
• Is your writing style/tone/word choice authentic yet suitable for your intended audience (usually your professor)?