One could easily argue there wasnt a literary device he couldnt master. Layout, graphic design choices, white space, style and tone: all of these factors influence your ethos. Well, when logos is used in an argument, that means you are using facts, like data or statistics, or common sense to make your argument known. Reliable, appropriate sources act as expert voices that provide a perspective you don’t have. When being introduced to rhetorical concepts, among the first appeals students learn about are the rhetorical appeals. You can also gain ethos through your use of sources. It’s much easier to encourage a disagreeable audience to listen to your point of view if you have convinced them that you respect their opinion and that you have established credibility through the use of logos and pathos, which show that you know the topic on an intellectual and personal level. This is especially important when writing an argument to an audience who disagrees with you. (See logos.) It’s also what you do to assure them that they are good people who want to do the right thing. Although these proofs overlap in the sense that they often work together in persuasive oratory, logos is most concerned with the speech per se ethos with the speaker and pathos with the audience. Latin for ethics, ethos is what you do to prove to your audience that you can be trusted, that you are a credible source of information. Logos, ethos, and pathos are relevant to all three kinds of rhetorical speeches (forensic or judicial, epideictic and deliberative). However, if you only rely on logos, your writing might become dry and boring, so even this should be balanced with other appeals. Your audience will question the validity of your claims the opinions you share in your writing need to be supported using science, statistics, expert perspective, and other types of logic. Latin for logic, logos is where those facts come in.

Many donations campaigns draw on pathos, such as this classic ASPCA ad:

Too much pathos can make your audience feel emotionally manipulated or angry because they’re also looking for the facts to support whatever emotional claims you might be making so they know they can trust you. People tend to have emotional responses before their brains kick in and tell them to knock it off. Aristotle defined rhetoric as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. Rhetoric is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. Latin for emotion, pathos is the fastest way to get your audience’s attention. To understand what ethos, logos, and pathos are, you must first know what rhetoric is.

Logos rhetoric