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Ethos, pathos, logos and the five canons, with concrete usage examples.
Aristotle's Rhetoric names three modes of persuasion: ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion) and logos (logic). They are not styles of writing; they are the three reasons an audience grants attention, cares about a point, or accepts an argument.
Ethos does its work in the introduction: state plainly what the talk covers and why you are the one giving it, without self-promotion. Logos does its work in the body: ordered points, each supported, each following from the last. Pathos does its work at the turning point where the audience is asked to decide or care.
A concrete assignment: mark each block of your outline with one mode. If the body is all logos, check that the introduction established ethos first; if the whole talk is ethos, the audience has been told who you are but never what the argument is.
On narrow screens, swipe or scroll the plate sideways.
The ancient rhetorical canon lists five parts: invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. Invention asks what to say, arrangement in what order, style in what words, memory how well it is known, and delivery how it sounds in the room.
Usage examples by canon: for invention, write the talk's question as a single sentence and gather only points that answer it. For arrangement, place those points inside introduction, body, conclusion and time the result. For style, prefer plain wording for a technical audience and reserve ornament for a single emphasis. For memory, learn the first sentence and the order of points. For delivery, set the pace at 120-150 words per minute and mark one deliberate pause at the key point.
Rhetoric was formalised as a discipline in ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE, and the toolkit above is the part of that tradition that still maps directly onto a modern short talk.
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