# Rhetoric and Composition/Q&A

Welcome to the Rhetoric and Composition questions and answers page. Feel free to post any questions you have while learning rhetoric and composition. Please sign and date your entries by inserting -- ~~~~ at the end. If you have questions about this book, post them on the Rhetoric and Composition discussion page.

## rhetorical question

When a character poses a rhetorical question in a sentence of dialogue should I use a question mark at the end?
for example:
"I don’t think anyone knew. I mean, they might have guessed. It was all so long ago who can remember."
After remember?
dmc
A: Yes, you do need a question mark in this situation—inside the quotation marks at the end. (A comma after "ago" would help as well.)
rbs
Answer: Your example would best be written this way, "I don't think anyone knew. I mean, they might have guessed. It was so long ago. Who can remember?" I would divide the last sentence into two.
Any thoughts on specific styles/approaches to writing comments for online/wiki writing (to go in your 'advanced' section)?

## rhetoric

what different types of rhetoric are there?
Answer: There are three basic kinds: Judicial Rhetoric, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Epideictic Rhetoric. Judicial rhetoric is used to judge what is right or wrong- for example a lawyer defending in court uses judicial rhetoric. Deliberative rhetoric is used to persuade a person to do something, like you would use to persuade friend to come to dinner. Epideictic rhetoric is used to praise (or blame) somebody. It is most often used in eulogies.

## Rhetorical Description

Do you have any example of description of a person?if you think so than you stupid

## Summarizing

Can you give me some tips about summarizing an article?
Think of it as an extreme condensation of the article, one that shows what the article is about and what it emphasizes. If the title is "John Adams" -- then which John Adams is the article about? Is it the second President of the United States? Is it the composer? Or is it someone else? To get something so basically wrong is to show either failure to understand the article, a superficial reading, or failure to look at it.
Take the most important parts of an article. If the article is a description, then look for the key pints of the article. Begin with a definition of the item in question and then the leading facts -- the ones that the author seems to hold most important, even if those leading facts are less interesting than some tangential material that you find more interesting.
The title is a clue. Ideally an author of what purports to be truth will create a structure that centers upon the aspects of a phenomenon, object, event, or work that the title suggests. It could be very broad or very narrow. Needless to say, an article on "The Tiger -- an Endangered Species" will say little about circus tricks involving tigers, and an article "Tiger Taming", on training tigers to perform in circuses without getting the trainer or the tigers hurt, won't dwell on a tiger's endangered state in the wild. "The Battle of Waterloo" won't be about the desirability or non-desirability of war, it won't be about the childhoods of Wellington or Napoleon, and it certainly won't be about D-Day. When it happened, participants, events leading to it, how troops were moved into battle, size of forces and their weapons, the win-loss situation, and consequences will all be relevant.
With an object, a living thing, a place, or a natural phenomenon in general you will need to describe it so that you prevent confusion. If the article is "Pencils", then you might want to show what pencils are, their primary uses, what materials they are made of, when they came into use (typically, when they were invented) how many are made, what was used before them, and characteristics that make them desirable or undesirable.
An author might try to connect very different things, so look for such -- and find the connection. Show it.

## Rules for writing

Can someone tell me what are the rules for writing not only and but also.

## Essay

HOW DO YOU WRITE AN ESSAY WITHOUT KNOWING ABOUT THE SUBJECT?
First, clarify what is asked for. Maybe you got verbal instructions from someone who did not speak clearly. Maybe you have a difficulty with hearing. Most good teachers gladly accommodate a student on that by putting the assignment in writing.
Second, find out what the subject is. Wikipedia is one of the most accessible stores of basic information in a wide variety of subjects. Maybe you know more about the subject than you think for the simple reason that someone has called something by some odd name unfamiliar to you.
Find multiple sources for information. Those can include books and magazines. Video? That's tricky. If your essay is on "Lions" and you see a wildlife documentary on lions, then how do you cite that you saw lions in a group? However instructive video is, watching it for information is not an effective use of time when you are trying to get information quickly as you must do for creating an essay under the pressure of time. You can search the Internet for websites that offer the information that you seek. That's reading, but it's easier to find some information on the Internet than to take a trip to a library far away.
NEVER -- NEVER -- NEVER directly copy any material, especially from an encyclopedia of any kind, and then put it into your essay unmodified or even paraphrased. Your teacher will know what is in Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book, and perhaps the June 1962 edition of National Geographic Magazine should it be in the classroom. Your teacher will also be able to look into Wikipedia for the relevant article, and if your article on George Washington reads like this:
George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) served as the first President of the United States of America (1789–1797), and led the Continental Army to victory over the Kingdom of Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783).
The Continental Congress appointed Washington commander-in-chief of the American revolutionary forces in 1775. The following year, he forced the British out of Boston, lost New York City, and crossed the Delaware River in New Jersey, defeating the surprised enemy units later that year. As a result of his strategy, Revolutionary forces captured the two main British combat armies at Saratoga and Yorktown. Negotiating with Congress, the colonial states, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile nation amid the threats of disintegration and failure. Following the end of the war in 1783, Washington retired to his plantation at Mount Vernon, prompting an incredulous King George III to state, "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
(These two paragraphs come unmodified from the beginning of the Wikipedia article "George Washington" -- and your instructor will discover that quickly and easily -- then you will have committed plagiarism. That is a huge no-no in writing; it shows that you did nothing creative and individual. You WILL get a poor grade!
You can use encyclopedias for finding other sources of information. (You may make a direct quote of the clever words of a well-renowned thinker -- but identify the person and the source).
The rest is easy to say and hard to do. You then find different threads of information and put them together in a way that only you can do. That is exactly what you would do if you knew something about the subject in the first place.

## history of school

when did school began