Composition (language)
The term composition (from Latin "com-" "with" and "ponere" "to place") as it refers to writing, can describe writers' decisions about, processes for designing, and sometimes the final product of, a document. In original use, it tended to describe practices concerning the development of oratorical performances, and eventually essays, narratives, or genres of imaginative literature, but since the mid-20th century emergence of the field of composition studies, its use has broadened to apply to any composed work: print or digital, alphanumeric or multimodal. Elements of composition. Theoretical and applied studies in narratology, rhetoric, and composition studies have identified  elements like the following as relevant to processes of composing language. This list is neither exclusive nor sequential: Oral discourse. Traditionally, oratory, or classical rhetoric, is composed of five stages, or canons: Typically, in any speech classroom, these stages are still prevalent in the composing process. Other such qualities to be included, especially when considering ones' audience and methods of persuasion, would be the rhetorical appeals: Written discourse. As oral discourse shifted to more written discourse, the stage of memory and delivery began to fade, yet the first three stages hold its rank in the writing process of most composition  classrooms. The rhetorical appeals also prove important in written texts, as the strategies of using these appeals become more complex as writers understand their audience's needs when not in physical view. Visual. While, strictly speaking, even a printed page of text is multimodal, the teaching of composition has begun to attend to the language of visuals. Some have suggested privileging only the linguistic mode limits the opportunity to engage in multiple symbols that create meaning and speak rhetorically. In thinking about how visuals are used to communicate, and how they are composed or analyzed in a rhetorical work, Foss  argues that one considers: Foss, who acknowledges visual rhetoric, demonstrates that composition studies has to consider other definitions and incorporations of language. Digital. This composition refers to work produced in digital spaces. The writer or speaker must not only consider all the composing processes of the above-mentioned discourse (like purpose, arrangement, etc.), but the relationship medium plays in the composing and decision process of that work. In digital discourse, the fifth canon of delivery takes on new meaning, and digital spaces change how traditional views of authority, circulation, and context are understood, like composing in a Wikipedia. Thus digital  rhetoric, or eRhetoric offers new ways of composing.