Take a Breather!

Many words pop up in my mind when I think about these past seven weeks in Writing, Editing, and Printing Online. From the rhetorical situation to remediation and reflection, I have gained an increasingly amount of knowledge pertinent to my major; Editing, Writing, and Media. All of these processes and words we have learned in this class give a title to things we already knew were there. However, upon learning about them, I realized my knowledge of them prior may have been a little wrong and not as in depth as it should have been. Take remediation, for example. We always saw this: A remediation example is when the Harry Potter books were made into movies. My knowledge was a little shaky; at first I thought Facebook was a remediation of Myspace. This can be defined as an example of repurposing because they are in the same form of medium. Overall, this class has strengthened my skills as a writer.



“Every audience at any moment is capable of being changed in some way by speech; persuasive situation is altogether general.” (Bitzer 3) One definition of rhetoric or rhetorical situation is persuasive communication, i.e., writing, speech, etc. The majority of writing contains some element of persuasiveness. If a writer is composing something, obviously they want to persuade the audience of their idea. Persuasive writing goes hand in hand with effective writing. I believe all writing is meant to have some sort of effect on the readers. If not, what would be the point of reading it?


Even something as bizarre as Lady Gaga can have effect on people. That's why she became so popular. She had effects on her audience and attracted many different audiences.

Some of the key terms I have drawn from rhetoric and rhetorical situation is invention, revision, memory, style, etc.
“In the classical Greek rhetoric represented by Aristotle, invention is congruent with the overall function of rhetoric, which is “to see the available means of persuasion in each case.”” (Covino and Jolliffe 5) Invention in rhetoric is creating new and effective ways to be successful relating to rhetoric and writing. Style is very important as well. The style of writing needs to be appropriate for the intended audience. Some terms I have drawn from composition include audience, reflection, remediation, etc. Audience is a big one for me; it is my key term for both main assignments. Audience is very important in composition in the fact that they are the people experiencing the composition. This is what the entire piece of writing revolves around; being attractive to the audience. “In composition studies, this conception of “audience created”-what Ede and Lunsford call “audience invoked”-often references Walter Ong. He contends that a successful writer develops the ability to “fictionalize in their imagination audiences they had learned…” (Key Concepts in Composition 1) Audience can even be created. Different audiences can overlap and be intrigued by the same things. I think all of these terms are important in the basic process of rhetoric and composition. Without any one of them, composing would not be possible.



For the most part, key terms and their functions overlap. They lead into each other and work together to produce a final composition. For example, audience goes hand in hand with style. The style in which something is created depends on what kind of audience the writer is intending to attract. This can go both ways. If something is written in a certain style, then the appropriate audience will flock to it. Invention is also very closely related to style and audience. The purpose of invention is to create different ways in which the audience will enjoy. I think this makes sense that all key terms in composition and rhetoric are related and overlapping. I believe all the key terms are there for a reason and if they weren’t needed, they wouldn’t be there. They are all necessary and vital to composing.


Reflection is very important to composing. Reflection is the emotional aspect behind composition. It allows writers to think about their work and see what they got out of writing it. Reflecting on a composition after writing it allows us to ponder the question of if it struck emotion or not. A point of most writing is to strike some sort of emotion. The process of reflection is critical to composing; it allows writers to see their work as a whole for the first time and to make sure it is pieced together correctly.

It is nice to take a breather and catch my breath. In a way, this blog is like a reflection of our class as a whole. It allowed me to see the vast amount of key terms and information we have learned about the past seven weeks. Everything has already strengthened my skills as a writer and it was beneficial to collect everything important to this course and this major and blend it together for an overall solid understanding.