While revising you may look for areas to improve the unity, cohesion, and development of your essay. Furthermore, you can check that all the parts of the essay such as the thesis statement are effective.
You might also check that your essay does not misuse ethos, pathos, and logos in a fallacious way. Fallacies are problems or weaknesses in explaining or defending your opinion. There are many fallacies you learn about in your reading class. These fallacies might also have multiple names (an English name and a Latin name). The practice in this section will focus on some of the most frequent.
These are some of the more common fallacies and some examples of them.
ad hominem: This is a personal attack on someone with a different opinion than you rather than their actual opinion
post hoc ergo propter hoc: This is when something happens before something else and so a cause/effect relationship is assumed. It says that because thing A happened before thing B, thing B happened because of thing A. It ignores other possible causes.
ad populum: This is when you say that your opinion is the best or right because it is popular. Everyone thinks this or everyone does this, so your reader should think or do it too.
slippery slope: This is when you say that event A leads to event B which leads to event C and so on. Usually, this is a series of events that get progressively worse, but occasionally it can be a series of events that get progressively better.
Lastly, be careful to use true information in your support. You could use great ethos, pathos, or logos, but if the information is untrue, then your opinion isn't really supported. As an academic writer, it is important to be honest and fair when supporting your opinion. Your goal is to use true support with effective rhetorical appeals for your opinion.
Discuss the questions below with a partner or group.
Match the fallacy to its example. Write the letter of the example next to the correct fallacy.
Fallacy | Example |
1. ____ ad hominem | A. "Yesterday I ate blackberries, and today I have a stomach ache. The blackberries must have caused this stomach ache." |
2. ____ post hoc ergo propter hoc | B. "First they’ll allow residents to keep chickens in their yards, then they’ll start allowing people to keep pigs and sheep. Soon, this entire neighborhood will be one giant livestock farm." |
3. ____ slippery slope | C. “It must be a really good car because so many people have bought one” |
4. ____ ad populum | D. "Well, it's pretty obvious that your political party doesn't know how to be fiscally responsible, so I wouldn't expect you to be either." |
Revise the sentences below to avoid fallacies. Use strong, true rhetorical appeals instead.
1. It is pretty clear that Martin's data is defective because he never completed his college degree.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2. You must have a bad grade in the class because you only take notes on your laptop.
3. All of the research seems to suggest that owning a cat can improve your mental health overall.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Review this student introduction paragraph for unity and development.
Prompt: Should economic globalization continue?
Today, globalization is the main topic for global trading and global politics. It connects billions of people on Earth. We can see the issues and solutions made by globalization. It brings benefits and disadvantages in many ways. Start with the prehistoric migration 100,000 years ago, through the era of Alexander the Great and the Genghis Khan Empire. It continued in the great British Empire and the United States after WWII. Until today, globalization never stops.
Review this student's paragraph for cohesion. The paragraph has been broken into groups of two sentences. How would you improve the cohesion between these groups of sentences? Make any feedback or editing markings on the groups of sentences. Then, write the complete revised version of the paragraph on the lines below.
Prompt: Should testing on animals be allowed to continue?
1. Mammals like dogs, sheep, and mice have similar body systems to humans. If people study a body of an animal, they can find out how something will work on a human body.
2. Some studies can only be conducted on a living organism. Scientists and researchers have been searching for appropriate medical treatments without risks.
3. Animal testing is a possibility for this. Animals and mammals have similar body structures to humans.
4. They have a similar muscular system, skeletal system, and nervous system. Most animals are biologically similar to humans.
5. “This similarity means that nearly 90% of the veterinary medicines that are used to treat animals are the same as, or very similar to, those developed to treat human patients” (The Animal Model, 2018). For example, 99% of human DNA is the same as that of mice.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Read the student paragraph and offer suggestions to the author. Is the body paragraph effective? Consider organization, using adequate sources, avoiding logical fallacies, etc.
Many people sustain that electric vehicles are going to be the only cars that are going to be sold in the market, but this is not true because of the high number of gasoline cars that are in production today. Recently, Volvo claimed that after 2019, gasoline cars are going to disappear, and the electric vehicles are going to be in the roads all over the world (CNN,2017). Furthermore, there were sold around 873,000 electric vehicles worldwide in 2016, helping that the number of electric vehicle use goes up to 1,2019,000 around the world (CNN, 2017; Statista, 2017). This looks to be a good number for a project that started a few years ago. On the other hand, the typical fuel car has been on top of the market for more than 50 years. Starting in 1901 with the first Mercedes car, designed by Wilhelm Maybach (History.com, 2010), companies are trying to build more and more of these cars. At the beginning of the 21st century, car companies’ worldwide production was 58,374,162 cars, where the USA produced 21.93% of them (OICA, 2000). Since 2000, the car production arose 62.7%, with China producing only 29.6% of them (OICA, 2016). Based on this numbers, electric vehicles seem to have a long trial to walk in order to win the market and the production of a normal fuel car. Thus, gasoline cars are not going to disappear in 2019.
Read a partner's essay and review its use of rhetorical appeals.
Mark and label any effective rhetorical appeals or fallacies you find in their writing.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/slippery-slope-fallacy/ (Kramer, 2022, para. 24)
Donato Acciaiuoli, “Commentary on the ” ed. Jill Kraye in vol. I, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 55
This content is provided to you freely by BYU Open Learning Network.
Access it online or download it at https://open.byu.edu/up_writing_summer/revisingW.