Thanks to our readers and a rhetorical analysis of the Obama/McCain debate

First of all, I have to say thank you to you who visit and read this blog. I often wish it contained earth-shattering insights instead of the ongoing wrestling of a lethal mind, but this month more of you visited this blog by 25% than ever before. Thank you! I hope it has offered you [...]

Interpreting political ads

Here in North Carolina we’re having an election for governor, so there are plenty of ads to persuade us to vote one way or the other, which is a great place to apply the enthymeme to syllogism exercise that I described in the blog entry below.
In an ad I just saw, a woman who used [...]

What do assumptions make of you?

Or what do you make of assumptions? Are assumptions good or bad?
We hear the cliche all too much about what assumptions make of you and me, but have you ever thought about how much that cliche assumes? Next time somebody says something like that to you, make a simple little request. Ask, “How can I [...]

CS Lewis had style

Since I care so much about writing, and since one of the greatest pleasures in life is a well-tempered sentence, I have been reflecting quite a bit lately on what makes for good style. I’ve been asking how to improve my own style as well as reviewing some writers whom I particularly love reading, among whom [...]

A Long Sentence by John Henry Newman

Here’s an example of a beautiful long sentence that couldn’t have said what it said if it had said it shortly:
[A great author] writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore [...]

On the Necessity For Long Sentences

We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so somber, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question.

That is the [...]

Books to Read

I’ve been reading in snatches of a page or two at a time a book that fell out of heaven into my lap at the conference this summer. If you are interested in a theological and philosophical understanding of the place of rhetoric in the Christian classical tradition, I don’t think you’ll find a book more [...]

Is this a once in a lifetime opportunity?

I’m not altogether certain but it might be. How often do you get to spend a weekend with a translator of Dante, a founder of a Christian classical college, and a group of people driven to figure out what Christian classical education is and how to implement it?
I just attended the SCL conference in Charleston, [...]

The Lost Tools of Writing and Al Gore’s Speechwriter

If you are hired to write speeches by the Vice President of these United States, you can write speeches. You can imagine, therefore, why my attention was aroused when I discovered an interview of Daniel Pink (speechwriter to Al Gore) by Tim Ferriss (author of The Four Hour Work Week).
Of course, I wanted to see if [...]

An effective Approach To Reading a Poem

Since a poem has the four qualtities identified and haltingly addressed in this post: it’s music, its imagery, its logos, and its unspeakable quality that I’ve reluctantly and insultingly reduced to its connotations, we can develop a strategy when we approach a poem that is consistent with the nature of poetry. We don’t need to [...]