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What Are Ethos, Logos, and Pathos?

Ethos, logos, and pathos are elements of persuasion. We’ll be covering what they mean and how to include them in your writing.

Quick Summary on Using Ethos, Logos, and Pathos in Your Writing

• Ethos , logos , and pathos are elements of writing that make it more effective and persuasive. While ethos establishes the writer’s credibility, logos appeals to the audience’s reason, and pathos appeals to their emotions.
• These three concepts, also known as the rhetorical triangle , three rhetorical appeals , or three modes of persuasion , were coined by Aristotle in his explanation of what makes rhetoric effective.

Ethos vs. Logos vs. Pathos

To understand what ethos, logos, and pathos are, you must first know what rhetoric is.

Rhetoric is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing.” Aristotle defined rhetoric as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.” In simpler terms, rhetoric is the effectiveness of the words (spoken or written) you choose to convey a message or change your audience’s perspective.

According to Aristotle, there are three means by which your rhetoric can be more powerful and that’s through the use of ethos, logos, and pathos. Knowing how to apply these three elements of persuasion can make your writing more compelling, so we’re going to teach you exactly what they mean and how to use them.

What Is Ethos, and How Do You Include It in Your Writing?

Ethos establishes the writer’s credibility or authority. Imagine you’re at a climate change conference to learn how you can help planet Earth. Whose speech would you find more trustworthy—that of a CEO of a gas company that has profited millions of dollars by drilling for oil, or a speech by the CEO of a non-profit that helps clean oceans?

Ethos “appeals to the writer’s credibility, authority, or character” to get the audience to trust them.

My non-profit organization started with just one volunteer—me. I’d walk up and down the beaches collecting trash. Then, a friend joined me. The following week, that friend brought a friend. And then another. Until it grew to what it is today—an organization with more than 300 volunteers who have helped remove more than 15,000 pounds (6.8 tons) of trash from the beaches and the oceans. So, I know quite a bit on getting people together for a good cause.

Consider word choice, spelling, and grammar when incorporating ethos to your writing. It’s hard to trust a writer when their text is riddled with errors. Depending on what you’re writing, it may be a good idea to explicitly explain why you’re trustworthy and your expertise in the area you’re writing about.

To ensure your writing is error-free, try using LanguageTool as your writing assistant. This multilingual spelling and grammar checker can detect various types of mistakes in your writing and suggest stylistic improvements.

What Is Logos, and How Do You Include It in Your Writing?

The word logic is derived from the word logos. As you might have imagined, logos is the “appeal to the reader’s logic.” This means that you use facts, data, and statistics to support your reasoning.

Using logos in your writing is effective because it provides evidence that makes it difficult for your audience to disagree with you. Proper use of logos in your writing requires thorough research. The following example includes logos:

According to NASA and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “the influence of human activity on the warming of the planet has evolved from theory to established fact.” This can be proven through data collected from ice cores, rocks, and tree rings as well as modern equipment, like satellites.

What Is Pathos, and How Do You Include It in Your Writing?

The last of the three elements of persuasion we’ll be discussing is pathos, which appeals to the audience’s emotions. In other words, writers try to persuade their audience by having them feel a certain way. Consider the following example:

Climate change is already happening all around us. But let’s pretend that we’re at the liberty of not having to worry about it because its effects won’t be evident in our lifetimes. What about your children? Or your children’s children? Imagine the life they will live as they have to endure extreme heat, catastrophic hurricanes, unprecedented rainfalls, and more. Climate change may not affect you personally, but it will affect those you love.

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos Makes For Effective Writing

Depending on what you’re writing and how you’re writing it, you may find yourself using more of either ethos, logos, or pathos. Truly effective writing finds a way to incorporate all three, even if one or two are used just a bit. As you read, try to recognize ethos, logos, and pathos. This will help you better incorporate it into your writing.

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What is Logos? Definition, Examples of Logos in Literature

Home » The Writer’s Dictionary » What is Logos? Definition, Examples of Logos in Literature

Logos definition: Logos is a rhetorical device that includes any content in an argument that is meant to appeal to logic.

What is Logos?

What does logos mean in literature? Logos is a rhetorical device that includes any content in an argument that is meant to appeal to logic.

Logos is one of the three Aristotelian appeals. A writer utilizes the three appeals in order to convince his audience of his argument. The other two appeals are ethos (ethics) and pathos (emotion).

Appeals to logos are those that involve or influence the logical reasons an audience should believe an argument.

Examples of logos in an argument for tax reform might include:

• The United States has the highest corporate income tax in the world.
• Our own small businesses cannot compete with such a relatively high tax burden.
• Therefore, the government should lower corporate income tax rates.

The first statement is a fact; the second and third statements create a syllogism. Both are appeals to logos.

Modern Examples of Logos

Whether it’s Mom explaining why you need to do your homework before bedtime, a newspaper columnist commenting on the day’s events, or an engineer explaining a need for new equipment, logical appeals are evident in everyday speech and argument.

However, be mindful that simply stating facts is not an appeal to logos. Writers use appeals to logos when they have an argument they are trying to prove . Yet, just about anything could be an argument.

Look at the above examples—each speaker is trying to convince someone of something. This is where logos might come into play.

The Function of Logos

It is very difficult to believe or support an argument if it does not make logical sense. This is why a writer should include appeals to logos in his argument. The purpose of writing is to convince someone of something. Logos is a tool that helps writers do this.

Not all arguments will have the same “amount” of logical appeals. Some arguments might call for more emotional appeals. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate his audience to determine the best appeals for his argument.

Examples of Logos in Literature

Let me start with the economy, and a basic fact: The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s, an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever. That’s just part of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters.

With these words, Obama is utilizing facts, numbers, and statistics to logically prove to his audience that American’s economy is on the rise. Here, Obama is appealing to logos to convince his audience that, as President, he has positively made change to affect America’s growth and development.

This is an example of logos.

Summary: Logos Definition Literature

Define logos in literature: the definition of logos in literature is a rhetorical device that appeals to logic and reason.

In summary, logos is:

• an appeal to logic
• one of the three Aristotelian appeals
• usually evident as facts, numbers, or statistics
• used to convince an audience of an argument

Logos Definition

What is logos? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Logos , along with ethos and pathos , is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Logos is an argument that appeals to an audience's sense of logic or reason. For example, when a speaker cites scientific data, methodically walks through the line of reasoning behind their argument, or precisely recounts historical events relevant to their argument, he or she is using logos.

Some additional key details about logos:

• Aristotle defined logos as the "proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself." In other words, logos rests in the actual written content of an argument.
• The three "modes of persuasion"— pathos , logos , and ethos —were originally defined by Aristotle.
• In contrast to logos's appeal to reason, ethos is an appeal to the audience based on the speaker's authority, while pathos is an appeal to the audience 's emotions.
• Data, facts, statistics, test results, and surveys can all strengthen the logos of a presentation.

How to Pronounce Logos

Here's how to pronounce logos: loh -gos

Logos and Different Types of Proof

While it's easy to spot a speaker using logos when he or she presents statistics or research results, numerical data is only one form that logos can take. Logos is any statement, sentence, or argument that attempts to persuade using facts, and these facts need not be the result of long research. "The facts" of an argument can also be drawn from the speaker's own life or from the world at large, and presenting these examples to support one's view is also a form of logos. Take this example from Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I a Woman?" speech in support of women's rights:

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman?

Truth points to her own strength, as well as to the fact that she can perform physically tiring tasks just as well as a man, as proof of equality between the sexes: she's still appealing to the audience's reason, but instead of presenting abstract truths about reality or numerical evidence, she's presenting the facts of her own experience as evidence. In this case, the logic of the argument is anecdotal (meaning it's derived from a handful of personal experiences) rather than purely theoretical, but it goes to show that logos doesn't have to be dry and clinical just because it's concerned with proving something logically.

Logos: Proof vs. Apparent Proof

Not all speakers who use logos can be blindly trusted. As Aristotle specifies in his definition of the term, logos can be "proof, or apparent proof." A speaker may present facts, figures, and research data simply to show that he or she has "done their homework," in an effort to attain the degree of credibility that is often automatically attributed to scientific studies and evidence-driven arguments. Or a speaker might present facts in a way that is wholly or partially misrepresentative, using those facts (and, by extension, logos ) to make a claim that feels credible while actually arguing something that is untrue. Yet another factor that can cause a speech or text to have the appearance of providing proof is the use of overlong words and technical language—but just because someone sounds smart doesn't mean their argument stands to reason.

Even if the facts have been manipulated, any argument that relies on or even just claims to rely on "facts" to appeal to a listener's reason is still an example of logos. Put another way: logos is not about using facts correctly or accurately , it's about using facts in any way to influence an audience.

Logos Examples

Examples of logos in literature.

While Aristotle defined the term logos with public speaking in mind, there are many examples of logos in literature. Generally, logos appears in literature when characters argue or attempt to convince one another that something is true. The degree to which characters use logos -driven arguments can also provide important insight into their personalities and motives.

Logos in Shakespeare's Othello

In Othello , Iago plots to bring about the downfall of his captain, Othello. Iago engineers a series of events that makes it look like Othello’s wife, Desdemona, is cheating on him. Suspicion of his wife’s infidelity tortures Othello, who only recently eloped with Desdemona against her father’s wishes. In this passage from Act 3, Scene 3, Iago manipulates Othello by means of logos . Iago "warns" Othello not to succumb to paranoia even as he fans the flames of that paranoia:

Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock The meat it feeds on….. Who, certain of his fate, loves not his wronger, But, oh, what damnèd minutes tells he o’er Who dotes, yet doubts— suspects, yet soundly loves… She did deceive her father, marrying you… She loved them most…. I humbly do beseech you of your pardon For too much loving you….

Iago here lectures Othello on the abstract dangers of jealousy, but then goes on to use reason and deduction to suggest that, because Desdemona deceived her beloved father by marrying Othello, she'd probably be willing to deceive Othello, too.

Logos in Don DeLillo's White Noise

In this passage from Part 2 of Don Delillo’s novel White Noise, Jack Gladney and his son Heinrich gaze through binoculars at an Airborne Toxic Event—or cloud of poison gas—that has just hit their town. Jack , in denial, tries to reassure his son that the cloud won’t blow in their direction and that there’s no cause for alarm. Heinrich disagrees:

"What do you think?" he said. "It's still hanging there. Looks rooted to the spot." "So you're saying you don't think it'll come this way." "I can tell by your voice that you know something I don't know." "Do you think it'll come this way or not?" "You want me to say it won't come this way in a million years. Then you'll attack with your little fistful of data. Come on, tell me what they said on the radio while I was out there." "It doesn't cause nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, like they said before." "What does it cause?" "Heart palpitations and a sense of deja vu." "Deja vu?" "It affects the false part of the human memory or whatever. That's not all. They're not calling it the black billowing cloud anymore." "What are they calling it?" He looked at me carefully. "The airborne toxic event." ... "These things are not important. The important thing is location. It's there, we're here." "A large air mass is moving down from Canada," he said evenly. "I already knew that." "That doesn't mean it's not important." "Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Depends."

Jack tries to reassure himself and his family that the situation isn’t serious. Heinrich tries to counter his father’s irrational, fear-driven response to the catastrophe with his "fistful of data": information he's learned in school from a science video on toxic waste, as well as reports about the disaster that he heard on the radio. He presents the facts so that his father can’t ignore them, thereby strengthening the logos of his argument that the situation is serious and the cloud will come their way. In this particular example, the lack of logos in Jack's argument reveals a lot about his character—even though Jack is a tenured college professor, strong emotions and fear for his own mortality often drive his behavior and speech.

Logos in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

In this example from To Kill a Mockingbird , lawyer Atticus Finch uses logos to argue on behalf of a black defendant, Tom Robinson, who stands accused of raping a white woman.

"The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is."

The logos in this case lies in Atticus' emphasis on the facts of the case, or rather, the fact that there are no facts in the case against Tom. He temporarily ignores questions of racial justice and emotional trauma so that the jury can look clearly at the body of evidence available to them. In short, he appeals to the jury's reason .

Logos in Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , the narrator takes a cross-country motorcycle trip with his son Chris, and their two friends John and Sylvia. When Chris tells the group in Chapter 3 that his friend Tom White Bear believes in ghosts, the narrator tries to explain that scientific principles only exist in our heads, and therefore are actually modern man's equivalent of ghosts:

"Modern man has his ghosts and spirits too, you know." "What?" "Oh, the laws of physics and of logic...the number system...the principle of algebraic substitution. These are ghosts. We just believe in them so thoroughly they seem real." "They seem real to me," John says. "I don't get it," says Chris. So I go on. "For example, it seems completely natural to presume that gravitation and the law of gravitation existed before Isaac Newton. It would sound nutty to think that until the seventeenth century there was no gravity." "Of course" "So when did this law start? Has it always existed?...What I'm driving at is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of anything, the law of gravity existed." "Sure." "Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere—this law of gravity still existed?" Now John seems not so sure. "If the law of gravity existed," I say, "I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be non existent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is...And yet it is still 'common sense' to believe that it existed." "I guess I'd have to think about it." "Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense. And what that means... is that that law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost!"

The narrator uses logos in his discourse on scientific concepts by presenting his audience with an example—gravity—and asking them to consider their own experience of gravity as empirical evidence in support of his argument. He urges his friends to come to a "rational, intelligent conclusion" about the concept of gravity, instead of relying on conventional wisdom and unexamined assumptions.

Logos in Political Speeches

Politicians frequently use logos, often by citing statistics or examples, to persuade their listeners of the success or failure of policies, politicians, and ideologies.

Logos in Barack Obama's 2015 State of the Union Address

In this example, Obama cites historical precedent and economic data from past years to strengthen his argument that recent progress has been substantial and that the nation's economy is in good health:

But tonight, we turn the page. Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before. More of our people are insured than ever before. And we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we’ve been in almost 30 years.

Logos in Ronald Reagan's 1987 "Tear Down this Wall" Speech

In this speech, Reagan intends for his comparison between the poverty of East Berlin—controlled by the Communists—and the prosperity of Democratic West Berlin to serve as hard evidence supporting the economic superiority of Western capitalism. The way he uses specific details about the physical landscape of West Berlin as proof of Western capitalist economic superiority is a form of logos:

Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany--busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of parkland. Where a city's culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there's abundance--food, clothing, automobiles--the wonderful goods of the Ku'damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on earth...In the 1950s, Khrushchev [leader of the communist Soviet Union] predicted: "We will bury you." But in the West today, we see a free world that has achieved a level of prosperity and well-being unprecedented in all human history. In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind—too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. After these four decades, then, there stands before the entire world one great and inescapable conclusion: Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.

Why Do Writers Use Logos?

It's important to note that the three modes of persuasion often mutually reinforce one another. They don't have to be used in isolation from one other, and the same sentence may even include examples of all three. While logos is different from both ethos (an appeal to the audience based on the speaker's authority) and pathos (an appeal to the audience's emotions), the use of logos can serve as a strong complement to the use of ethos and/or pathos —and vice versa.

For instance, if a politician lists the number of casualties in a war, or rattles off statistics relating to a national issue, these facts may well appeal to the audience's emotions as well as their intellect, thereby strengthening pathos as well as logos as elements in the speech. Consider this passage from Michelle Obama's 2015 speech at The Partnership for a Healthier America Summit, in which she updates listeners on the success of her Let's Move! project for improving children's nutrition:

I mean, just think about what our work together means for a child born today. Maybe that child will be one of the 1.6 million kids attending healthier daycare centers where fruits and vegetables have replaced cookies and juice. And when that child starts school, maybe she’ll be one of the over 30 million kids eating the healthier school lunches that we fought for. Maybe she’ll be one of the 2 million kids with a Let’s Move! salad bar in her school, or one of the nearly 9 million kids in Let’s Move! Active Schools who are getting 60 minutes of physical activity a day, or one of the 5 million kids soon attending healthier after-school programs.

While Obama includes statistics to persuade her audience that Let's Move! has been a success ( logos) , she's also using those facts and figures to stir up enthusiasm for her cause ( pathos).

Other Helpful Logos Resources

• The Wikipedia Page on Logos: A detailed explanation and history of the term.
• The Dictionary Definition of Logos: A definition encompassing the different meanings of the word logos.
• Logos on Youtube: A video from TED-Ed about the three modes of persuasion.

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What Are Logos, Pathos & Ethos?

A straight-forward explainer (with examples)

By: Derek Jansen (MBA) | Reviewer: Eunice Rautenbach (DTech) | June 2023

If you spend any amount of time exploring the wonderful world of philosophy, you’re bound to run into the dynamic trio of rhetorical appeals: logos , ethos and pathos . But, what exactly do they mean and how can you use them in your writing or speaking? In this post, we’ll unpack the rhetorical love triangle in simple terms, using loads of practical examples along the way.

Overview: The Rhetorical Triangle

• What are logos , pathos and ethos ?
• Logos unpacked (+ examples)
• Pathos unpacked (+ examples)
• Ethos unpacked (+ examples)
• The rhetorical triangle

What are logos, ethos and pathos?

Simply put, logos, ethos and pathos are three powerful tools that you can use to persuade an audience of your argument . At the most basic level, logos appeals to logic and reason, while pathos appeals to emotions and ethos emphasises credibility or authority.

Naturally, a combination of all three rhetorical appeals packs the biggest punch, but it’s important to consider a few different factors to determine the best mix for any given context. Let’s look at each rhetorical appeal in a little more detail to understand how best to use them to your advantage.

Logos appeals to the logical, reason-driven side of our minds. Using logos in an argument typically means presenting a strong body of evidence and   facts to support your position. This evidence should then be accompanied by sound logic and well-articulated reasoning .

Let’s look at some examples of logos in action:

• A friend trying to persuade you to eat healthier might present scientific studies that show the benefits of a balanced diet and explain how certain nutrients contribute to overall health and longevity.
• A scientist giving a presentation on climate change might use data from reputable studies, along with well-presented graphs and statistical analyses to demonstrate the rising global temperatures and their impact on the environment.
• An advertisement for a new smartphone might highlight its technological features, such as a faster processor, longer battery life, and a high-resolution camera. This could also be accompanied by technical specifications and comparisons with competitors’ models.

In short, logos is all about using evidence , logic and reason to build a strong argument that will win over an audience on the basis of its objective merit . This contrasts quite sharply against pathos, which we’ll look at next.

Contrasted to logos, pathos appeals to the softer side of us mushy humans. Specifically, it focuses on evoking feelings and emotions in the audience. When utilising pathos in an argument, the aim is to cultivate some feeling of connection in the audience toward either yourself or the point that you’re trying to make.

In practical terms, pathos often uses storytelling , vivid language and personal anecdotes to tap into the audience’s emotions. Unlike logos, the focus here is not on facts and figures, but rather on psychological affect . Simply put, pathos utilises our shared humanness to foster agreement.

Let’s look at some examples of pathos in action:

• An advertisement for a charity might incorporate images of starving children and highlight their desperate living conditions to evoke sympathy, compassion and, ultimately, donations.
• A politician on the campaign trail might appeal to feelings of hope, unity, and patriotism to rally supporters and motivate them to vote for his or her party.
• A fundraising event may include a heartfelt personal story shared by a cancer survivor, with the aim of evoking empathy and encouraging donations to support cancer research.

As you can see, pathos is all about appealing to the human side of us – playing on our emotions to create buy-in and agreement.

Last but not least, we’ve got ethos. Ethos is all about emphasising the credibility and authority of the person making the argument, or leveraging off of someone else’s credibility to support your own argument.

The ethos card can be played by highlighting expertise, achievements, qualifications and accreditations , or even personal and professional associations and connections. Ultimately, the aim here is to foster some level of trust within the audience by demonstrating your competence, as this will make them more likely to take your word as fact.

Let’s look at some examples of ethos in action:

• A fitness equipment brand might hire a well-known athlete to endorse their product.
• A toothpaste brand might make claims highlighting that a large percentage of dentists recommend their product.
• A financial advisor might present their qualifications, certifications and professional memberships when meeting with a prospective client.

As you can see, using ethos in an argument is largely about emphasising the credibility of the person rather than the logical soundness of the argument itself (which would reflect a logos-based approach). This is particularly helpful when there isn’t a large body of evidence to support the argument.

Ethos can also overlap somewhat with pathos in that positive emotions and feelings toward a specific person can oftentimes be extended to someone else’s argument. For example, a brand that has nothing to do with sports could still benefit from the endorsement of a well-loved athlete, just because people feel positive feelings about the athlete – not because of that athlete’s expertise  in the product they’re endorsing.

How to use logos, pathos and ethos

Logos, pathos and ethos combine to form the rhetorical triangle , also known as the Aristotelian triangle. As you’d expect, the three sides (or corners) of the triangle reflect the three appeals, but there’s also another layer of meaning. Specifically, the three sides symbolise the relationship between the speaker , the audience and the message .

Without getting too philosophical, the key takeaway here is that logos, pathos and ethos are all tools that you can use to present a persuasive argument . However, how much you use each tool needs to be informed by careful consideration of who your audience is and what message you’re trying to convey to them.

For example, if you’re writing a research paper for a largely scientific audience, you’ll likely lean more heavily on the logos . Conversely, if you’re presenting a speech in which you argue for greater social justice, you may lean more heavily on the pathos to win over the hearts and minds of your audience.

Simply put, by understanding the relationship between yourself (as the person making the argument), your audience , and your message , you can strategically employ the three rhetorical appeals to persuade, engage, and connect with your audience more effectively in any context. Use these tools wisely and you’ll quickly notice what a difference they can make to your ability to communicate and more importantly, to persuade .

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Pathos, Logos, and Ethos

Most people are able to drive a car without fully understanding how the car operates. Making an argument is the same way. Most of us attempt to persuade people every day without understanding how persuasion works. Learning how a strong argument is crafted empowers us to better communicate and persuade others to understand our viewpoints.

What Are Pathos, Logos, and Ethos?

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are three strategies commonly employed when attempting to persuade a reader.

Pathos , or the appeal to emotion, means to persuade an audience by purposely evoking certain emotions to make them feel the way the author wants them to feel. Authors make deliberate word choices, use meaningful language, and use examples and stories that evoke emotion. Authors can desire a range of emotional responses, including sympathy, anger, frustration, or even amusement.

Logos , or the appeal to logic, means to appeal to the audiences’ sense of reason or logic. To use logos, the author makes clear, logical connections between ideas, and includes the use of facts and statistics. Using historical and literal analogies to make a logical argument is another strategy. There should be no holes in the argument, also known as logical fallacies, which are unclear or wrong assumptions or connections between ideas.

Ethos is used to convey the writer’s credibility and authority. When evaluating a piece of writing, the reader must know if the writer is qualified to comment on this issue. The writer can communicate their authority by using credible sources; choosing appropriate language; demonstrating that they have fairly examined the issue (by considering the counterargument); introducing their own professional, academic or authorial credentials; introducing their own personal experience with the issue; and using correct grammar and syntax.

Sample Paragraph

Imagine this: a small dog sits in a dark, cold garage. His hair is matted and dirty; he is skinny and weak from going days without food. There is no water for him to drink, no person to give him love and no blanket to keep him warm at night. 1 While this might be a hard scenario to imagine, it is not an uncommon one in America today. According to the Humane Society of the United States, nearly 1,000,000 animals are abused or die from abuse every year. 2 As a veterinarian with 30 years of experience, I have seen how even one incident of abuse can affect an animal for the rest of its life. 3 As a society, we need to be more aware of this terrible problem and address this issue before it gets worse.

1 Pathos: the author paints a vivid picture to evoke a feeling from the reader—sadness and pity for the abused animal.

2 Logos: the author uses a startling statistic to appeal to our intellect. Keep in mind that these three strategies can often overlap. This sentence qualifies as both Logos and Ethos because it cites a reputable organization, so we know the author is using credible sources.

3 Ethos: the author establishes their own credibility by stating their occupation and experience.>

How Do I Know if the Author is Using Pathos, Logos or Ethos?

Pathos—does the writer appeal to the emotions of their reader.

• Do they use individuals’ stories to “put a face” on the problem you’re exploring? For example, using an individual’s story about losing their home during the mortgage crisis of the 2008 Recession may be more powerful than using only statistics.
• Do they use charged language or words that carry appropriate connotations? For example, if a writer describes a gun as a “sleek, silver piece of sophisticated weaponry,” they are delivering a much different image than if she writes, “a cold hunk of metal, dark and barbaric and ready to kill.”

Logos—does the writer appeal to the rational mind by using logic and evidence?

• Do they include facts and statistics that support their point? It’s more convincing to tell the reader that “80% of students have committed some form of plagiarism,” than simply saying that “Lots of students have plagiarized.”
• Do they walk us through the logical quality of their argument? Do they show us how ideas connect in a rational way? For example: “English students have been able to raise their overall grade by meeting with peer tutors, so it’s safe to assume that math students could also benefit from frequent tutoring sessions.” This example points out that logically, if the result has been seen in one situation, then it should be seen in a different but similar situation.
• Hasty generalizations: “Even though the movie just started, I know it’s going to be boring.”
• Slippery Slope: “If the government legalizes marijuana, eventually they’ll legalize all drugs.”
• Circular Argument: “Barack Obama is a good communicator because he speaks effectively.”

Ethos—is this writer trustworthy?

• What are their credentials? Are they an expert in the field? Have they written past essays, articles or books about this topic?
• Do they use reputable sources? Do they support her statements with sources from established publications like The New York Times or a government census report? Do they fail to mention any sources?
• Are they a fair-minded person who has considered all sides of this issue? Have they acknowledged any common ground they share with the opposite side? Do they include a counterargument and refutation?

Learn more about the Rhetorical Analysis Graphic Organizer .

Learn more about the Rhetorical Analysis Sample Essay .

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 Ethos, Logos, and Pathos – A Simple Guide

4-minute read

• 12th April 2023

Ethos, logos, and pathos are three essential components of persuasive communication . They’ve been used for centuries by great communicators to influence the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of their audiences. In this simple guide, we’ll take a closer look at these three components using examples from famous writing and speeches.

What Is Ethos?

Ethos is a persuasive appeal based on the credibility or character of the speaker or writer. It refers to the trustworthiness, expertise, or authority that they bring to the argument. It’s crucial in establishing the credibility of the speaker or writer and can be built in through a variety of means, such as reputation and sources, or language and tone.

How To Use Ethos

Ethos can be established through the speaker or writer’s reputation: if they are known for being knowledgeable, honest, and trustworthy, this can lend credibility to their argument. For example, in his famous “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. established his ethos by highlighting his role as a civil rights leader and his personal experience with racial injustice.

Another way you can achieve ethos in speech or writing is through the use of credible sources. For example, Rachel Carson established ethos in her book Silent Spring by providing extensive scientific evidence to support her argument that pesticides were harming the environment.

Finally, ethos can be accomplished through the use of language and tone . Using a professional and respectful tone can create the impression of credibility and authority. For instance, in his second inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln employed ethos by using a solemn, reflective tone to convey the gravity of the situation.

What Is Logos?

Logos is a persuasive appeal based on logic and reasoning. It refers to the use of evidence and logical arguments to support the speaker or writer’s position.

How To Use Logos

One way you can implement logos in your speech or writing is through the use of statistics and data. When writing, or constructing a speech, try to incorporate reliable and credible stats or figures to strengthen your claims or argument and persuade your audience.

You can also employ examples and analogies to achieve logos. These can make your argument more accessible and understandable to a wider audience. For example, in his book The Tipping Point , Malcolm Gladwell uses the example of “the broken windows” theory to illustrate his argument that small changes can have a big impact on social behavior.

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Finally, logos can be established through the use of logical arguments . To ensure you have a logical argument, you should have a clear statement with definitions, examples, and evidence to support it. For instance, in his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau made a logical argument that individuals have a moral obligation to resist unjust laws.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos is a persuasive appeal based on emotion. It refers to the use of language and imagery that elicits an emotional response. Pathos can be used to create a sense of urgency, inspire empathy, or evoke a particular mood.

How To Use Pathos

Vivid imagery is a great way in which a writer or speaker can implement pathos. Using descriptive language to paint a picture in your audience’s mind is a powerful and persuasive skill. For example, in his poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” Wilfred Owen used vivid imagery to describe the horrors of war and elicit an emotional response in his readers.

Pathos can also be accomplished by using personal anecdotes. The power of storytelling is an invaluable skill for any writer or speaker because it creates rapport and an emotional connection with your audience. For example, in her TED talk “The Power of Vulnerability,” Brene Brown shares personal stories about her struggles with shame and vulnerability to inspire empathy and connection with her audience.

Finally, pathos can be established through the use of rhetorical questions and appeals to shared values. A good example can be heard in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He poses his biggest question to his audience (and the world): “Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history?” In response to this rhetorical question, he beautifully tries to persuade the audience to work together toward a common goal, stating, “It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity.”

Ethos, logos, and pathos are powerful tools for persuasive speech and writing. By establishing credibility, using logical arguments, and appealing to emotion, speakers and writers can influence the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of their audiences. When used effectively, these elements can help to create meaningful and lasting change in the world.

Interested in learning how to elevate your writing with more literary devices? Check our other articles .

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The Essential AP Guide to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

The goal of argumentative writing is to persuade your audience that your ideas are convincing. Basically, there are three ways of doing this:

• You can convince your reader that your authority is indisputable (ethos)
• You can convince your reader by appealing to his emotions (pathos)
• You can convince your reader by appealing to his sense of logic and reason (logos)

Think of these different modes of persuasion, ethos, pathos, and logos, as tactics or strategies. Tactics you’ve used all your life when you use words to try to persuade someone to do something, be that agree with your opinion or buy you a new bike.

Yes, you use ethos, pathos, and logos every day.

To succeed in AP English, you need to know how to identify ethos, pathos, and logos quickly. Below is our quick guide that gives you everything you need to know to identify ethos, pathos, and logos and ace AP English.

English Studies

This website is dedicated to English Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, English Language and its teaching and learning.

Using Logos

Logos is a persuasive literary and rhetorical device used for logical reasoning, evidence, and factual information to support an argument or point of view.

Introduction

Table of Contents

Logos is a persuasive literary and rhetorical device used for logical reasoning, evidence, and factual information to support an argument or point of view. It appeals to the audience’s rational capability by presenting coherent and rational explanations, using statistics, research, and logical connections. Through the use of logos, writers, and speakers aim to convince their audience by demonstrating the validity of their claims.

How to Create Logos

Creating logos involves using logical reasoning, evidence, and arguments to persuade an audience. Here are some steps to help you create logos:

• Identify your audience: Understand who your target audience is. Recognize their characteristics, preferences, and potential biases. Tailor your logical arguments to resonate with their perspectives and values.
• Define your purpose: Clearly state the objective of your argument. Whether you aim to inform, convince, or persuade, a well-defined purpose guides your logical reasoning and evidence selection.
• Gather evidence: Collect relevant facts, statistics, research findings, and examples that support your argument. Strong evidence enhances the credibility of your logical appeals and reinforces your position.
• Structure your argument: Organize your thoughts logically. Present your ideas in a coherent manner, using a clear introduction, a well-structured body with supporting evidence, and a conclusive summary that restates your main points.
• Use clear and concise language: Employ language that is easily understandable to your audience. Avoid jargon or overly complex terms that could hinder comprehension. Clarity in your language reinforces the strength of your logical appeal.
• Address counterarguments: Anticipate potential objections or opposing viewpoints. Address these counterarguments logically and respectfully. Demonstrating awareness of alternative perspectives enhances the overall strength of your argument.
• Revise and edit: Review your argument critically. Ensure the logical flow of your reasoning, the relevance of your evidence, and the overall coherence of your message. Edit for grammar and clarity to eliminate any distractions from your logical appeals.

Remember, the creation of logos involves crafting a persuasive argument based on reason and evidence. By following these steps, you can develop a compelling case that appeals to your audience’s rational thinking and fosters understanding and agreement.

Benefits of Logos

• Enhances Credibility

Providing logical reasoning and well-supported arguments increases the credibility of your message. When you present facts and evidence in a clear and structured manner, your audience is more likely to trust your perspective and conclusions.

• Appeals to the Intellect

Using logos in communication appeals to the audience’s intellectual faculties. Logical arguments stimulate thinking and reasoning, engaging the audience’s analytical and rational side. This approach encourages them to process information critically and thoughtfully.

• Strengthens Critical Thinking

Logos prompts the audience to evaluate information objectively. By presenting a well-constructed logical argument, you challenge the audience to consider different viewpoints and assess evidence. This engagement with logic nurtures their critical thinking skills.

• Improves Communication

Incorporating logos in your communication makes your message more organized and coherent. A structured argument is easier for the audience to follow, ensuring that your ideas are conveyed clearly and effectively.

• Encourages Informed Decision-Making

Logos aids in presenting information and evidence necessary for making informed decisions. By relying on logical reasoning and credible data, you empower your audience to make choices based on a deeper understanding of the topic at hand. This contributes to sound decision-making processes.

Logos and Literary Theory

Suggested Readings

• Booth, Wayne C., et al. The Craft of Research . 4th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2016.
• Corbett, Edward P. J., and Robert J. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student . 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 1998.
• Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times . University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
• Lanham, Richard A. Analyzing Prose . 2nd ed., Continuum, 2003.
• Perelman, Chaim, and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation . University of Notre Dame Press, 1969.
• Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric . Oxford University Press, 1936.
• Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. Writing Analytically . 8th ed., Cengage Learning, 2017.

More from Literary Devices:

• Internal Rhyme: A Poetic Device
• Hypophora: Using and Critiquing It
• Hypophora: A Rhetorical Device

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Understand The Difference Between Ethos, Pathos, And Logos To Make Your Point

• What Is Ethos?
• What Is Pathos?
• What Is Logos?
• Examples Of Each
• What Are Mythos And Kairos?

During an argument, people will often say whatever is necessary to win. If that is the case, they would certainly need to understand the three modes of persuasion, also commonly known as the three rhetorical appeals: ethos , pathos , and logos . In short, these three words refer to three main methods that a person can use to speak or write persuasively. As you’re about to find out, the modes of persuasion are important because a speaker who knows how to effectively use them will have a significant advantage over someone who doesn’t.

The terms ethos , pathos , and logos and the theory of their use can be traced back to ancient Greece to the philosophy of Aristotle . Aristotle used these three concepts in his explanations of rhetoric , or the art of influencing the thought and conduct of an audience. For Aristotle, the three modes of persuasion specifically referred to the three major parts of an argument: the speaker ( ethos ), the argument itself ( logos ), and the audience ( pathos ). In particular, Aristotle focused on the speaker’s character, the logic and reason presented by an argument, and the emotional impact the argument had on an audience.

While they have ancient roots, these modes of persuasion are alive and well today. Put simply, ethos refers to persuasion based on the credibility or authority of the speaker, pathos refers to persuasion based on emotion, and logos refers to persuasion based on logic or reason.

By effectively using the three modes of persuasion with a large supply of rhetorical devices, a speaker or writer can become a master of rhetoric and win nearly any argument or win over any audience. Before they can do that, though, they must know exactly what ethos , pathos , and logos mean. Fortunately, we are going to look closely at each of these three ideas and see if they are really as effective as they are said to be.

⚡️ Quick summary

Ethos , pathos , and logos are the three classical modes of persuasion that a person can use to speak or write persuasively. Specifically:

• ethos (character): known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” This is the method in which a person relies on their credibility or character when making an appeal or an argument.
• pathos (emotions): known as “the appeal to emotion.” Pathos refers to the method of trying to persuade an audience by eliciting some kind of emotional reaction.
• logos (logic): known as “the appeal to reason.” This method involves using facts and logical reasoning to support an argument and persuade an audience.

What is ethos ?

The word ethos comes straight from Greek. In Greek, ethos literally translates to “habit,” “custom,” or “character.” Ethos is related to the words ethic and ethical , which are typically used to refer to behavior that is or isn’t acceptable for a particular person.

In rhetoric, the word ethos is used to refer to the character or reputation of the speaker. As a rhetorical appeal, ethos is known as “the appeal to authority” or “the appeal to credibility.” When it comes to ethos , one important consideration is how the speaker carries themself and how they present themselves to the audience: Does it seem like they know what they are talking about? Do they even believe the words they are saying? Are they an expert? Do they have some experience or skills that tell us we should listen to them?

Ethos is important in rhetoric because it often influences the opinion or mood of the audience. If a speaker seems unenthusiastic, unprepared, or inexperienced, the audience is more likely to discount the speaker’s argument regardless of what it even is. On the other hand, a knowledgeable, authoritative, confident speaker is much more likely to win an audience over.

Ethos often depends on more than just the argument itself. For example, a speaker’s word choice, grammar, and diction also contribute to ethos ; an audience may react more favorably toward a professional speaker who has a good grasp of industry jargon and enunciates clearly versus a speaker who lacks the necessary vocabulary and fails to enunciate. Ethos can also be influenced by nonverbal factors as well, such as posture, body language, eye contact, and even the speaker’s choice of clothing. For example, a military officer proudly wearing their uniform bedecked with medals will go a long way to establishing ethos without them saying a single word.

Here as a simple example of ethos :

• “As a former mayor of this city, I believe we can solve this crisis if we band together.”

The speaker uses ethos by alerting the audience of their credentials and experience. By doing so, they rely on their reputation to be more persuasive. This “as a…” method of establishing ethos is common, and you have probably seen it used in many persuasive advertisements and speeches.

What are open-ended questions and how can you use them effectively? Find out here.

What is pathos ?

In Greek, pathos literally translates to “suffering, experience, or sensation.” The word pathos is related to the words pathetic , sympathy , and empathy , which all have to do with emotions or emotional connections. Aristotle used the word pathos to refer to the emotional impact that an argument had on an audience; this usage is still mainly how pathos is used in rhetoric today.

As a rhetorical appeal, pathos is referred to as “the appeal to emotion.” Generally speaking, an author or speaker is using pathos when they are trying to persuade an audience by causing some kind of emotional reaction. When it comes to pathos , any and all emotions are on the table: sadness, fear, hope, joy, anger, lust, pity, etc.

As you probably know from your own life, emotions are a powerful motivating factor. For this reason, relying on pathos is often a smart and effective strategy for persuading an audience. Both positive and negative emotions can heavily influence an audience: for example, an audience will want to support a speaker whose position will make them happy, a speaker who wants to end their sadness, or a speaker who is opposed to something that makes them angry.

Here is a simple example of pathos :

• “Every day, the rainforests shrink and innocent animals are killed. We must do something about this calamitous trend before the planet we call our home is damaged beyond repair.”

Here, the author is trying to win over an audience by making them feel sad, concerned, or afraid. The author’s choice of words like “innocent” and “calamitous” enforce the fact that they are trying to rely on pathos .

What is logos ?

In Greek, the word logos literally translates to “word, reason, or discourse.” The word logos is related to many different words that have to do with reason, discourse, or knowledge, such as logic , logical , and any words that end in the suffixes -logy or -logue .

As a mode of persuasion and rhetorical appeal, logos is often referred to as “the appeal to reason.” If a speaker or author is relying on logos , they are typically reciting facts or providing data and statistics that support their argument. In a manner of speaking, logos does away with all of the bells and whistles of ethos and pathos and cuts to the chase by trying to present a rational argument.

Logos can be effective in arguments because, in theory, it is impossible to argue against truth and facts. An audience is more likely to agree with a speaker who can provide strong, factual evidence that shows their position is correct. On the flip side, an audience is less likely to support an argument that is flawed or entirely wrong. Going further, a speaker that presents a lot of supporting evidence and data to the audience is likely to come across as knowledgeable and someone to be listened to, which earns bonus points in ethos as well.

While Aristotle clearly valued an argument based on reason very highly, we know that logos alone doesn’t always effectively persuade an audience. In your own life, you have likely seen a rational, correct speaker lose an argument to a charismatic, authoritative speaker who may not have the facts right.

Here is a simple example of logos :

• “According to market research, sales of computer chips have increased by 300% in the last five years. Analysis of the industry tells us that the market share of computer chips is dominated by Asian manufacturers. It is clear that the Asian technology sector will continue to experience rapid growth for the foreseeable future.”

In this paragraph, the author is using data, statistics, and logical reasoning to make their argument. They clearly hope to use logos to try to convince an audience to agree with them.

Do you need persuading to take this quiz on identifying ethos, pathos, and logos? We think you’ll be a champion at it.

Examples of ethos , pathos , and logos

Ethos , pathos , and logos can all be employed to deliver compelling and persuasive arguments or to win over an audience. Let’s look at a variety of examples to see how different speakers and authors have turned to these modes of persuasion over the years.

“Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me […] You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?” —Marc Antony, Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

In this scene, Marc Antony is trying to win over the Roman people, so Shakespeare has Antony rely on ethos . Antony is establishing himself as both a person of authority in Rome (having the power to offer Caesar a crown) and an expert on Caesar’s true character (Antony was Caesar’s close friend and advisor).

“During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story , and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.” —Steve Jobs, 2005

Here, Steve Jobs is providing his background–via humblebrag – of being a major figure in several different highly successful tech companies. Jobs is using ethos to provide substance to his words and make it clear to the audience that he knows what he is talking about and they should listen to him.

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“Moreover, though you hate both him and his gifts with all your heart, yet pity the rest of the Achaeans who are being harassed in all their host; they will honour you as a god, and you will earn great glory at their hands. You might even kill Hector; he will come within your reach, for he is infatuated, and declares that not a Danaan whom the ships have brought can hold his own against him.” —Ulysses to Achilles, The Iliad by Homer

In this plea, Ulysses is doing his best to pile on the pathos . In one paragraph, Ulysses is attempting to appeal to several of Achilles’s emotions: his hatred of Hector, his infamous stubborn pride, his sympathy for civilians, and his desire for vengeance.

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest—quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963

In this excerpt from his “I Have A Dream” speech, King is using pathos to accomplish two goals at once. First, he is connecting with his audience by making it clear is aware of their plight and suffering. Second, he is citing these examples to cause sadness or outrage in the audience. Both of these effects will make an audience interested in what he has to say and more likely to support his position.

Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech is recognizable and noteworthy for many reasons, including the rhetorical device he employs. Learn about it here.

“Let it be remembered how powerful the influence of a single introduced tree or mammal has been shown to be. But in the case of an island, or of a country partly surrounded by barriers, into which new and better adapted forms could not freely enter, we should then have places in the economy of nature which would assuredly be better filled up if some of the original inhabitants were in some manner modified; for, had the area been open to immigration, these same places would have been seized on by intruders. In such case, every slight modification, which in the course of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favoured the individuals of any of the species, by better adapting them to their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would have free scope for the work of improvement.” —Charles Darwin, On the Origin of the Species , 1859

In this passage, Darwin is using logos by presenting a rational argument in support of natural selection. Darwin connects natural selection to established scientific knowledge to argue that it makes logical sense that animals would adapt to better survive in their environment.

“I often echo the point made by the climate scientist James Hansen: The accumulation of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases—some of which will envelop the planet for hundreds and possibly thousands of years—is now trapping as much extra energy daily as 500,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs would release every 24 hours. This is the crisis we face.” —Al Gore, “The Climate Crisis Is the Battle of Our Time, and We Can Win,” 2019

In this call to action, Al Gore uses logos to attempt to convince his audience of the significance of climate change. In order to do this, Gore both cites an expert in the field and provides a scientifically accurate simile to explain the scale of the effect that greenhouse gases have on Earth’s atmosphere.

What are mythos and kairos ?

Some modern scholars may also use terms mythos and kairos when discussing modes of persuasion or rhetoric in general.

Aristotle used the term mythos to refer to the plot or story structure of Greek tragedies, i.e., how a playwright ordered the events of the story to affect the audience. Today, mythos is most often discussed as a literary or poetic term rather than a rhetorical one. However, mythos may rarely be referred to as the “appeal to culture” or the “appeal to myth” if it is treated as an additional mode of persuasion. According to this viewpoint, a speaker/writer is using mythos if they try to persuade an audience using shared cultural customs or societal values.

A commonly cited example of mythos is King’s “I Have a Dream” speech quoted earlier. King says:

“When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable rights’ of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ ”

Throughout the speech, King repeatedly uses American symbols and American history ( mythos ) to argue that all Americans should be outraged that Black Americans have been denied freedom and civil rights.

Some modern scholars may also consider kairos as an additional mode of persuasion. Kairos is usually defined as referring to the specific time and place that a speaker chooses to deliver their speech. For written rhetoric, the “place” instead refers to the specific medium or publication in which a piece of writing appears.

Unlike the other modes of persuasion, kairos relates to the context of a speech and how the appropriateness (or not) of a setting affects how effective a speaker is. Once again, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is a great example of the use of kairos . This speech was delivered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Clearly, King intended to use kairos to enhance the importance and timeliness of this landmark speech.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, ethos, pathos, logos, kairos: the modes of persuasion and how to use them.

General Education

Ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos all stem from rhetoric—that is, speaking and writing effectively. You might find the concepts in courses on rhetoric, psychology, English, or in just about any other field!

The concepts of ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos are also called the modes of persuasion, ethical strategies, or rhetorical appeals. They have a lot of different applications ranging from everyday interactions with others to big political speeches to effective advertising.

Read on to learn about what the modes of persuasion are, how they’re used, and how to identify them!

What Are the Modes of Persuasion?

As you might have guessed from the sound of the words, ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos go all the way back to ancient Greece. The concepts were introduced in Aristotle’s Rhetoric , a treatise on persuasion that approached rhetoric as an art, in the fourth century BCE.

Rhetoric was primarily concerned with ethos, pathos, and logos, but kairos, or the idea of using your words at the right time, was also an important feature of Aristotle’s teachings.

However, kairos was particularly interesting to the Sophists, a group of intellectuals who made their living teaching a variety of subjects. The Sophists stressed the importance of structuring rhetoric around the ideal time and place.

Together, all four concepts have become the modes of persuasion, though we typically focus on ethos, pathos, and logos.

What Is Ethos?

Though you may not have heard the term before, ‘ethos’ is a common concept. You can think of it as an appeal to authority or character—persuasive techniques using ethos will attempt to persuade you based on the speaker’s social standing or knowledge. The word ethos even comes from the Greek word for character.

An ethos-based argument will include a statement that makes use of the speaker or writer’s position and knowledge. For example, hearing the phrase, “As a doctor, I believe,” before an argument about physical health is more likely to sway you than hearing, “As a second-grade teacher, I believe.”

Likewise, celebrity endorsements can be incredibly effective in persuading people to do things . Many viewers aspire to be like their favorite celebrities, so when they appear in advertisements, they're more likely to buy whatever they're selling to be more like them. The same is true of social media influencers, whose partnerships with brands can have huge financial benefits for marketers .

In addition to authority figures and celebrities, according to Aristotle, we’re more likely to trust people who we perceive as having good sense, good morals, and goodwill —in other words, we trust people who are rational, fair, and kind. You don’t have to be famous to use ethos effectively; you just need whoever you’re persuading to perceive you as rational, moral, and kind.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos, which comes from the Greek word for suffering or experience, is rhetoric that appeals to emotion. The emotion appealed to can be a positive or negative one, but whatever it is, it should make people feel strongly as a means of getting them to agree or disagree.

For example, imagine someone asks you to donate to a cause, such as saving rainforests. If they just ask you to donate, you may or may not want to, depending on your previous views. But if they take the time to tell you a story about how many animals go extinct because of deforestation, or even about how their fundraising efforts have improved conditions in the rainforests, you may be more likely to donate because you’re emotionally involved.

But pathos isn’t just about creating emotion; it can also be about counteracting it. For example, imagine a teacher speaking to a group of angry children. The children are annoyed that they have to do schoolwork when they’d rather be outside. The teacher could admonish them for misbehaving, or, with rhetoric, he could change their minds.

Suppose that, instead of punishing them, the teacher instead tries to inspire calmness in them by putting on some soothing music and speaking in a more hushed voice. He could also try reminding them that if they get to work, the time will pass quicker and they’ll be able to go outside to play.

Aristotle outlines emotional dichotomies in Rhetoric . If an audience is experiencing one emotion and it’s necessary to your argument that they feel another, you can counterbalance the unwanted emotion with the desired one . The dichotomies, expanded upon after Aristotle, are :

• Anger/Calmness
• Friendship/Enmity
• Fear/Confidence
• Shame/Shamelessness
• Kindness/Unkindness
• Pity/Indignation
• Envy/Emulation

Note that these can work in either direction; it’s not just about swaying an audience from a negative emotion to a positive one. 

However, changing an audience's emotion based on false or misleading information is often seen as manipulation rather than persuasion. Getting into the hows and whys requires a dive into the ethics of rhetoric , but suffice to say that when you attempt to deceive an audience, that is manipulation.

If you really want to get an audience fired up about something, you can inspire righteous anger, which may or may not be manipulation. If somebody is offended that you’ve asked them for something, you can try making them feel sorry for you by turning indignation into pity— that’s manipulation.

What Is Logos?

Logos comes from a Greek word of multiple meanings, including “ground,” “speech,” and “reason.” In rhetoric, it specifically refers to having a sense of logic to your persuasion; logos-based rhetoric is founded in logic and reason rather than emotion, authority, or personality.

A logic-based argument appeals to a person’s sense of reason— good logos-based rhetoric will persuade people because the argument is well-reasoned and based in fact. There are two common approaches to logos: deductive and inductive arguments.

Deductive arguments build on statements to reach a conclusion —in effect, the conclusion is reached in reverse. A common method is to propose multiple true statements which are combined to reach a conclusion, such as the classic method of proving that Socrates is mortal.

All men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates must be mortal.

That’s not really a case that needs to be argued, but we can apply the same framework to other arguments as well. For example, we need energy to live. Food gives the body energy. Therefore, we need food to live.  

All of this is based on things we can prove, and results in a conclusion that is true , not just theorized. Deductive reasoning works on the assumption that A = B, B = C, so therefore A = C. But this also supposes that all the information is true, which is not always the case.

Sometimes the conclusions you reach with deductive reasoning can be valid, as in the reasoning makes sense, but the conclusion may not be necessarily true. If we return to the Socrates argument, we could propose that:

All men eat apples. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates must eat apples.

The problem is that we can’t prove that all men eat apples —some do, some don’t. Some might eat an apple once but never again. But based on our arguments, the conclusion that Socrates must eat apples is valid.

A strong deductive argument for logos-based reasoning will be composed of provable facts that can reach a provable conclusion. However, a valid but not entirely sound argument can also be effective—but be wary of shifting from persuasion to manipulation!

Another approach to logos-based rhetoric is inductive reasoning, which, unlike deductive reasoning, results in a probable argument rather than a definite one. That doesn’t mean that it is less effective—many scientific concepts we accept as truth are inductive theories simply because we cannot travel back in time and prove them— but rather that inductive reasoning is based on eliminating the impossible and ending in an argument that is based in sound logic and fact, but that may not necessarily be provable.

For example, all people with a cough have a cold. Kelly has a cough. Therefore, Kelly likely has a cold.

Our conclusion is likely , but not absolute. It’s possible that Kelly doesn’t have a cold—not because she doesn't have a cough, but because there are other possible causes, such as having allergies or having just breathed in some dust. The conclusion that she has a cold is likely based on data, but not absolute.

Another example would be that Kelly picks her nose. Kelly is a woman, therefore all women must pick their nose.

Inductive reasoning is based on generalizations. The first example, in which Kelly likely has a cold, makes sense because it’s based on something provable—that a sampling of people who have a cough have colds—and followed up with a likely conclusion. In the second example, this is a less sensible conclusion because it’s based on extrapolation from a single reference point.

If we reverse the claim and say that all women pick their noses, and Kelly is a woman, therefore Kelly must pick her nose, that would be more sound logic. Still not necessarily true—not all women pick their noses—but a more sound example of inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning can still be incredibly effective in persuasion, provided that your information is well-reasoned. Inductive reasoning creates a hypothesis that can be tested; its conclusion is not necessarily true, but can be examined.

As always, be wary of venturing into manipulation, which is more likely to be based on erroneous or misleading facts.

What Is Kairos?

Kairos is the Greek word for the opportune moment, which is precisely what it means in rhetoric. According to this principle, the time in which an argument is deployed is as important as the argument itself. An argument at the wrong time or to the wrong audience will be wasted; to be effective, you must also consider when you are speaking and to whom.

In effect, kairos means choosing the correct rhetorical device to match the audience and space in which you’re attempting to persuade. If you wanted to persuade people to go vegetarian, the middle of a hot dog-eating contest is probably not the right time. Likewise, you’re probably not going to persuade a room of data-driven scientists of something by appealing to pathos or ethos; logos is probably your best bet.

In essence, kairos asks you to consider the context and atmosphere of the argument you’re making. How can you deploy your argument better considering time and space? Should you wait, or is time of the essence?

As Aristotle famously said, “Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”

The goal of kairos is to achieve exactly that. Effective use of kairos strengthens your persuasion ability by considering how people are already feeling based on context. How can you influence or counteract that? Or maybe pathos isn’t the right approach—maybe cold hard facts, using logos, is more suited. Kairos works in conjunction with the other modes of persuasion to strengthen your argument, so as you’re putting a persuasive piece together, consider how and when it’ll be deployed!

How to Identify Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Understanding how the modes of persuasion work can make you better at identifying and picking them out. Not only is a better understanding of them useful for composing your own arguments, but it’s also beneficial when seeing other people’s arguments. When you understand how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos work, you’re less susceptible to them.

Advertising is one of the places we see the modes of persuasion most often. Looking at each of these advertisements, you can see how they use each mode of persuasion to convince audiences to convince an audience of something.

Using celebrities is a classic example of ethos, which uses authority or recognition to convince an audience of something. In this case, celebrities like Michelle Obama, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Janelle Monáe discuss the importance of voting.

It doesn’t matter that they’re not politicians or political scientists; audiences find them appealing and genuine. When they speak of the importance of voting, audiences listen because they like what these figures have to say . If talented, famous people like this are taking the time to vote, it must be important!

Historians or those well-versed in politics might make different arguments about why audiences should vote, but in this case, the goal is to inspire people. When we see people we admire doing things, we want to do them too; hence the reason that ethos works so well.

ASPCA’s commercials are some of the most infamous examples of pathos in advertising. Sarah McLachlan’s “Angel” plays over footage of abused animals in shelters, encouraging viewers to donate money to support the organization.

It’s not hard to understand why it works; both the song and the imagery are heartbreaking! You can’t help but feel sad when you see it, and that sadness, when followed up by a prompt to donate, encourages you to take immediate action.  And these ads are effective— the campaign raised millions of dollars for ASPCA .

By appealing to our emotions and making us feel sad, this advertisement encourages us to act. That’s a classic use of ethos—it influences our feelings through the one-two punch of sad music and imagery, encouraging us to perform the desired action.

In some cases, emotion and authority aren’t the right tactic. Logos often appears in tech advertisements, such as this one for the iPhone XS and XR.

Notice how the advertisement focuses on product shots and technological terms. Most audiences won’t know what an A12 bionic neural engine is, but it sounds impressive. Likewise, that “12 MPf/1.8 wide-angle lens, with larger, deeper 1.4 micron pixels” is pretty meaningless to most people, but the numbers suggest that this phone is something special because it uses scientific-sounding language.

It doesn’t matter whether audiences really understand what’s being said or not. What matters is that they feel confident that the ad is selling them something they need —in this case, impressive technological specifications that make this phone an improvement over others.

Kairos should ideally factor into all uses of the modes of persuasion, but timeliness can also be a big selling point. In this Christmas-themed M&Ms advertisement, the company uses timely humor to forge a connection between the holidays and M&Ms.

Because these commercials have been running for such a long time, there’s also a nostalgic attachment to them. Just as people look forward to new Budweiser advertisements during the Super Bowl, others look forward to seeing M&Ms or the Coca-Cola polar bear during the holidays.

Though this commercial doesn’t go out of its way to tell you the benefits of M&Ms, it does forge a connection between M&Ms and Christmas, encouraging people to purchase them around the holidays.

Examples of the Modes of Persuasion

Now that you’ve had some exposure to how ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos function and what they can do, you can test your ability to recognize them using the images below!

There are a few things to notice about this image:

• The anonymous figure
• The language
• The use of a statistic

Can you figure out which mode of persuasion this represents?

The fact that the figure is anonymous tells us it’s probably not ethos. While we might be influenced by a person who’s in shape, there’s not really an appeal here based on the person—they’re just an image to support the ad.

“DOMINATE” is a pretty loaded word, suggesting that this may have elements of pathos.

However, take a look at that statistic. Whether it’s true or not, a hard statistic like that suggests that this ad is using logos to appeal to viewers. You can draw out an argument from there—75% of users lose weight within weeks. You’re a user. Therefore, you will likely lose weight within weeks.

What do you notice about this image?

• The way the text frames the woman’s body
• The name of the perfume
• The color choice

What mode of persuasion is this?

Again, we don’t know who the model is, and perfume isn’t going to make us look like her, so we can count ethos out.

The ad seems pretty intent on making us look at certain things—the woman’s lips and chest in particular. What is it trying to make us feel?

“FORBIDDEN FRUIT” has a connotation of sensuality.

Red is a color commonly associated with passion.

When you combine the photo, the framing, the perfume name, and the color, you get a strong sense of sex appeal from the advertisement. This makes it an example of pathos—the ad is trying to make us feel a certain way . If we buy this perfume, maybe we would feel attractive, too.

How about this advertisement?

• A serious-looking photo
• Text promising “no more back pain”
• “Doctor recommended.”

Seeing a doctor might make you tempted to think the answer is logos, but there’s no appeal to logic here.

“No more back pain,” is a nice promise, but there’s no attempt to appeal to emotions, so it can’t be pathos.

What’s important in this image is the combination of the doctor in the image and the line “doctor recommended.” This doctor might not be famous, but he does have authority, making this an example of ethos.

Our confidence in this treatment grows because we trust that a doctor understands how to address back pain.

What mode of persuasion is this?  Think about:

• The framing

She does look fashionable and the ad mentions stylists, so it’s possible that this is ethos.

There are no statistics or arguments being made, so the answer probably isn’t logos.

Pathos is possible, but despite having a heavily made-up model, this ad is far less about sex appeal than the previous one.

But the text mentions a specific holiday—New Year’s—suggesting that this is kairos. Kairos can, and often should, be combined with all the modes of persuasion to be even more effective. In this case, the model’s appearance could suggest either ethos or pathos in addition to kairos. The message here is that you should act now, at the beginning of the year, to take advantage of the deal and to start the year off with a new style, much like the one the model is sporting.

Key Tips for Identifying Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos

Now that you know the difference between all the modes of persuasion, you’ll have a much easier time identifying them. If you run into trouble, you can always ask questions about what you’re seeing, hearing, or reading to understand what mode of persuasion it’s using.

#1: Is It Related to a Specific Time?

If the argument is based on a specific day or context, such as Valentine’s Day or appealing only to a select group of people, such as people with dogs, it’s more likely to be kairos.

#2: Does It Involve a Celebrity or Authority Figure?

Celebrities are often a dead giveaway that an argument is using ethos. But authority figures, such as doctors, dentists, or politicians, can also be used to appeal to ethos. Even regular, everyday people can work, particularly when combined with pathos, to appeal to you based on a mutual connection you have.

#3: Does It Involve Statistics?

Statistics are a huge clue that an argument is using logos. But logos can also just be a logical argument, such as that if plants need water, and it’s hard to remember to water them, you should buy an automatic plant waterer. It makes perfect sense, making you more likely to buy it, rather than changing your habits to remember to water your plants more frequently.

#4: Does It Influence Your Emotions?

If an argument tries to change your emotions, whether by making you sad, happy, angry, or something else entirely, it’s a good indicator that it’s using pathos. Sex appeal is one of the biggest examples of pathos in advertising, appearing everywhere from makeup ads to car commercials to hamburger advertisements.

What’s Next?

Need help understanding the historical context for The Great Gatsby to perfect your kairos-based argument?

You can always combine the modes of persuasion with literary devices to make your arguments even stronger!

Learn how to say "good morning" in Japanese ! Even if it's not a mode of persuasion, it's just good manners.

Melissa Brinks graduated from the University of Washington in 2014 with a Bachelor's in English with a creative writing emphasis. She has spent several years tutoring K-12 students in many subjects, including in SAT prep, to help them prepare for their college education.

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Table of Contents

Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, logos – logos definition.

• CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 by Emily Lane

What is Logos?

Logos refers to an appeal to logic as opposed to an appeal to pathos or ethos .

Here, logos does not refer to formal logic such as that practiced in mathematics, philosophy, or computer science. Rather, logos refers to the consistency and clarity of an argument as well as the logic of evidence and reasons. It plays a role as one of the main three modes of persuasion:

Utilizing these appeals to reason within our writing and daily life allows us to create more convincing arguments targeted to our audience .

Related Concepts: Evidence ; Inductive Order, Inductive Reasoning, Inductive Writing ; Deductive Order, Deductive Reasoning, Deductive Writing ; Reasoning – Guide to Reasoning with Evidence

In formal logic, in abstraction, the following is the case: if A is true and B is true and A is an instance of B, then the repercussions of B will always be true. The problem, however, is that this kind of logic doesn’t work for real-life situations. This is where the argument comes into play.

Formal logic would say that speeding, for example, is a violation of traffic laws. A repercussion of violating a traffic law is a ticket; therefore, every person who speeds gets a ticket. However, in real life, not in abstract theory, things aren’t that cut and dried. Most people would not agree that all speeders, in every circumstance, should receive a ticket. In an argument about a real-life situation, the audience needs particulars to make their decisions. Sometimes there’s an exception. Why was that person speeding? Well, if an eighteen-year-old is speeding to show off for his friends, then yes, most people would agree that he deserves a ticket. However, if a man is driving his pregnant wife to the hospital, then maybe he does not deserve the ticket. One could, and probably would, make the argument that he should not get a ticket.

How to Appeal to Logos?

Let’s examine how the appeal to logos would work in an argument for the speeding father-to-be.

Because arguments are based on values and beliefs as well as facts and evidence, it is logical that the argument must coincide with accepted values and beliefs.

What are enthymemes?

The enthymeme is the foundation of every argument.

Enthymemes have three parts:

• the unstated assumption that is provided by the audience.

All three of these textual elements must make sense to your audience in order for your argument to be considered logical. The claim of an argument for the father-to-be could be something like, “This man should not get a speeding ticket.” That’s it. The claim is pretty simple. It is your educated opinion on the matter. The reason would be something like “because his wife is in labor in the backseat.” So the two stated parts of your enthymeme would be, “This man should not get a speeding ticket because his wife is in labor in the backseat.” Now, this seems obviously logical to us; however, what is our underlying value, our unstated assumption about this argument? Most of us would probably agree that a hospital is a better place to give birth than a backseat. That is the third part of the enthymeme. Your audience must agree that your assumption is true in order for your argument to be considered logical. If your readers don’t have the same assumption, they are not going to see your logic. You must find an enthymeme that works for your audience. The pregnant wife’s enthymeme is fairly easy to see. In more volatile claims and reasons, the unstated assumptions can be trickier to identify and work out with your audience.

How do enthymemes Relate to Logos?

Reasons like “because his wife is in labor” are motivations for the driver’s actions, not evidence. Most audiences need facts. Evidence is the facts. Both reasons and evidence are used in appeals to logos ; however, reasons cannot be your only support. Evidence as to why the man should speed might include studies about the problems with births in difficult or dangerous circumstances, interviews with women who have given birth in automobiles, and infant mortality rates for births that do not occur in hospitals. As you can see, there are many different kinds of evidence you could provide for this argument.

Consistency means not changing the unstated or stated rules governing your argument. Consistency is essential to logic. Let us continue with the speeding example. If, for instance, you are arguing that the infant mortality rate is too high for babies born outside the hospital and that the father is required to speed for the safety of his unborn child, then you may not want to include evidence of the high infant mortality rate in car crashes. Although this information may be part of the infant mortality rate, it goes against the underlying assumption that speeding is acceptable because of the high risk of harming the baby if it is born in the backseat.

Why is Logos important?

So why should you care about logos? In your own writing, logos is important because it appeals to your readers’ intellect. It makes your readers feel smart. Logos is the part of the argument where you treat your audience like purely rational, “only the facts, ma’am” kind of people. Also, gaps, leaps, and inconsistencies in logic, no matter how well developed the other appeals may be, can tear apart an argument in short order. This is the same reason you cannot ignore logos in others’ arguments either. All the appeals are linked together; for instance, if you use as evidence an article that has leaps in logic, or relies only on authority and pathos , this article could damage your own ethos as an author . It is important to remember that all three appeals must be well developed and work together to make a good argument .

Logos Examples

As you now know, logos can be defined as a writer’s or speaker’s attempt to appeal to the logic or reason of their audience. Let’s look at some examples of logos that you might commonly find when reading texts of various media:

When a writer employs data or statistics within a text, you can probably assume that he or she is attempting to appeal to the logic and reason of the reader. For example, an argument in favor of keeping abortion legal may cite the May 2011 Pew Research poll that found 54 percent of Americans in favor of legal abortion. This figure makes a logical argument: abortion should be legal because the majority of Americans support it, and in a democracy, the majority makes the decisions.

Causal Statements

When you see an “if-then” statement, with credible supporting evidence, the writer is likely appealing to your reason. Consider an argument about lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18: a writer might suggest that, if the legal drinking age were 18, then people between 18 and 21 would be less likely to drive under the influence. If the writer offers evidence that the reason that some between the ages of 18 and 21 drive drunk is that they fear calling a friend or parent because they have illegally ingested alcohol, then this causal statement would be an appeal to a reader’s sense of reason.

Relevant Examples or Other Evidence

You might begin to think about logos as evidence that doesn’t involve an appeal to your emotions. Even expert testimony, which would certainly be an example of ethos, also could be an example of logos, depending on its content. For example, in a discussion about recent cuts in education funding, a statement from the Hillsborough County, Florida, the superintendent would be an appeal to authority. But if that statement contained a discussion of the number of teachers and classes that would have to be cut if the state were to reduce the district’s funding, the statement from the superintendent could also be an appeal to logic.

Fallacies of Logos

Appeal to Nature

Suggesting a certain behavior or action is normal/right because it is “natural.” This is a fallacious argument for two reasons: first, there are multiple, and often competing, ways to define “nature” and “natural.” Because there is no one way to define these terms, a writer cannot assume his or her reader thinks of “nature” in the same way he or she does. Second, we cannot assume that “unnatural” is the same as wrong or evil. We (humans) have made lots of amendments to how we live (e.g., wearing clothes, living indoors, farming) with great benefit.

Argument from Ignorance

Assuming something is true because it has not been proven false. In a court of law, a defendant is, by law, “innocent until proven guilty.” However, judges and jurors must hear testimonies from both sides and receive all facts in order to draw conclusions about the defendant’s guilt or innocence. It would be an argument from ignorance for a judge or juror to reach a verdict without hearing all of the necessary information.

Intentionally misrepresenting your opponent’s position by over-exaggerating or offering a caricature of his or her argument. It would be fallacious to claim to dispute an opponent’s argument by creating a superficially similar position and refuting that position (the “straw man”) instead of the actual argument. For example, “Feminists want to turn men into slaves.” This statement fails to accurately represent feminist motivations—which can be very diverse. Most feminists agree in their goal to ensure women’s equality with men. Conceptions of equality can vary among feminists, but characterizing them as men-haters detracts from their true motivations.

False Dilemma

Assuming that there are only two options when there are, in fact, more. For example, “We either cut Social Security, or we have a huge deficit.” There are many ways to resolve deficit problems, but this statement suggests there is only one.

Hasty Generalization

Drawing a broad conclusion based on a small minority. For instance, if you witnessed a car accident between two women drivers, it would be a hasty generalization to conclude that all women are bad drivers.

Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (With This, Therefore Because of This)

Confusing correlation with causation—that is, thinking that because two things happened simultaneously, then one must have caused the other. For example, “There has been an increase in both immigration and unemployment; therefore, immigrants are taking away American jobs.” This statement is fallacious because there is no evidence to suggest that immigration and unemployment are related to each other—other than that their rates increased simultaneously.

The Slippery Slope

The slippery slope argument is often a way to scare readers or listeners into taking (or not taking) a particular action (see “ Fallacious Pathos “). The slippery slope argument can also function as a false invocation of logic or reason in that it involves a causal statement that lacks evidence. For example, I might argue that if the drinking age were lowered from 21 to 18, vast numbers of college students would start drinking, which in turn would lead to alcohol poisoning, binge drinking, and even death. This conclusion requires evidence to connect the legality of drinking with overindulgence. In other words, it does not follow that college students would drink irresponsibly if given the opportunity to drink legally.

Brevity – Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence – How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow – How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity – Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style – The DNA of Powerful Writing

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• Ethos Pathos and Logos

Persuasive Essay Using Ethos Pathos and Logos

By: Henrique Bertulino

You may not know it but you need logos, ethos, pathos, and even kairos to come up with a good essay. Basically, these things, also called modes of persuasion, ethical strategies, or rhetorical appeals, can help you convince your audience and support your arguments. These four elements of persuasion were even described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric, and he definitely knew how to be persuasive. Now you can get a short summary of the ancient philosopher's research and use his knowledge in your favor! 

Understanding Logos, Ethos, and Pathos 

Examples of logos, examples of ethos , examples of pathos , bonus: what is kairos.

So, what are logos, ethos, and pathos? You can see them as three elements of an effective persuasive message, which can come in handy for your argumentative essay. You're using them already, there's no doubt, but you're just doing it unknowingly for now. But by knowing them well and using them purposefully you can get as convincing and confident as by using a professional rhetorical approach. Also, knowing the structure of your persuasion will improve the structure of your speech overall, both written and spoken. So get to know logos, ethos, pathos, and kairos better. 

What Is Logos? 

Logos is the persuasive technique appealing to the rational part. It's related to the facts you use to support your argument and make your idea look more attractive to the audience. Logos is usually called a "logical appeal", and it comes in the form of the citation of statistics, facts, charts, graphs, etc. It makes your statement more reliable and legit by using undoubtful things that can be checked and measured. 

There are different rational modes of thinking to use, here are some examples:

• Deductive reasoning — going from a broad, general claim to a specific point.
• Inductive reasoning — using some specific examples to support a broad generalization.
• Comparison — highlighting the strength of your claim by comparing your case with a similar one in which the fairness of your position is clearer.
• Cause/effect thinking — basing your position on making assumptions about the future, making predictions that prove you're right. 
• Exemplification — listing many examples of evidence to support your opinion.
• Coherent thought — structuring your thoughts properly so that they are easy to receive and understand. 

Let’s pretend you need to write an argumentative essay reflecting global warming. Here are some examples of logos you can use to make your arguments stronger. 

• The average surface temperature of the Earth has risen about 2.05 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century.
• NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment have data showing that Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019. 
• When it comes to surface ocean waters, their level of acidity has increased by about 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

What Is Ethos

Ethos is another important brick in the wall of your persuasion, it appeals to your character and evaluates your opinion in terms of your trustworthiness. It relies on your credibility as a speaker and decreases or increases the level of trust that the audience has towards you depending on how reliable you are as a source. Ethos is not only related to your own authority and achievements but also to the values or ideologies that your potential listener or reader may share.

There are several ways to show people your credibility, such as:

• Describing more than one opinion and providing counterarguments to show that you're knowledgeable and open to other positions. 
• Referring either directly or indirectly to the beliefs that matter to the audience, which may also include using special language, phrasing, imagery, or other writing styles, to build the bond. 
• Demonstrating your reputation, expertise, experience, or academic knowledge in a field. 

Let’s continue with your discussion paper on global warming. Here are some examples of ethos that can support your argument.  

• I have a degree in Biology and I can assure you the way this company disposes of its waste can harm the environment.
• My family has a business related to fishing and I can say that for the last 15 years, the level of water quality has been decreasing dramatically. 
• As I've spent the last summer as a volunteer for a non-profit environmental organization, I know that the effect of global warming is even more dreadful than the media portray it. 

What Is Pathos?

Pathos focuses your audience's attention on their emotions and how your writing corresponds with them. It appeals to such things as empathy, imagination, feelings, fears, etc. Combined with two other modes, this emotional one can help you build a strong argument that will convince any audience that you're right. 

Here are some examples of what can help you: 

• Describing things, people, places, events, and ideas in an expressive and relatable way. 
• Creating vivid images that make readers not only understand but also feel your claim. 
• Sharing personal stories to build a stronger connection with your readers. 
• Using emotionally charged vocabulary to reflect a specific mindset and create a specific atmosphere. 
• Appealing to the facts that may affect your audience and their lives so that they can actually relate to the things you're saying. 

As we keep going with your imaginary discussion essay about global warming, let's see what pathos examples can be useful. 

• Due to global warming hurricanes will become stronger and more intense, which is a life-threatening change. 
• Extreme heat affects not only people's health, but also energy consumption, agricultural industry, and economics. 
• Obviously, the rising of the temperature leads to declining water supplies, which means the price of just an ordinary water bottle will increase drastically in no time. 

This one is way less-used but still present. Kairos stands for "right time". And it basically refers to the optimal moment to take action. You can make your claim stronger by building a connection between your position and the actual situation you and your audience are in right now. Your logos, ethos, and pathos need to be served in a perfect moment to strike effectively, and that's when kairos comes into play. 

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Frankly speaking, when I started reading about Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Kairos, I could not understand what they are and how they can be used in essay writing. However, after reading your notes, everything has become clear. It will be very easier to me to teach my students how these rhetorical appeals are used in essay writing. Thank you very much.

Jean Bosco Twahirwa

This is a detailed lesson about the use of persuasive strategies in essay writing. Shout out to you; hats off! May I have another detailed example of a full written essay about inclusive education? That will be kind of you, guys.

TWAHIRWA Jean Bosco

Such an enlightening article! It not only explained the importance of ethos, pathos, and logos but also showcased how they work together to make arguments more convincing. I feel more confident in my argumentative essay writing after reading this.

I never realized how much of an impact my use of ethos, pathos, and logos made in my writing until I read this article.

I’ve used the techniques in this article for my latest essay and noticed a significant improvement in its persuasive power.

I found this extremely helpful in improving my essay writing skills. The examples provided were spot-on and helped me better grasp the importance of ethos, pathos, and logos in persuasive writing. Highly recommended!

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How to use Ethos, Pathos and Logos in a Persuasive Essay

Oct 21, 2023 | 0 comments

Oct 21, 2023 | Blog | 0 comments

Ethos, Pathos, and Logos are three types of persuasion that an author or speaker can use to convince the audience. Ethos is the appeal to ethics, and it is a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader. Pathos is the appeal to emotion, and it’s a way of convincing an audience of an argument by creating an emotional response. Logos is the appeal to logic, and it uses logical reasoning as its main tool for persuasion.

This article will discuss using these three modes when writing your essay. The difference between ethos, pathos, and logos will be elaborated by ethos, pathos, and logos examples.

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What Is Logos? 

The third and final aspect of ethos, logos, is an appeal to logic. It attempts to persuade readers by using reason, rationality, and facts. You can use logos to present evidence for your thesis statement—using statistics or examples from the world around you—or it can be used as a standalone approach. Either way, logos are best when backed up by evidence from the real world.

Logos makes sense because it appeals to our rational minds: we use logic every day to make decisions (or not). We ask ourselves, “Is this a good idea?” or “Will this benefit me?” We weigh the pros and cons before acting on impulse; we think about consequences before making purchases; we run through a cost-benefit analysis before investing our time or money into something new. Logos tries its hardest not just because it makes sense but because it works!

Examples of Logos

Logos are often used in essays to support a claim, explain why something is true, or give an example. For example:

• “I can’t wait for our next meeting because it will be fun.” (explanation)
• “That’s not fair! You’re supposed to let me go first.” (reasoning)

Logos are especially useful when persuading someone or making your point clear. They’re also good for showing that you understand how things work or what makes them important. For example:

• “I know that many people think they need a degree to get a job in this field, but I think most employers value experience over education anyway.” (logical reasoning)

What Is Ethos

Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is a means of convincing someone of the character or credibility of the persuader. Ethos is the Greek word for “character.” The rhetoric must establish trust with an audience to persuade them effectively. Effective ethos will make your audience feel more comfortable with you and more likely to believe what you say.

To establish ethos, you can refer to other people who have similar credentials, experience, or knowledge as yourself or else provide evidence that shows how your expertise has been beneficial in similar situations before (this makes it easier for others to accept your knowledge because they know how much experience you have).

Examples of Ethos 

Examples of Ethos:

• Speeches (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech)
• Advertisements (e.g., Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign)
• Literature and poetry (e.g., Edgar Allan Poe’s “ The Raven “)
• Journalism (e.g., the New York Times’ coverage of Hurricane Harvey)
• Politics (e.g., Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration speech)

In daily life, you can use examples of ethos to persuade people to get what you want or do what you ask them to do.

What Is Pathos?

Pathos is all about the emotional connection between the speaker and the audience. It’s an appeal to the senses and feelings of an audience, often through pity or sympathy.

Essentially, pathos is all about persuasion through emotion: it’s how you can use pathos in your writing (and in life) to influence people—and get them on your side.

Because when we’re moved by something, whether it be a person’s suffering or a cause we believe in, we are more likely to act on that feeling than if there were no emotion.

So, what emotions does pathos evoke? There are many ways for writers and speakers alike to use pathos in their work—but these three methods of persuasion will probably come up most often: empathy, fear, guilt/shame.

Examples of Pathos 

Here are some examples of how you can use pathos in various forms of writing:

• In advertising, an emotional appeal is often used to persuade viewers that a product will improve their lives. For example, one advertisement might portray a family enjoying time together using their new vacuum cleaner. Another advertisement might show a man alone at home watching TV and eating potato chips—but he could be happy if only he had this new brand of hot sauce!
• In speeches or debates, an emotional appeal is often used to encourage people to take action on something important to them or others. An activist might speak about how many animals have died yearly because they were trapped in animal testing labs—and ask everyone listening what they will do. A politician might talk about how his opponent’s policies won’t truly help people who need jobs; instead, he’ll ensure everyone has health insurance and gets paid more money for working full-time than if they were unemployed!
• Legal cases can include stories from witnesses or victims who experienced suffering because someone else committed wrongdoings against them (or even themselves). If you want someone else punished for stealing your car stereo system when all you did was walk outside your house one day and then come back later when there was nothing left where it should’ve been…then tell us why we should care!

Bonus: What Is Kairos?

Kairos is the right time to deliver your message.

It’s used in persuasive writing to take advantage of your audience’s current state of mind so they’re more likely to listen and act on whatever you’re trying to get across.

The best way to use kairos is by connecting with your reader emotionally—you want them to relate what you have written with their own experiences so that they can connect with what you are saying, whether it be about a product or an idea.

Examples of Kairos

Kairos is a Greek word meaning “the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment).” When the time is right, you do the right thing.

One of the most classic uses of kairos was in ancient Greece, when people would use it before speaking to kings and royalty. If someone had something important to say, they waited for a kairotic moment where both parties were available and in an appropriate mood to hear their speech.

You can use Kairos when you need to take advantage of an opportunity as soon as it arises. It’s similar to timeliness, but rather than just being on time, it’s more like jumping into action before anyone else has thought about doing so themselves! This can be useful when trying out new ideas or coming up with innovative solutions because you can come up with them before anyone else does, which means that other people will start thinking about them (which could give them ideas).

Final Thoughts on Ethos Pathos and Logos

Ethos, pathos, and logos are three important elements to consider when writing your essay.

• Ethos is the writer’s credibility, which you can establish by using facts and figures that are credible and relevant to the topic being discussed.
• Pathos is an appeal to emotion to create a connection with the reader, who will feel compelled to agree with your argument. Opening paragraphs of essays often use pathos because they set expectations for what will come later in the essay.
• Logos refers to appeals based on logic or reason rather than emotions or feelings—and, as such, relies on strong arguments supported by evidence (facts). You can use logos in any part of your essay, but especially at the end, where you want readers who did not initially agree with your point of view to change their minds after reading your supporting evidence.

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Writing — Persuasive Writing: The Power of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

Persuasive Writing: The Power of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos

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Published: Feb 7, 2024

Words: 870 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Table of contents

Using ethos, pathos, and logos together, counterarguments.

• Professional qualifications, expertise, and experience
• Personal reputation, character, and integrity
• Third-party endorsements, testimonials, and references
• Common values, beliefs, and interests
• Create empathy, compassion, or sympathy
• Trigger fear, anger, or sadness
• Stir hope, inspiration, or joy
• Connect with the audience's values, beliefs, and experiences
• Present facts, data, and statistics
• Use reasoning, deductions, and analogies
• Use examples, anecdotes, and case studies
• Address counterarguments and refute objections
• Establish your ethos first, to gain the audience's trust and respect
• Use pathos to engage the audience's emotions and values, but avoid manipulating or exploiting them
• Use logos to provide evidence, reasoning, and counterarguments, but avoid being too technical or dry
• Integrate ethos, pathos, and logos seamlessly, so that they reinforce each other and create a persuasive synergy
• Acknowledge the counterarguments and show that you understand the other side's perspective (ethos)
• Anticipate the emotional reactions that the counterarguments may trigger and address them proactively (pathos)
• Provide evidence, reasoning, and examples to refute the counterarguments and strengthen your position (logos)
• Use rhetorical questions, analogies, or metaphors to reframe the counterarguments and show their weaknesses (logos)

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Is it OK to use the same baby name as a friend? Hoda and Jenna discuss

After you choose a name for your baby, does that mean the name is off the table for future children of your best friends?

Co-hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager pondered that very question in a segment of Hoda and Jenna’s Social Dilemmas.

A viewer wrote:

"One of my best friends, Charlotte, is expecting a little boy. When Charlotte announced she was having a boy, she also declared she'd be giving him the same name as my 15-month-old, Cooper. She never asked if it would bother me and I never said anything to her because I feel like it makes me a bad friend telling her she shouldn't name him that. Am I right to be annoyed? Should I talk to her about it?" A "Social Dilemmas" viewer Question

"I would be flattered," said Hoda. "I would be flattered if someone said, 'I love the name you chose so much.' I wouldn't be like, 'That's my kid's name.' 'Cause there are other Coopers ... Cooper Manning ... he's a Cooper."

“I had a boyfriend named Cooper,” added Jenna. “Probably shouldn’t have dated him so long. But anyway ... fine, fine!”

Hoda and Jenna have put a lot of thought into the names of their own children.

Hoda named her older daughter Haley, after Halley’s comet, because she pictured her “sailing through the sky.” Younger daughter Hope’s name was inspired by Hoda’s yearning for a second child.

Jenna named her oldest daughter after her mother and husband Henry’s mother: Margaret Laura, nicknamed Mila . Middle child Poppy has a name that is a tribute to her grandfather, the late George H.W. Bush, who went by “Poppy” during his childhood. Her youngest, Henry Harold Hager, or Hal for short, inherited his name  from his father and his middle name from Jenna’s grandfather, Harold Welch — father of former first lady Laura Bush.

“By the way, Cooper is a great name, and I think it’s kinda cool,” said Hoda to wrap up the naming dilemma. “Can you imagine they’d be friends growing up. ‘Cooper!’ ‘Hey, Cooper!’ ‘Coop!’”

“Or they could go by Cooper 1 and Cooper 2,” Jenna offered. “Right? Why not?”

Hoda concluded, “I think it could be kinda fun.”

Rosie Colosi lives in New Jersey and is a reporter for TODAY Parents. She has bylines in The Atlantic, The Week, MSNBC, and PureWow, and she has written 33 nonfiction children's books for Scholastic, Klutz, and Nat Geo Kids. Once upon a time, she played Mrs. Claus in "The Rockettes' Radio City Christmas Spectacular," but now she mostly sings songs from "Annie" to her two daughters … while they beg her to play Kidz Bop.

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Tesla Semi spotted using a sensor array

A Tesla Semi was spotted driving on the highway with a sensor array on top of the vehicle. The automaker has long been quiet about the autonomous driving capacity of its commercial trucks.

At Tesla’s annual shareholders meeting earlier this month, CEO Elon Musk said that he approved Tesla’s long-delayed plan to bring the Tesla Semi class 8 electric truck to volume production.

After the original unveiling of the Tesla Semi in 2017, Tesla has refrained from talking too much about the vehicle’s autonomous driving capabilities .

But Tesla has always claimed that all its vehicles produced since 2016 are equipped with all the hardware necessary to achieve self-driving through software updates and the Tesla Semi was seen sporting cameras all around the vehicle.

Now, a Tesla Semi vehicle was spotted with a new array of sensors on top:

Last week, I saw a Tesla Semi with a sensor suite instead of a rooftop fairing near Gigafactory Nevada by u/GameSyns in teslamotors

The sensors do look like lidar sensors:

Tesla doesn’t use lidar sensors for its autonomous driving system, but it has used lidars for validation or “ground truthing” of its own systems.

This is likely what is happening here, which makes it interesting as it could imply development on Tesla deploying its supervised autonomous driving systems to its class 8 electric truck.

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The People Who Dismantled Affirmative Action Have a New Strategy to Crush Racial Justice

Last summer, in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College , the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority struck down race-conscious admission programs adopted by Harvard College and the University of North Carolina as violations of the 14 th Amendment’s equal protection clause. In doing so, the court’s conservative supermajority both ignored that the Framers of the 14 th Amendment were the originators of affirmative action and turned a blind eye to entrenched racial inequalities that make a mockery of the constitutional promise of equal citizenship. Now, Edward Blum, who was behind the attack on affirmative action in the SFFA case, and other conservative litigants intent on blocking racial justice efforts have a new strategy: remake the nation’s oldest federal civil rights law, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, into a weapon to challenge private efforts to ameliorate systemic racial discrimination and to redress the racial wealth gap.

Last week, in American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund Management , a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11 th Circuit became the first federal court of appeals to place its imprimatur on Blum’s new tactic. In a 2–1 ruling, the court of appeals held that Fearless Fund’s grant program to provide capital funding to small businesses run by Black women violated a key federal civil rights statute that dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Known as Section 1981, this law guarantees the equal right to make and enforce contracts.

The court’s opinion, written by Judge Kevin Newsom and joined by Judge Robert Luck, both Donald Trump appointees, held that Fearless Fund’s privately financed effort to rectify the near-total exclusion of Black women from venture capital and ensure that women of color have access to the resources they need to enjoy economic freedom and succeed in business was an unlawful form of racial discrimination. Adopting a strict colorblind reading of Section 1981, Newsom insisted that permitting a grant program open only to Black women “would be anathema to the principles that underlie all antidiscrimination provisions” and preliminarily enjoined its operation.

Newsom’s majority opinion works hard to portray the result as compelled by settled legal principles, but make no mistake, Fearless Fund is a big deal: It perverts a landmark civil rights statute aimed at guaranteeing basic rights of economic citizenship to Black Americans and redressing the long shadow of enslavement, and it creates new barriers to efforts to ensure racial inclusion. Never mind that eradicating racial subordination and guaranteeing economic justice lie at the very core of Section 1981. The two Trump-appointed jurists in the majority effectively read these fundamental precepts out of the statute, holding that Black-owned companies cannot put their own private money into the work of redressing the racial wealth gap and helping to ensure the success of Black-owned companies. According to the court of appeals, Fearless Fund’s grant program must be available to white-owned businesses as well.

The colorblind reading of Section 1981 advanced by Newson’s majority opinion is profoundly antitextual. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was intentionally written in a race-conscious manner. The act declares that citizens “of every race and color … shall have the same right … to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens.” Recognizing that enslaved Black Americans never had rights to contract and property—rights essential to equal citizenship—Congress used sweeping language to ensure that persons of “every race and color” would “enjoy” the same economic freedoms as “white citizens.” The statute is not aimed at the use or consideration of race at all; instead, it uses the rights of white citizens as a baseline to guarantee to Black Americans rights of economic citizenship that white citizens have long taken for granted. Newsom quotes the relevant statutory language, but pays the text lip service.

Congress chose this text for good reason: The Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act was critical to enforcing the 13 th Amendment, eradicating badges of slavery and ensuring that Black Americans freed from bondage were entitled to basic economic rights and enjoyment of the fruits of their labor. It came in direct response to former enslavers seeking to impose new forms of servitude and reduce Black Americans to serfdom. With these new race-conscious protections, the Reconstruction-era Civil Rights Act’s Framers insisted, “all features of slavery which are oppressive in their character, which extinguish the rights of free citizens, and which unlawfully control their liberty shall be abolished and destroyed forever.” The Fearless Fund ruling perverts the statute’s roots in securing economic justice, even as it forbids Black-led businesses from using their own money to ameliorate systemic patterns of economic exclusion and inequality.

The Congress that enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 knew that private efforts were crucial to racial and economic uplift. One of the singular successes of Reconstruction was the creation of the nation’s first schools and colleges for Black Americans in the South , spurred by charitable giving by abolitionists and others who devoted significant resources to education in recognition that knowledge is power. In throwing up new roadblocks to the use of private money to redress racial and economic inequality, the Fearless Fund ruling is both deeply antitextual and antihistorical.

Fearless Fund will be far from the last word on the meaning of Section 1981. As other courts consider Ed Blum’s conservative effort to rewrite that critical act, they should remember that the Civil Rights Act of 1866 sought to redress continuing badges of enslavement and to make economic justice a reality. Reconstruction’s great constitutional transformations were race-conscious to the core. In passing statutes like the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress understood the need for far-reaching remedies to rectify centuries of racial enslavement, oppression, and violence and to ensure some measure of economic justice to Black Americans. Getting this history right is essential to exposing the glaring flaws in conservative rulings, like Fearless Fund , and to addressing the next wave of coming cases seeking to roll back racial justice efforts.

Trump threatens lawsuit over ad using his own words to discourage mail voting

Donald Trump's campaign vowed legal action and said it would seek a criminal investigation into a super PAC that ran a misleading digital ad in Pennsylvania featuring clips former president discouraging Republicans from voting by mail.

After having condemned mail voting for years, Trump is now embracing it and encouraging his voters to take advantage of the practice in the presidential election.

“MAGA Patriots, listen to our president,” the ad from Pennsylvania Values PAC begins, before it splices together sound bites of Trump condemning mail voting.

“Mail in voting is totally corrupt, get that through your head,” Trump says in one such clip.

The 30-second ad ends with the on-screen text: “Stand strong with President Trump against mail in voting!”

The digital ad ran over the weekend, according to Google data. Trump's campaign sent the group a cease-and-desist letter Tuesday afternoon.

“We are aware of your advertisement falsely claiming that President Trump has asked Pennsylvania voters not to vote by mail. This advertisement may constitute both a criminal and civil conspiracy to injure the rights of President Trump’s supporters to cast their ballots in Pennsylvania. Cease and desist broadcasting, or otherwise distributing via the internet or elsewhere, this false advertisement immediately and preserve all relevant documents in anticipation of likely litigation,” the Trump campaign said in a letter to the group’s publicly listed treasurer.

In the letter, the Trump campaign argued the group was violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, legislation enacted to protects Americans from political intimidation. That law has also been cited in litigation against Trump and his allies over the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Pennsylvania Values PAC spent between $10,000 and $15,000 to show more than 800,000 Pennsylvania voters the ad, according to Google data. The ad has since been removed from the platform, with Google citing a policy violation.

According to Google data, it is the PAC's first Google ad in nearly six years. During the 2018 cycle, it ran a series of ads attacking Rep. Lou Barletta, a Republican who ran for the Senate in 2018 against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.

An official with the group didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jane C. Timm is a senior reporter for NBC News.