This book uses logos, pathos, and ethos in critical thinking, active reading, and persuasive writing. Accessible and stimulating, the versatile manual can be used as a rhetoric, a reader, a guide on research writing, and a guide on style. Through its chapters, users learn to excel at what they say; through our style interchapters users earn to excel at how they say it. Cheating, conservation, race, politics, male/female communication styles, gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage, stem cell research ndash; many diverse and mature readings on these subjects engage readers and writers in analytical thinking and stimulate them to react with thoughtful discussions and compositions. For individuals who want to communicate clearly, argue persuasively, and analyze and evaluate what they read.

Winner of the 2017 Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Book Prize Software developers work rhetorically to make meaning through the code they write. In some ways, writing code is like any other form of communication; in others, it proves to be new, exciting, and unique. In Rhetorical Code Studies, Kevin Brock explores how software code serves as meaningful communication through which software developers construct arguments that are made up of logical procedures and express both implicit and explicit claims as to how a given program operates. Building on current scholarly work in digital rhetoric, software studies, and technical communication, Brock connects and continues ongoing conversations among rhetoricians, technical communicators, software studies scholars, and programming practitioners to demonstrate how software code and its surrounding discourse are highly rhetorical forms of communication. He considers examples ranging from large, well-known projects like Mozilla Firefox to small-scale programs like the “FizzBuzz” test common in many programming job interviews. Undertaking specific examinations of code texts as well as the contexts surrounding their composition, Brock illuminates the variety and depth of rhetorical activity taking place in and around code, from individual differences in style to changes in large-scale organizational and community norms. Rhetorical Code Studies holds significant implications for digital communication, multimodal composition, and the cultural analysis of software and its creation. It will interest academics and students of writing, rhetoric, and software engineering as well as technical communicators and developers of all types of software.

Argumentation: The Art of Civil Advocacy teaches students the principles of argumentation as a practical way to engage in interpersonal and public deliberation. Authors Larry Underberg and Heather Norton offer a unique approach for creating civil discourse by encouraging students to consider how they argue with others to enhance or diminish opportunities for future dialogue. A variety of everyday examples are provided in the text to demonstrate how well-reasoned argumentation can strengthen communities and create productive citizenship. Students gain a better understanding for the situations, environments, and relationships that form the context for an advocate, and how those factors can influence discourse.

Using a flexible software system, this book teaches evidential and inferential issues used in drawing conclusions from masses of evidence.

“This short book makes you smarter than 99% of the population. . . . The concepts within it will increase your company’s ‘organizational intelligence.’. . . It’s more than just a must-read, it’s a ‘have-to-read-or-you’re-fired’ book.”—Geoffrey James, INC.com From the author of An Illustrated Book of Loaded Language, here’s the antidote to fuzzy thinking, with furry animals! Have you read (or stumbled into) one too many irrational online debates? Ali Almossawi certainly had, so he wrote An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments! This handy guide is here to bring the internet age a much-needed dose of old-school logic (really old-school, a la Aristotle). Here are cogent explanations of the straw man fallacy, the slippery slope argument, the ad hominem attack, and other common attempts at reasoning that actually fall short—plus a beautifully drawn menagerie of animals who (adorably) commit every logical faux pas. Rabbit thinks a strange light in the sky must be a UFO because no one can prove otherwise (the appeal to ignorance). And Lion doesn’t believe that gas emissions harm the planet because, if that were true, he wouldn’t like the result (the argument from consequences). Once you learn to recognize these abuses of reason, they start to crop up everywhere from congressional debate to YouTube comments—which makes this geek-chic book a must for anyone in the habit of holding opinions.

Powering the Future brings together material that assesses innovative solutions to the global climate and energy crises. It explores the fundamental differences between alternative and renewable energy sources, and the role of developing nations in implementing these technologies, among other issues. Chapters address: An overview of green energy sources and select worldwide initiatives The benefits of alternative energy Drawbacks to energy alternatives Differing approaches to alternative energy implemen-tation The alternative vs. renewable energy debate Alternative energy in the developing world. A general introduction and introductory essays to each chapter give the reader the necessary background to put the issue in perspective.