Everything taught as rhetoric today can be traced to Aristotle, but his rhetoric needs to be updated. The five elements of his rhetoric--invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery--were designed for public orators, but rhetoric has since come to mean the written rather than the spoken word. Peter Ramus redefined rhetoric in the sixteenth…

Argues that style is rhetoric and that a writer's style is the product of his or her choices of ways to arrange and express ideas within and between sentences. Shows how the concept of style as option offers value as a classroom tool. (FL)

Grace and style are elements of composition rarely demanded by teachers or developed by students. Since both terms are elusive to define and because asking students to make attempts at grace and style can have unappealing results, perhaps vigor is a better element to encourage students to pursue. Vigor does not outlaw graceful flourishes and…