Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects

For courses in first-year composition and advanced composition.

Rhetorical Grammar encourages writers to recognise and use the grammatical and stylistic choices available to them and to understand the rhetorical effects of those choices on their readers. The 8th Edition offers a more intuitive content organisation, updated passage selections, and current exercises and examples. It maintains its hallmark revision strategies and systematic discussions about reader expectations, sentence rhythm and cohesion, subordination and coordination, punctuation, modification, diction, and many other essential principles.

Kolin and Gray ask students to regard composing sentences as an artful way to elicit a desired emotion or reaction - rather than a list of tedious rules to remember. In this way, grammar is defined as an intellectual exercise that opens students’ minds to the versatility, beauty, and possibilities of language.