Luxagraf

While I’ve never seen these formalized like these, I definitely spend a lot of time working through questions like this when I write stuff for luxagraf, and to a lesser degree, Wired. A handy cheat sheet for those looking to improve their writing or just thinking, courtesy of Aristotle. “Sometimes when you’re thinking about a subject that you might want to write about — or even form an opinion about — you don’t know quite where to start or how to proceed. In rhetorical theory, this stage in the process of developing an argument — coming up with ideas, thinking of something to say — is called invention (inventio). In the fourth century before Christ, the Greek philosopher Aristotle provided would-be orators with a wealth of topoi (sing. topos), literally places, intellectual places to explore, in his Rhetoric. In their classic textbook, Writing, Gregory and Elizabeth Cowan (1980) adapted Aristotle’s concept for modern use in the form of a heuristic, a sort of thought-provoking questionnaire that helps writers develop a more thorough understanding of a topic as they work through each stage. It has become one of my favorite teaching tools.”

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