Content
 
the content of an article refers to the basic points and information covered. When you are looking at content as a part of the rhetorical strategy, you are assessing whether what the author chose to focus on and cover is effective at appealing to the audience and communicating the core message that the author intended.

Structure
 
structure refers to the order of the information and ideas present. In examining structure, you are trying to determine whether the arrangement suits the subject matter as well as the audience. Look at the intro, the conclusion, and the body. Look at how the author tried to hook the reader. Look at the paragraphing and arrangement. Consider whether it flows and is coherent.

Diction
 
When you examine the diction of a written work you are looking at the specific words chosen. How did the author’s word choices effect his/her message? Are the words helping to powerfully convey the ideas and points? What is it about the language that helps to persuade the reader? Or conversely, what about the word choice is off-putting or problematic? In examining diction, you really are looking at the tiny details that help to create a perception in the audience, and how those words and the perception they give effects the audience’s reception of the ideas.

Tone
 
Tone is the impression and attitude the author conveys throughout the entirety of a piece of writing. If diction is the small puzzle pieces within the puzzle, the tone is the impression or feeling conveyed by the image and pieces once the puzzle is put together. Think of tone as the posture and feeling that an article communicates.

Narrative
 
Narrative refers to the inclusion of a character (real or imagined) and/or a story within the writing. Usually this is to provide a concrete example to a point or to help the audience to see and feel the importance of the ideas. Using narrative is a powerful choice because as human beings we are captured by story and often responsive to it. The use of narrative can be quite illustrative of ideas and effective in communicating them…except when it falls flat or when it pushes the audience too far into negative emotions. Making a reader defensive or irritating the reader is usually not going to lead to much persuasive appeal.

Syntax
 
syntax has to do with the types of sentences used in the article—both the kinds of sentences (declarative, imperative, questions, exclamatory) and also the length of them (short, long, fragmented). Are they complex sentences or simple sentences? What do the types of sentences do for how the audience reads the written words? Think of syntax as the pacing of the piece. Syntax can also be responsible for the level of intellectualism conveyed—higher level scholarly pieces often rely on jargon and highly complex sentence patterns while an article for a wider audience might rely on a much more basic design for its sentences.

Audience Awareness
 
when you look at the article and where it is published, you can determine who it is intended for. Part of what you might choose to look for is whether the strategies the author is relying on are a good match to the audience it is intended for. Sometimes authors nail the audience awareness piece and design an article that will be highly effective and persuasive. On the other hand, sometimes they design an article that has strong strategies but is missing the mark because the strategies aren’t a good fit for the audience. For example, an article that is a lighthearted and nostalgic commentary on going to the beach wouldn’t be appropriate for an audience of people who just barely survived a hurricane and lost their homes. The question is “can the author read the room? Can we see that they know who they are trying to reach?”

Voice
 
when you are assessing a speech you will of course consider the way a speaker projects his or her voice and how that voice conveys the ideas and emotions. You want to be able to pinpoint whether a voice is soft or loud, strong or weak, high or low. You also want to consider the pacing of the voice—some speakers talk fast while others are slower or just more deliberate. Consider whether the pace and the tone of the voice are effective of the audience. For example, I tend to talk really really fast and somewhat moderate to low volume. When I’m teaching children, I have to force myself to talk slower and louder because they feel that I am more engaged, and they can understand me better and engage more fully. Voice is something a speaker can control. They have their natural instincts but if they are a practiced speaker they can and do adjust for their audience.

Gestures
 
Consider the hand gestures, movements, and body language of the speaker. Some individuals tend to stand really still and hardly move at all while others may be quite mobile and active. The irony is that some people use gestures that make a speech more powerful while others may be active on stage and the audience could find it distracting or annoying. So, gestures and body language are not good or bad in and of themselves—they are effective or ineffective and that is dependent on how they are deployed and how they are received. Again, speakers must know their audience and shape and choose movement for those viewers.

Emotion
 
a speaker can convey emotion in a variety of ways. Through voice and gestures and stage presence. Those are all ways that emotion can be indirectly leveraged into a speech. But speech can be emotional in the examples, the narratives, as well as the structure. You have to think about what the speaker is including and why. Are they using certain techniques or strategies solely for emotional impact. If a speaker laughs or cries or gets angry on stage, that is a more direct deploying of emotion. So pay attention to direct and indirect ways that the speaker is attempting to emotionally engage with the audience.

Stage Presence
 
Stage presence is similar to gestures but has to do more with the overall attitude on the stage. It’s the impression or the attitude that the speaker conveys holistically. How does the speaker walk onto the stage and what is their attitude towards their audience? Is it friendly? Is it patronizing? Is it educational? Are they projecting power and charisma? Or are they more casual and humorous? If you’ve ever watched a comedian perform and then watched a politician give a speech, you’ll note dramatic differences is how they hold their place on the stage. This is shaped by what they are trying to convey.

Visual Aids
 
Speakers sometimes just use their body and their voice to communicate to their audience. But often they use visual aids or props to help them. You need to determine whether these aids are in fact helpful and how they are enhancing (or detracting from) the speaker’s message. They should further support and expand the ideas and points being presented. If they are unnecessary or distracting, we need to notice that too.

Anecdote
 
Just like visual aids, speakers often use stories or short anecdotes to illustrate a point or connect with the audience. It’s a way of taking abstract ideas and making them concrete. If a speaker includes one or multiple narratives, they are really trying to make something applicable and relatable and pertinent for their audience. And just like with visual aids, we have to decide whether these narrative anecdotes are distracting or annoying or sappy to the audience. A well timed and illustrative story can result in significant impact and buy-in. But a poorly designed or timed story can be damaging because your audience might be confused or irritated by it.

Camera angles and framing
 
If you watch any film, you need to be aware of how directors are choosing to position cameras and arrange shots of their subjects. Yes this seems more obvious is blockbuster type movies but it is equally relevant when analyzing documentary style films. How are the ideas and subjects being composed in the square that is being captured? How and why are things positioned the way that they are? Remember that there’s always a reason. It’s to show them in a certain way so that the overall message is being articulated visually.

Lighting
 
consider the lighting that the creators choose in different scenes. Lighting talks a lot more work than we often realize. It is rarely accidental. It has to literally be engineered and constructed so that what is being filmed is actually clear and visible but also so that it is figuratively visible and conveying the ideas and points that the creators are trying to communicate.

Music
 
What sort of music or sound is being played in the background. Music can produce an emotional reaction in viewers without their being conscious of it. It can shift the focus, tone, and effect of the visual scene. So look at whether the music is actively assisting in the creator’s intended message or not.

Text on the screen or Use of animation (visual effects)
 
often films that convey information might use a mix of “normal” filming but also rely some on computer animation and visual effects. These are essentially a different way to visually aid the viewer in understanding. When analyzing these choices, we can look at the professional quality of these elements

Composition
 
Composition covers the contents of the film as a whole as well as the individual visual shots. Film is a visual medium. What is the central arc and focus? Look at the subject and how the subject is being represented and why it’s being represented in these ways. That will give you an idea of the global message and how well the details of the cinematography are communicating it.

Focus
 
This is a specific detail but an important one to notice. When you take a picture or film something, you will have a focal point. What is in focus and what is kept in the background? What is clear and what is more blurred? What is present in the shot and what is absent? Noticing these details again will demonstrate how effectively a film is conveying the central idea or message. If those details are not lending themselves to the central messaging, then they aren’t aligned with the purpose and will probably not effectively convey the points and ideas to the viewers.

White Space
 
When you’re analyzing a website look at the amount of text in proportion to white space. White space is important because it gives clarity and power to certain words and sentences

Usability and Clarity
 
A site might be visually appealing but if it isn’t clear what its purpose is or if it doesn’t effectively lead viewers to do what it is motivating them to do, it probably won’t be very usable or effective. The overall usability of a site is quite important. If traffic comes to the site and is quickly confused or unsure what they are supposed to do next, then the site isn’t working for the audience. So it’s either a failure in design details or in audience awareness or both.

Images
 
sites might use visual images (either 2D, 3D or photography). These images should support the language on the page and the message of the site. If the images are not clearly placed and presented, then the creators have not effectively incorporated them onto the page. Imaging is essential because reading large blocks of script on the webpage without anything to break it up is wearisome at best and annoying at worst. Particularly in a digital world, we are accustomed to high expectations of what appears in a multimodal format, so for a site to do everything well except utilize images, still calls into question the rhetorical effectiveness of the website.

Menu
 
Notice how web designers use a menu to guide the audience’s experience. A menu isn’t just a list of options. It’s where the creators can prioritize things. What they choose to display on the menu and also what they choose not to display tells us something about the purpose of the site. Again, we also have to consider audience and whether the menu options and the messaging contained there are going to work for the particular intended audience. Again, sometimes what is visually appealing and logical for one audience may not be for a different audience, so awareness of who is going to be using the site is critical in deciphering whether it is effective in achieving it.

Links
 
Designers and authors use links to lead visitors to other places inside and outside the site. Links again are clues into priorities. They also can aid in navigation. Broken links can cause confusion and frustration so linking at all is important in site management because it can give viewers clues to whether the site is being maintained and updated. Links also can cause visitors to judge you based on what other digital media you might point them toward.

Colors
 
Website colors can convey tone and atmosphere. Think about how often color can give us a sense or an impression. There is actually extensive scholarship on the different effects of different colors. It’s called color theory. Experts have a lot to say about the role color can play in assisting in messaging.

Font
 
Font has to do with the size and shape of the text. The choices and variations within those choices, as with color, can give a site’s traffic an impression about the level of seriousness or professionalism or playfulness of a site and its creators. Web designers might even use graphic designers to create a specialized font just for their site and for their messaging. So look at the nuances of feeling that text size and graphics might give to the reader.