Posted: April 23rd, 2016

How to establish your logos?

To write a review, you set out the product or service that you’re reviewing, your expectations for that product or service, and compare your expectations with what you actually got. Finally, pass judgment on the quality or capacity of your subject.

A “product or service” includes anything for which you paid money and expected to receive something in exchange. Read the sample reviews in our text, and you’ll see that some are about music albums or movies. Those are products of the entertainment industry. You can review music or a film yourself. Services include anything and everything from an oil, lube, and tire pressure check on your car to a memorable vacation at a resort in Vanuatu. Pick any product or service that you’ve experienced or used AND that left you with a clearly good or bad impression.

To start, outline your expectations and how your subject met them: What did you want? What did you get?

Next, outline the precise ways that your subject met or failed to meet expectations. Use specifics and details: explain exactly how your subject succeeded or failed.

You should have a good start with your details, so begin drafting the essay. Name your product/service in the first paragraph so your reader identifies the subject. Establish your ethos by describing your background, your relationship to the product/service, the length of time you’ve used it or known about it. Establish your logos, too: in a thesis, tell what you expected and whether or not your subject met those expectations.

The rest depends on specifics. Get into them. Write paragraphs that have one idea each and that tell, exactly, what the product/service did or did not do to meet your expectations.

Your conclusion should either
1) reinforce your positive review of the product/service or 2) offer an alternative if you’ve written a negative review