Delivery & Document Design

The concept of "delivery" is one of the rhetorical canons. The Latin word, pronuntiatio, has morphed into our familiar word pronunciation. In ancient Greece, as rhetoric was first being defined, we might imagine this as a guy in a toga standing on a street corning delivering a speech. But in today's context, and particularly regarding writing, I use delivery to address the form and format: media and document design.

The genre of a text largely determines its document design and delivery, though rhetors (or their editors, book designers, etc.) can spend considerable time making delivery expectation more elaborate or beautiful.

Two pages of lines representing dense text, side by side. The first is an academic essay, with more line spacing, indented paragraphs, etc. The second is a business format letter, structured very differently, with spaces between paragraphs, letterhead, and a signature.

What effect does a document's design have on a reader's expectations? Even from a distance, academic essays (left) and business letters (right) look different from each other. How do those differences communicate to readers, even before they see any of the actual words?


Doodle: the front page of an academic essay, with headers, page numbers, a title and separate paragraphs, some additional pages, and the works cited list.

In addition to some academic genres, we'll learn formats for what is often called "technical writing" that you might use in an office or professional environment, such as letters and memos.

Learning the details of document design and delivery for academic writing will be very helpful in college! We'll be using MLA essay and citation format. But there are others, too! 

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find the list of inks in the lefthand toolbaruse this guide for the document design on all your academic essays in our course