Ethos, Logos and Pathos

The Art of Writing for a Sport
Paintball; Promoter of Violence or Healthy Fun? by Ross Taylor, is a paper where a student decided to touch the topic of how people interpret paintball as a violent unethical sport and how he wanted to help his audience understand the truth behind the fun, athletic and mentally challenging sport. In my attempt to understand Taylors work, I will break up his writing into Logos, Ethos and Pathos.
Logos being the appeal to reason, Taylor uses this to his advantage by demonstrating it throughout his paper. When Taylor first begins by explaining the reasons of the common belief that paintball is a promoter of violence and dangerous sport, he goes into how he believes it is misunderstood and that the game is fun, mentally challenging, and builds teamwork. He includes this into his paper to clarify his reasons behind promoting paintball. He goes on to explain each aspect he had mentioned by giving proper evidence to support his views. Like when he disguises paintball as an athletic sport he states that "During the game, players execute numerous strategic moves to gain a tactical advantage, often including quick jumps, dives, rolls, and runs." To continue to support his argument, Taylor mentions the article about eye injuries. Paintball can be violent and can cause such injuries if not played with proper safety precautions. He mentions the counter argument about violent injuries in order to justify his thought properly. Finally when Taylor begins to explain how people interpret paintball as a promoter of violence he counter attacks that with the fact that there is nothing proven that this sport influences teenagers into committing violent dangerous acts.
Ethos is the appeal to the character of the speaker/writer. Taylor demonstrates ethos when he begins his paper and places the audience in the middle of a paintball game. By doing this the reader builds confidence in Taylor's knowledge on the sport. By going through different rules and...