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William Zinsser Simplicity Summary

Decent Essays

Kairos—William Zinsser’s “Simplicity” posses the rhetorical device, kairos. Kairos, according Carolyn R. Miller, is the “principle of timing or opportunity” in a literary work, and is usually employed after a particular (recent) event in order to leverage a specific idea. The possibility of Zinsser leveraging kairos is broad, and he does exercise effective use of it in my case. And in my case, the result of effective kairos use is my agreement with Zinsser’s main idea: “We are a society strangling in unnecessary words.” “What member of an insurance or medical plan can decipher the brochure that tells him what his costs and benefits are?” I most definitely cannot, and neither can the representative I expect to assist me in determining them.

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