Say what? When I first heard the word ethos I had absolutely no idea what my English teacher was talking about. It seemed like some crazy word that people make up in order to veil what they really mean. Ethos later came to mean the moral character, or credibility of an author. This made much more sense to me.
Whether we realize it or not, the world is full of ethos in so many different ways. Public speakers need to build up their reputation with an audience in order to be the most effective. Writers need to target their audiences in ways that are insightful and wise. When a person has no ethos with us we simple disregard their comments as useless or dumb. Ethos is everything. What many people label as their "reputation", "legitimacy", or "character" is just another way of saying their "ethos." If you take away a person's positive ethos, their arguments no longer become legitimate. This was just one of the many things that I learned this semester in my writing class.
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