Evaluative Writing

Evaluative writing is a genre of writing in which a subject is reviewed and looked at closely. The author of an evaluative piece needs to collect relevant information regarding their subject and choose their criteria: the subject was good, or the subject was bad. The author should be aware of their audience and meet their expectations. The author must also be sure to follow evaluation ethics, by making a constructive argument, as well as being aware of real life consequences of their review. Amount of information that should be included should vary depending on where to evaluative piece is going to be published. Lastly the author needs to make use of pathos, logos, and ethos.

Relevant Information
Being that evaluative writing’s purpose is to talk about specific subject, it is important to collect as much information regarding the subject as possible. The information should be relevant to the subject. Information on other subjects should only be included to make supporting points.

Criteria
In evaluative writing, criteria is a characteristic that holds perhaps the most value. The author’s criteria is what position the author is taking on the subject, or what they are criticizing. Their criteria can go one of two ways: good or bad. Once the author has decided which side they are arguing, they need to gather information accordingly to support it.

Audience Expectations
Depending on the intended audience of an evaluation, an author may want to alter which type of information is included. For example, if someone were to make an album review they would want to gear it toward a specific audience. If it was geared towards music fans, they may focus on the quality of the music or lyrical meaning. If it was geared more towards a group such as parents however, the author would want to talk more about how appropriate the lyrical content may be for their children.

Evaluation Ethics
When writing evaluations, the author should be aware of evaluation ethics. Using evaluation ethics means that although the author is criticizing a subject, they should remain respectful. If they are trying to convey that their subject was unsuccessful, then they can absolutely do so, but should do so in a constructive manner. Additionally, the author needs to be aware of real life implications that could affect their subject. For example a poor restaurant review could cause a drop in customers. With this being said, evaluations should be completely trustworthy.

Context
Briefly defined, context describes what is already known by the audience. This determines how much background information an author should include in their evaluation and is determined by where the writing is being published. In an academic setting the author would want to include as much information as humanly possible. If the evaluation was for something such as a magazine, they could include less information for the sake of brevity. This would be acceptable in this case, since the readers of the magazine would already have some sort of knowledge or interest of the subject.

Ethos
Ethos is a concept based out of ancient Greece, meaning “character.” Ethos is extremely important when writing an evaluative essay because it establishes that the author is able to be trusted. Establishing credibility is done by showing that you have done a fair amount of background research while evaluating your subject. Additionally, the author needs to make sure to give credit to any outside sources that they us

Pathos
Also based out of ancient Greece, pathos is an aspect of writing that is used in order to reach the emotions of the audience. Pathos is crucial to any piece of evaluative writing because emotional appeal keeps the piece interesting to the readers. Pathos can be achieved in many different ways. One of these would be by starting off with a personal experience or story. Additionally, the author of an evaluative piece should speak passionately about their subject.

Logos
Logos is another Greek term which basically means the author’s opinion, or argument. In evaluative writing, the author needs to choose an argument that goes either one of two ways: the subject is bad, or the subject is good. The author needs to use logos in order to convey to the audience what side they are taking, and must make clear arguments to support why they are taking that side.