# Ethos, pathos and logos > Aristotle's three ways to persuade. Ethos appeals to the speaker's credibility and character, pathos to the audience's emotions, and logos to logic and evidence. Strong arguments, speeches and pitches use all three. Also known as ethos, pathos, logos, rhetorical appeals ## In practice Every persuasive speech asks the audience three silent questions: should I trust you, do I care, and does this make sense? Aristotle named the answers ethos, pathos and logos more than two thousand years ago, and they still describe how people are moved, from closing arguments to wedding toasts to sales pitches. For writers they are a tool on two levels. Inside the story, they explain why a character's speech wins or fails: a general rallies troops with pathos, a lawyer wins with logos, a stranger is believed because of ethos. Outside the story, the same three appeals shape a query letter, a pitch meeting or a logline that has to convince a reader in one sentence. The appeals are rarely used alone. A great persuasive scene builds credibility, makes the audience feel the stakes and gives them a reason that holds up. When a character's argument feels hollow, check which of the three is missing. ## All three appeals in one short speech **A character persuades with ethos, pathos and logos** ``` INT. TOWN HALL - NIGHT Folding chairs, every one full. The council wants to close the clinic. NURSE ADELE (60s) stands at the microphone in her scrubs, straight from a shift. ADELE I've worked at that clinic for thirty-one years. I delivered half the people in this room. Murmurs. A man in the third row nods. Adele holds up a photo of a newborn. ADELE This is Maya. She was born blue, at two in the morning, during a snowstorm. The nearest hospital is forty minutes away. She had four. Silence. Adele sets the photo down and lays a single page on the council's table: the cost of keeping the clinic open beside the cost of the ambulance runs it would replace. ``` Adele's first line is ethos: thirty-one years and a room full of people she delivered. The story of Maya is pathos, and "She had four" turns it into a number the audience feels. The page on the table is logos. The scene works because each appeal arrives when the room is ready for it. ## What ethos, pathos and logos are Ethos, pathos and logos are the three modes of persuasion, or rhetorical appeals, described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric in the fourth century BC. He argued that a speaker can persuade through the character of the speaker (ethos), the emotional state of the listener (pathos) or the argument itself (logos). Nearly every persuasive text still uses some mix of the three. Ethos is the appeal to credibility. The audience believes the speaker because of their expertise, experience, honesty or goodwill. A doctor explaining a diagnosis, a veteran describing war or a friend who has always told the truth carries ethos. It can come from reputation before the speaker opens their mouth, or be built during the speech by showing fairness and knowledge. Pathos is the appeal to emotion: fear, hope, anger, pity, pride or love. Logos is the appeal to logic and evidence, through facts, statistics, examples and reasoning. Aristotle also wrote about kairos, the right moment for an argument, which reminds writers that even a strong appeal fails if it arrives at the wrong time. ## Ethos, pathos and logos examples Ethos: "As a firefighter for twenty years, I can tell you that smoke detectors save lives." Pathos: "Imagine waking up to the sound of your child coughing in a house full of smoke." Logos: "Homes with working smoke detectors have far fewer fire deaths than homes without them." Each sentence argues for the same thing in a different way. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech uses all three. It draws ethos from the setting at the Lincoln Memorial and from its appeals to the Declaration of Independence. Its logos is the argument that the nation has broken a written promise, framed as a "bad check" returned marked "insufficient funds." And its repeated dream of his four children being judged "by the content of their character" is pure pathos. Advertising leans on them constantly. A dentist recommending a toothpaste is ethos, a commercial about a soldier coming home for the holidays is pathos, and a chart comparing fuel efficiency is logos. Learning to spot each appeal is the first step to using them deliberately, and to noticing when one is being used to hide the weakness of another. ## Ethos, pathos and logos in film Courtroom dramas are built on the appeals. In 12 Angry Men, Juror 8 wins over the room with logos, taking apart the evidence one piece at a time, while other jurors' anger and prejudice show pathos turned against reason. In A Few Good Men, Kaffee's cross-examination of Colonel Jessup uses logic to provoke an emotional outburst that destroys the colonel's credibility. Battle speeches are mostly pathos and ethos. Aragorn at the Black Gate in The Return of the King and William Wallace in Braveheart don't offer statistics; they stake their own lives on the fight and remind the soldiers what they love. The speakers' willingness to stand in the front line is ethos, and it makes the emotion believable. Some of cinema's best persuasion scenes are about failure. A character who leads with logic when the audience needs feeling, or who has spent their credibility before the speech begins, loses the room. Writing that failure precisely tells the audience exactly who the character is. ## How to use ethos, pathos and logos in writing When a character has to persuade, decide what the listener needs. A skeptic needs logos, a frightened crowd needs pathos and a stranger needs a reason to trust the speaker first. Write the speech for that listener, not for the audience in the theater, and let the listener's reaction show whether it works. Earn ethos before the speech. In film, credibility usually comes from what a character has done on screen, not from what they say about themselves. A character who saved someone in act one can ask for trust in act three, and the audience will grant it along with the people in the scene. Make logos concrete and pathos specific. A single image (one child, one empty chair) moves more than a general appeal to suffering, and a single clear fact lands harder than a list of statistics. When you pitch your own script, apply the same rules: show why you are the writer for this story, why it matters and why it works. ## Official sources & context Sources reviewed Oct 28, 2026 - [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Aristotle's Rhetoric](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/) ## Common questions ### What are ethos, pathos and logos in simple terms? They are three ways to persuade someone. Ethos makes them trust you, pathos makes them feel something, and logos gives them a logical reason. Most good arguments use all three. ### What is an example of ethos, pathos and logos? Ethos: "As a nurse for twenty years, I've seen what this does." Pathos: "Picture your own child in that hospital bed." Logos: "The program costs less than the emergency visits it prevents." ### Who came up with ethos, pathos and logos? The Greek philosopher Aristotle described them in his Rhetoric, written in the fourth century BC. He called them the three modes of persuasion that a speaker can create through speech. ### Can you use ethos, pathos and logos together? Yes, and the most persuasive speeches usually do. Credibility makes the audience listen, emotion makes them care, and logic gives them a reason to act that still makes sense once the feeling fades. ### What is kairos in rhetoric? Kairos is the right or opportune moment to make an argument. It is often taught as a fourth appeal alongside ethos, pathos and logos: the same speech can win or fail depending on when it is given. ### Which is the strongest appeal? It depends on the audience and the situation. Aristotle wrote that the speaker's character may be the most effective means of persuasion, but a frightened crowd may respond to pathos while a panel of experts wants logos. The strongest arguments combine them. ### How do screenwriters use ethos, pathos and logos? In speeches and arguments inside the story, such as closing statements, rallying cries and confrontations, and outside it in pitches and query letters. Knowing which appeal a scene relies on helps a writer see why a speech lands or falls flat. ## Related terms - [Monologue](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/monologue): A long, uninterrupted speech by one character, spoken to other characters who listen. In a screenplay a monologue is written as one extended block of dialogue and is used sparingly, for moments when a character finally says what the story has been building toward. - [Pitch](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/pitch): A concise selling of a project — spoken or written — that names the hook, characters, conflict, and why this story now, without requiring the listener to read the whole script first. - [Logline](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/logline): One or two sentences that capture protagonist, conflict, and stakes — the shortest honest pitch of the story. - [Dialogue](https://www.inkwell.software/glossary/dialogue): Spoken lines under a character cue. In Plot, a dialogue pass proposes changes, mostly to the spoken lines, that you accept or reject one at a time. --- Canonical page: