Paul Roberts, author of How to Say Nothing in 500 Words, has had an accomplished career writing English books, making him qualified to lecture students about their dismal essays. How to Say Nothing in 500 Words is an analysis on what makes student essays boring and repetitive, and how to change that in our own writing. He uses example of a standard essay about college football, a topic beat to earth by countless years of students. Roberts points out all the things the hypothetical student did wrong, mostly that they were just trying to make the 500 word minimum, and then he gives examples of how to spice it up, not make it so monotonous. He clearly wrote this essay for students, to help them write better essays and stand out from the crowd instead of just blending into the background with basic writing. The way Roberts achieves this purpose is by using a specific, yet hypothetical scenario that is probably familiar to all students. He wrote an essay in his essay and gave it a background, a story that the audience could connect to. He compared the first essay, boring and lazy, to the second essay, which was on the same topic, but written with all the suggestions that Roberts had given to make it better. The contrast between the two clearly showed how much better the second essay really was. Roberts knew his audience well and used that to his advantage by creating a hypothetical scenario akin to one his audience might be in. By doing this, he made sure the audience would be engaged in his writing and be paying attention to what he was saying. Roberts' purpose was to educated students on how to better their papers, and I believe he did that well. Using his scenario and example made sure the audience was engaged and contrasting the first essay to the second highlighted how important it was to have good, interesting papers.
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