Mortimer J. Adler's 'How To Mark A Book'

In Mortimer J. Adler’s article “How to Mark A book,” he argues that you should mark up your book to note significant information. Mortimer argues, through the rhetorical appeals and fallacies, that as you write in a book it becomes “absorbed in your bloodstream,” and allows you to fully own the book. As readers searching for these techniques we can become, in a way, immune to the fallacies and observe the argument for what it truly is. This article, however,has relatively few fallacies. "How to Mark A book," uses all of the rhetorical appeals (ethos, logos, pathos) to convince you the reader to mark up your book. First, for any analysis of an argument, we must find “who is claiming what”(Lunsford, Ruszkiewicz and Walter 94). In this case we have Mortimer Jerome Adler, an American philosopher, educator and writer; his publisher “The Saturday Review of Literature,”who commonly publish pieces

Throughout this argument he provides reason after reason on why you should mark your book, while also considering any reason to the contrary. Notice how when he states, “If you’re a die-hard anti-book-marker you may object that the margin,… don’t give room enough. How about a using a scratch pad… then insert these pages permanently inside.”(Adler 2), he explains the counter argument and presents a solution immediately afterwards.

Next, we will talk through his ethical appeals, which aren’t nearly as common as his logical appeals, however still prove to be strong supporting details in his case. He says, “The most famous active reader of great books I know is President Hutchins of the University of Chicago,” and goes on to talk regarding his marking of books in further detail. Hutchins list of accomplishments range from graduating from Yale to being the dean of the law school there. Certainly this man should be held in high regard, and Adler has clearly formed the case, “he does it so should