ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapter 2, meanings are in people, not in words. But the meaning in the minds of people can be stimulated to awareness by words. During invention, we generate the ideas for our message. During disposition we select, apportion, and arrange these ideas to make the skeleton of a message. In each of these phases of message preparation, we make choices based upon our analysis of the audience and the hypothesized reactions of that audience. When our attention is directed to style, we are concerned with the completion of the message, that is, giving the skeleton its “flesh.” Stylistic choices concern the ways in which ideas are expressed. The stylistic phase of message preparation, therefore, is the phase in which you direct full attention to choosing language to express the ideas.
