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The first textbook on rhetoric which still remains to us was written by Aristotle. He defines rhetoric as the art of writing effectively, viewing it primarily as the art of persuasion in public speaking, but making it include all the devices for convincing or moving the mind of the hearer or reader. Aristotle's treatise is profound and scholarly, and every textbook of rhetoric since written is little more than a restatement of some part of his comprehensive work. It is a scientific analysis of the subject, prepared for critics and men of a highly cultured and investigating turn of mind, and was not originally intended to instruct ordinary persons in the management of words and sentences for practical purposes. While no one doubts that an ordinary command of words may be learned, there is an almost universal impression in the public mind, and has been even from the time of Aristotle himself, that writing well or ill is almost purely a matter of talent, genius, or, let us say, instinct. It has been truly observed that the formal study of rhetoric never has made a single successful writer, and a great many writers have succeeded preeminently without ever having opened a rhetorical textbook. It has not been difficult, therefore, to come to the conclusion that writing well or ill comes by nature alone, and that all we can do is to pray for luck

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Alpheus Sherwin Cody (November 30, 1868 - April 4, 1959) was an American writer and entrepreneur who developed a long-running home-study course in speaking and writing and a signature series of advertisements asking Do You Make These Mistakes in English? A critic of traditional English education, Cody advocated colloquial style and grammar. His course, presented in a patented workbook format which he described as self-correcting, was purchased by over 150,000 students from its inception in 1918. He published essays, books and articles virtually nonstop from 1893 through 1950. In a book published in 1895, he gave the advice, Write what you know-so go out and know something. Born in Michigan, Sherwin Cody was orphaned at an early age and raised by relatives in New England. He attended the Canterbury district school in New Hampshire, Waltham High School in Massachusetts, and in 1885 to Amherst College, where he studied with John Franklin Genung and worked as a secretary to Amherst President Julius Hawley Seelye. After graduating from Amherst, Cody worked at various jobs trying to establish himself as a writer. After the failure of a Horatio Alger-style novel called In the Heart of the Hills, he moved to Chicago in 1896.[2] Cody worked at the Chicago Tribune as correspondence education was being initiated at the University of Chicago, and he was assigned to writing a home study course on English for the Tribune. In 1903 Cody produced a version of his course in pocket-sized book form as The Art of Writing and Speaking the English Language which he advertised in the business magazine The System and elsewhere.[3] Historians of business communication list Cody among those establishing modern business communication based on the notions of clarity, correctness, courtesy, and colloquial style.[4] Marketing his own books and giving personalized correspondence courses in business writing connected Cody with Chicago business leaders and the school reform movement in Chicago and he developed a series of ability tests which became the basis of the Sherwin Cody 100% Self-correcting Course in English Language

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