Kyle Stedman (@kstedman) reads the bad idea "The Five-Paragraph Essay is Rhetorically Sound" by Quentin Vieregge (@Vieregge). It's a chapter from Bad Ideas about Writing, which was edited by Cheryl E. Ball (@s2ceball) and Drew M. Loewe (@drewloewe). Don't miss the joke: the author of the chapter is disagreeing with the bad idea stated in the chapter's title.

Keywords: basic writing, current-traditional rhetoric, discursive writing, five-paragraph essay (or theme), prescriptivism

Quentin Vieregge is an associate professor of English at UW-Eau Claire--Barron County. He teaches writing, literature, and film classes. He has co-authored two books: Agency in the Age of Peer Production and The United States Constitution in Film: Part of Our National Culture.  And he has published more generally in the fields of rhetoric & composition and popular culture studies. (2020 bio)

As always, the theme music is "Parade" by nctrnm, and both the book and podcast are licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. The full book was published by the West Virginia University Libraries and Digital Publishing Institute; find it online for free at https://textbooks.lib.wvu.edu/badideas.

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