Old Dominion University ODU Digital Commons English Theses & Dissertations English Summer 2015 Creating Memories: Writing and Designing More Memorable Documents James Eric Sentell Old Dominion University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_etds Part of the Rhetoric and Composition Commons Recommended Citation Sentell, James E.. "Creating Memories: Writing and Designing More Memorable Documents" (2015). Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dissertation, English, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/8tfp-x251 https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_etds/3 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the English at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. CREATING MEMORIES: WRITING AND DESIGNING MORE MEMORABLE DOCUMENTS by James Eric Sentell B.A. May 2007, Missouri State University M.A. May 2009, Missouri State University A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Old Dominion University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ENGLISH OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY August 2015 Approved by: Julia Romberger (Director) David Metzger (Member) Dan Richards (Member) Stewart Whittemore (Member) ABSTRACT CREATING MEMORIES: WRITING AND DESIGNING MORE MEMORABLE DOCUMENTS James Eric Sentell Old Dominion University, 2015 Director: Dr. Julia Romberger If communication’s purpose is to enable action or belief (Johnson-Sheehan, 2012), then communication will be more effective—and thus more ethical—if the audience can easily remember it. However, the study of memory has long been neglected in English Studies. Therefore, communicators lack strategies for enhancing documents’ memorableness and an ethical framework for assessing (un)memorable documents and composing processes.