Summary
For my rhetorical analysis, I chose to analyze “Fitness ABC’s Certification Manual.” This manual is from Fitness ABC website. The primary audience for this manual is the people interested in receiving fitness certification, but companies concerned with fitness certification are the primary audience of the International Fitness Association, which impacts how the manual is created and formatted, as well as what is included in it. The company in question has been providing services for organizations and experts that strive to gain fitness certification to become legitimate players in the fitness industry.
Content
The content of the manual is quite diverse, touching upon on physiological aspects of physical performance, as well as the issues such as nutrition and chemical changes within people’s bodies. The specified approach to content selection helps develop a full picture of the processes occurring during exercises. As a result, core quality requirements for fitness organizations are justified and critical standards are introduced into the target environment.
Organization
The manual is organized rather clearly ad effectively. Split into several key sections, the manual provides detailed instructions related to each certification aspect in its corresponding part. The manual starts with the requirements for nutrition and the overview of core physiological aspects and then proceeds to the discussion of different training types and strategies. The reason for choosing the specified layout concerns the necessity to shed light on the key physical requirements for exercising, specifically, the necessity to have the required level of health. In other words, customer safety defines the choice of the manual arrangement, which creates the effect of a caring and supportive attitude of the organization.
Aesthetic Quality
The aesthetic of the manual is mostly average, with none of the elements being specifically unique or attracting a particularly vast amount of attention. The specified choices must have been made to keep the reader’s focus on the essential issue, namely, the set standards and the necessity to comply with them. On the website, the manual creates a sense of normalcy and orderliness, which must have been the main rationale behind the aesthetic choices. For instance, the prevalence of the white color and the scarce number of images and illustrations contribute to the sense of the ordinary. The few images on the front page represent the organization’s core focus by portraying people exercising or wearing sports clothes (Krautblatt, 2022).
The color choice of blue and red could be considered clashing, yet their sparse use removes the specified impression. Finally, the fonts used in the paper introduce a certain element of chaos. They might seem mismatched with a combination of serif and sans serif fonts, their different sizes, colors for different heading types, and other characteristics. However, since each font type is designated to a particular part of the paper or a specific subheading type, they serve their purpose, enhancing the impression of an order being the priority.
Page Layout
On the page, the manual is arranged rather carefully and clearly. The specified approach to arrangement creates an understanding of the importance and urgency of the provided information. Furthermore, the general page structure, including the number of paragraphs and the arrangement of core data, appears to be visually pleasing. The specified characteristic of the page layout contributes to the fast perception of the information and its proper understanding.
Writing Style
The manual focuses primarily on the use of logos as a means of appealing to the rational side of the readers’ personalities. The emphasis on logos as the core constituent of the rhetorical approach of the organization is evident in the use of technical terms and the provision of clear instructions devoid of any emotional appeal. Technical terms such as “diet requirements,” “physiology,” and “kinesiology” are used consistently in the manual, creating an effect of competence and accuracy, and authority. The guide uses formal diction to represent the set requirements as essential standards of practice.
Visual Elements
The manual contains multiple tables that help visualize key information and represent essential standards and requirements for exercising and nutrition. However, the manual lacks images supporting the information stated in the instructions. As for the ones included in the manual, the writers must have selected them to create a visual shorthand for the type of services discussed. The inclusion of the specified images creates the effect of building an immediately understandable setting to which the guidelines are to be applied.
Reference
Krautblatt, C. (2022). Fitness ABC’s certification manual. IFA.