How Not to Say the Wrong Thing ~ Silk & Goldman

~ By Susan Silk & Barry Goldman

"It works in all kinds of crises -- medical, legal, even existential. It's the 'Ring Theory' of kvetching. The first rule is comfort in, dump out." An expository text, the article is meant to pose a problem the authors noticed and consequently offer a solution. The purpose is to aide oblivious people with the social etiquette of responding to a crisis that they are not the center of. 

Indicative of this would be the organization of the article. The first two passages provide a set of personal experiences where people responded inappropriately to to those most affected by what was happening. These provide a backdrop for the next paragraph, which goes into an explanation of a technique one of the authors created, the Ring Theory.

Adopting an overall casual tone, the authors lean towards a more conversational approach to get their point across. To illustrate, the authors use contractions instead of spelling out words like "cannot." The text is more fluid than, say, a scientific paper concerning turtles.  Friendlier than a formal paper, the article sounds much like a friend, one who is perhaps advising you as the reader to think for a moment before acting.