In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson seeks to persuade readers to open their eyes to a serious problem: the reckless spraying of poison. His goal in writing this book is to protect plants, animals, and humans from poisons that never needed to be sprayed. Carson uses invective, ad hominem argument, and punctuation to attack the people responsible for the spraying and elicit an emotional response from the reader. Through the use of these strategies, his argument becomes stronger and more effective in revealing the horrors of species control. In order to achieve his goal, Carson must convince the reader that farmers are negligent of the environment. Carson uses invectives throughout the play to make the farmers the “bad guys.” From the start, she uses invective to surprise the reader. “As the habit of killing grows – the resort to “eradication” of any creature that might inconvenience or annoy us – birds increasingly find themselves a direct target of poisons rather than a accidental." When the reader reads the first bit of the sentence, they are immediately captivated by the use of the word “kill.” It catches them off guard and makes their mind wander. This also instills in the reader's mind that farmers are murderers. Using the word “habit” makes the reader think that farmers kill so often that they don’t even think about it. The first line of Silent Spring is perhaps the most powerful line in the piece. This automatically pits the reader against the farmers, because no one supports the killers. This makes the farmers seem ruthless and malicious, without even going into detail. As the article drags on, Carson continues to use harsh and highly critical language to smear farmers. “…-But the farmers were…… middle of paper……the words of the farmers are rubbish. Carson uses hyphens repeatedly to break up the sentence and allow the reader to process the information. Every good article has plenty of pauses because they give the reader time to think. Finally, Carson italicizes the word “month” (line 35). In doing so, it increases the time it takes for workers to become ill. In all persuasive literature, there are both important facts and trivialities. It's the author's job to point out what's important. Carson's article does a remarkable job of convincing readers that farmers need to be more careful when using poisons. The invective language attacks the farmers, the ad hominem argument makes the reader sympathetic, and the punctuation further intensifies the effects of the other two. By the end of the article, Carson has most of the readers on his side because the article is so well written..