What did Aristotle say makes a speech persuade: character, emotion or logic?

Aristotle said a speech persuades through three kinds of appeal: the speaker's character, the audience's feelings, and the argument itself. He gave them Greek names: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos is credibility, how well a speaker convinces you that they are qualified to talk about the subject. Pathos is the appeal to your emotions. Logos is the appeal to reasoning, the facts, figures and logic that back up a claim.

The ideas come from Aristotle's Rhetoric, a treatise on the art of persuasion from the 4th century BCE. It seems he never meant to publish it: what survives looks like his students' notes on his lectures. Yet the three appeals are still everywhere today, in advertisements, on television, in social media and even on roadside billboards. Think of a toothpaste ad: a dentist in a white coat (ethos), a happy family smiling at breakfast (pathos), a chart of fewer cavities (logos).

Aristotle was answering an old worry. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle saw rhetoric as a tool too often used to manipulate people by stirring emotion and leaving out facts, and they accused the sophists of exactly that. Plato even blamed sophistical rhetoric for the arrest and death of Socrates. Aristotle's reply was to study persuasion honestly, as something that could rest on knowledge instead of manipulation.

That is also the best use of his list today. When something tries to win you over, ask which appeal is doing the work, and whether it is really earned: is this person actually an expert, is that feeling justified, do those numbers really show what they claim?