To change the mind of a reader, authors compose written persuasion according to a set of rhetorical features. This article describes the features of persuasive texts and reviews research results to explore whether adults indeed change their minds after reading persuasion. Toulmin's (1958) model of argument and Aristotle's model of persuasive content characterize the structure and content of well-written persuasion. Research in social psychology and text comprehension shows that adults typically build a case for their own prereading belief rather than process a persuasive text mindfully, weigh evidence, and change their beliefs. An important contract between author and reader is typically broken. Research on designing text to disabuse students of scientific misconceptions points to text features that authors could use to encourage readers to read persuasion mindfully.

Given the existing literature on text summarization that documents what learners, particularly younger learners, cannot do, a study was designed to assess what fifth-grade students can do. Thirty students at two reading levels read an expository text, produced a summary, reflected on the summarizing process, and identified good and bad summaries for the text. Both successful and less successful readers were fairly adept at recognizing good summaries, but proficiency group differences emerged for production and reflection measures. Readers in both proficiency groups performed at below-ceiling levels on the production and reflection measures.