How grateful are we truly for what we have and what we have gained from the work we have done? Are we grateful for what we own or are we still jealous of that friend, colleague, colleague or even extended family member who has nicer items than ours? Jacob Riis opened our eyes and gave us a true and vivid description and insight into how American families lived and worked in New York in the late 1800s. This eye-opening account shows us today that we should be grateful for what we have and never think that everyone is better than us. In How the Other Half Lives, Riis uses a variety of writing techniques such as word choice, imagery, and writing. Whenever elementary school teachers ask their students to write an article or essay, in some of his sentences he uses key words and expressions to describe the scenes he encounters, while other times he uses dialogue to describe to his readers what the people of that time seemed. An excellent example of the use of dialogue is when Riis describes a short account of a host talking to an Italian Riis met. Using such a variety of sentence structures allows Riis to showcase his vast knowledge of the many ways he can organize his thoughts and use his own interpretations of what he has experienced during his studies. He also changed the arrangement of some of the words he uses to narrate. For example, throughout the narrative, Riis capitalizes words that would otherwise not be capitalized and also divides individual words into the words used to form the larger words. Riis has used his unique style in composing his sentences to emphasize what he believes is most important and continue to capture the attention of his audience. Riis demonstrates a variety of his writing skills and techniques in How the Other Half Lives. With word choice, imagery, dialogue, and sentence structure, Riis created his own unique style as he told his accounts while exploring the other half of the people of New York. Riis demonstrates and shows his audience that a writer can make simple changes to their text to change the impact of what they are talking about and still have their readers’