The Common Reader is an argumentative text written 1925 by Virgina Woolf. The target of the text is the common reader.

The text is composed of two sequences: the function of the first sequence is to explain the criticism of the novel and the reason why the traditional novel is no longer suitable to give the essence of life to the reader that are looking for. As a consequence writers have to keep to the traditional standards that are like an "unscrupulous tyrant". The metaphor of the tyrant stands for that standards that let writers not free to write what they would like to write.

The second sequence has the function to tell the reader what life is like. She is displaying the way minds receive in an ordinary day a lot of impressions. Some of it are "trivial" or "evanescent" and other are "engraved with the sharpness of steel". In addition she explains what a writer could write if he "were a free man and not a slave". He would write about life and its impressions without Victorian conventions.

The argumentative text consists of:

- The aim

- To whom the text is addresses (Thesis, argumentations, content, information)

- Use of language (grammar, syntax)

- Effectiveness of the message