This is a site devoted to the linguistic topic of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). You can find a bit of information on the history behind RST under the "Introduction to RST" page (link to the left). The vast majority of the text on the site was written by Bill Mann, with some updates by Maite Taboada. The site is updated semi-regularly. Send comments or corrections to Maite Taboada (mtaboada at sfu.ca).

A note about the diagrams: RST diagrams are inherently large, especially when they include the whole text being analyzed. Most of the full diagrams of larger texts will require scrolling in order to see the whole diagram. Generally it will help for you to set your screen to the highest resolution you have available. We regret the inconvenience, but it seems necessary if the diagrams are to be read. We have also provided pdf files of the diagrams, in some cases in landscape and broken across several pages.

An Acknowledgement: In addition to the people mentioned in the introduction, we are grateful for contributions by John Bateman, Susanna Cumming, Cecilia Ford, Barbara Fox, Peter Fries, Ed Hovy and Bob Kasper. We would also like to thank Simon Fraser University for hosting the site.