Audio is an effective but often overlooked component of World Wide Web delivery. Of the nearly twenty billion web pages estimated to exist, statistically few use sound. Those few using sound often use it poorly and with hardly any regard to theoretical and rhetorical issues. This thesis is an examination of the uses of audio on the World Wide Web, specifically focusing on how that use could be informed by current and historical rhetorical theory. A theoretical methodology is applied to suggest the concepts and disciplines required to make online audio more meaningful and useful. The thesis argues for the connection between the Web and the modern orator, its embodiment, its place in sound reproduction technology, and awareness of the limitations placed on it by design and convention.