You probably already know that you need to devise an argument for your academic papers and express it succinctly in a thesis statement. This handout assumes that you've got your thesis down and want learn to move beyond the thesis statement to the next skill to master in order to write an effective essay: effective argumentation throughout the body of your paper.
To develop a good argument, it’s not sufficient to have a viable thesis statement. Your whole paper has to work together to support the argument, which must build and progress as the paper continues.
In high school, essay writing tends to be taught in the language of “topics” and “subtopics.” In university, that way of thinking can make it harder both to write an effective thesis statement and to develop a continuous argument in the body of your essay. It encourages you to think in the form of a list.
Imagine you’re going to the grocery store, and you want to remember what to buy. You make a list, but it really doesn’t matter what order the items are in:
Eggs
Milk
Bread
. . . is effectively the same as:
Milk
Eggs
Bread
Many essays using the topic/subtopic premise come out looking a lot like that grocery list.
Effectively, you end up producing an essay that looks like this 1st chart above.
The topics are visualized horizontally, because they don’t really progress. You could rearrange your body topics in any order, and it wouldn’t make much difference. This is the mark of poor argumentation.
An essay with the thesis below might look like this 2nd chart on the right:
In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe criticizes the colonization of the Ibo people through describing pre-colonial Ibo culture, British legal systems, and British violence against the Ibo.
The problem here is that there is no clear sense of how the argument builds from topic to topic (a problem reflected in the structure of the thesis itself which, as you can see from the 3rd chart on the right, lists subtopics instead of relating them together as part of an overarching argument).
In an argumentative essay, your reader should feel as if each paragraph builds on the one before. It shouldn’t feel like the paragraphs could be rearranged. Instead, it should feel like you need to have established the sub-argument you made in the paragraph before to move on the next paragraph and sub-argument.
In the interests of effective argumentation, we might remodel our prospective thesis and essay body as follows:
In order to get to each sub-argument of this example essay, the writer needs to establish what s/he does in the preceding paragraph(s). That’s the sign of an overarching argument, rather than simply a list of subtopics, and it is something that you must accomplish in order to write an effective essay.
The introduction directs the reader to the thesis. It performs topic analysis which tells the reader why an essay on this topic is worthwhile.
The thesis is the most important part of the essay. It is the statement or statements you prove to be true. It is never vague, open-ended or imprecise. Sometimes, you will also need a separate directional statement. This is the road map of subtopics you will follow to prove your thesis. It sets the expectations of your reader.
The body provides the proof for the thesis. It is usually divided into subtopics. If something in the body isn’t helping to prove the thesis, it should be removed.
The conclusion is not a summary. It has two tasks:
Restate the thesis.
Give implications based on the truth of the thesis.
A geologist examines huckleberries . . .
Photo source: U.S. Geological Survey.
Gratefully adapted with a PD license from Flickr.
The most basic thesis is descriptive. However, most university work requires more than a descriptive thesis. It requires analysis. There are many ways of understanding the concept of analysis, but I find it helpful to use these categories. They are – more or less – in order of complexity, from simplest to most complex.
EVALUATE: to give the meaning or significance; to judge or estimate worth; Does it work, succeed, meet its own criteria, make sense?
Steve Hoselton introduces inductive reasoning--what it is and how it works--using a simple example. With Audio.
COMPARE: to evaluate relative to another; to rank, weigh or discriminate: Which is better? How are they different?
APPLY: to evaluate using a model or theory; to rate or scale according to established outside criteria. Does it work by this standard?
ASSESS: to evaluate a model or theory by testing it; to use a theory in practice. What are the strengths or weaknesses of this idea?
SYNTHESIZE: to modify or improve; to use existing ideas to create something new. How can this concept be re-invented?
Any one of these methods of analysis might be sufficient for a particular task. Certainly, one almost never expects to use them all in one assignment.
When you first get your assignment, make a schedule and be sure to build in time for the revision stage. Ideally, leave yourself ample time so that you can set your draught aside for a day or two and return to it with a fresh perspective. You are less likely to detect problems when you are too close to the work. Coming back to it with a clear mind will help you to see it more objectively which will, in turn, make a difference in the quality of the final product.
Allow yourself to be expansive as you draught. Write as much as you need to write to get all of your thoughts and ideas down. In revising, you will probably need to condense and extract words, sentences, perhaps even entire paragraphs. So be abundant at first, keeping in mind that you can decide what is extraneous and cut anything that isn’t necessary later on.
This is a temptation to which we all succumb. Somehow, we think it makes sense to correct as we are drafting: to find the optimal word, to rewrite the same sentence until it is perfect or come up with the most fluid transition. This is a natural inclination! We all want to write something stunning in the first try; however, this can slow down the process considerably. It interferes with the flow of our ideas and ultimately ends up being counterproductive. Even the most seasoned writers have to rewrite and polish.
So, learn from their example: give yourself permission to write an imperfect draught.
The practise of editing as you write is surprisingly common and not an easy habit to break. It is a natural inclination: when we see an error, we want to stop and deal with it immediately. Likewise, if we review the paragraph we just wrote and think that it isn’t “good enough” or “there yet,” we want to go back to it and make it right before moving on. If you find that this is the case for you, try leaving the errors as they are. (You can always highlight them so that you will remember to look for them later.) Even if your computer is nagging at you with red and green squiggly underlines, ignore them for now! They will still be there when you have completed a draught and are better left to correct later. Make an effort not to re-read what you’ve written and just continue writing.
If you find that it is difficult to break the edit-as-you-go habit, you can try covering your computer screen. In this way, you will not be able to see errors flagged by your word processing program or re-read what you’ve just written. This will make it easier to proceed: follow your outline (if you have one that you are using), just type and allow your thoughts to flow freely, looking forward rather than back. Remember, you can make your corrections later!
If all else fails, try writing by hand! This might seem like a drastic measure – especially now, when we do EVERYTHING on our computer. And it might seem inefficient since you will eventually have to type up what you’ve written anyway. Nevertheless, this can be an effective way of breaking the editing habit and training yourself to write in a new way. In fact, when you enter what you’ve written into a document, you will naturally begin some of your revising then – if nothing else, it will give you your first look at the whole of what you’ve written.
Photo source: Brett Jordan.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
Many students find quotation baffling. You know you have to do it, but when, how much, and how aren’t terribly clear. Some assignments and/or disciplines will specify that they don’t want much—if any—direct quotation, telling you to paraphrase instead.
If that’s what your assignment or instructor says, listen to them! Don’t quote, just paraphrase as needed, citing appropriately. But what about when you are supposed to use quotation?
Some assignments will ask you to close read or analyze a specific passage. For these assignments, you need to make sure that you engage substantially with the passage you have been assigned. Throwing in one or two lines from it and quickly moving on won’t suffice. You should use few, if any, examples from the rest of the text the passage comes from, instead prioritizing material from the passage itself.
What if you’re just writing a regular assignment (direct quotations are permitted, but you are not restricted to a single passage)? Quote as necessary to support your argument. If you’re writing an essay, say, about literature, and you almost never quote directly, you’re quoting too little. If the quotations—including from researched articles—are overshadowing your own voice, then you’re quoting too much.
In general, you want to quote directly only when one or more of the following situations applies:
You will be engaging in substantial analysis of the specific passage or phrase you have quoted.
You will be critiquing, in detail, the position expressed in the passage or phrase you are quoting.
The specific language that the writer uses to express their idea is particularly interesting, eloquent, or noteworthy.
Whenever you quote, you must follow your quotation with analysis immediately. It is your job to demonstrate why and how the quotation is important; don’t leave this task to your reader! Here are some examples (I have used MLA format. You should cite using whichever citation format has been specified by your instructor):
Bad: When Shakespeare writes “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate” in Sonnet 18, the reader can see that the person he is writing about is beautiful (1-2). The reader can see from the line “thy eternal summer shall not fade” that the beauty will last for a long time.
Good: Asking first “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”, Shakespeare’s speaker soon asserts that his beloved is not only “more lovely,” but “more temperate” than a single day (18.1-2). While the beauty of a day can vary even in the summer, the beloved’s temperate loveliness never fluctuates. Rather, preserved by the speaker’s poetry, his beauty stretches beyond the changeability of a single day into an “eternal summer” (18.9).
Quotations must be integrated into sentences of your own. They cannot stand alone as a sentence, and they must work with the rest of your sentence in a way that is grammatically correct. Here are some examples:
Wrong: In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West claims that literature helps us to understand others. “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).
Wrong: In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West talks about “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).
Right: In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West argues that “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).
Right: Claiming that “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign,” Robin West positions the use of literary techniques in our interpersonal interactions as enabling us to grasp the experiences of others with whom we have little in common (“Economic” 874).
Sometimes you might have to change some words in the quotation to make it work grammatically with the rest of your sentence. To indicate that you have done so, use square brackets. To indicate that you have omitted words, use ellipses. Here’re some examples:
In “Economic Man and Literary Woman,” Robin West represents “Metaphor and narrative [as] the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (874).
In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare’s speaker represents his beloved’s beauty as constant and unchanging, telling him: “Thou art … more temperate” (2) than “a summer’s day” (1).
If you feel unsure as to how to integrate a quotation into a sentence, you can always just begin by writing that the author “writes,” “argues,” “contends,” “claims,” “implies,” “suggests,” “explains,” etc. Here’s an example:
As Robin West contends, “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
Make sure that your punctuation fits the sentence construction that you have used. Here are some options:
Robin West argues that “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
Robin West argues: “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
As Robin West argues, “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
According to Robin West, “Metaphor and narrative are the means by which we come to understand what was initially foreign” (“Economic” 874).
For more information, consult the UofT Writing website.
George at work
Photo source: The New Paradigm.
Gratefully used with a CC license from Flickr.
1. Be plain, not pretentious. Prefer simple clarity to impressive wordiness (e.g. oblige, not obligate; use, not utilize).
2. If you write a word or phrase without knowing what it means, scratch it out. If you’re supposed to know, find out.
3. “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” 1
4. Writers are tour guides. Tell the reader what you are going to say, say it, and then say you have said it. If this hand-holding feels a little patronizing, it’s probably just right: what’s plain to you is probably not so plain to your reader.
5. Support every argument you make with evidence; be as concrete as possible.
6. Treat your reader as educated but not a specialist. Explain fully.
7. Define your terms. Some words—reality, for example—have many meanings. Make sure the reader understands what the word means for you in your paper.
8. In university essays and other formal writing, wean all slang, contractions (e.g. you’re, it’s, don’t), and half-built sentences from your prose.
9. In general, prefer active verbs to passive ones: they have more punch (e.g. prefer Queen Mary persecuted Protestants to Protestants were persecuted by Queen Mary).
10. Leave time for revision. Reading the paper aloud is especially helpful for catching awkward sentences.
11. Cut out unnecessary words (e.g. many, not a large number of; since, not due to the fact that; Henry VIII was cruel, not Henry VIII was a person who was cruel).
12. Watch out for common errors in grammar, spelling and usage (e.g. the dog chewed it’s bone [wrong—use its]; and it’s a friendly dog [correct]; Global warming can effect plant life [wrong—use affect]; and Global warming can have an effect on plant life [correct]).
13. When referring to scholars’ arguments, avoid writing that an article or a book says something. Texts don’t write; people do.
14. Cite every opinion, idea or thought that is not your own, whether quoting or paraphrasing.
15. If you have trouble with English, opt for shorter sentences and basic word order. Most professors prefer a simple clear essay to a complex confusing one.
16. “Break any of these rules rather than say anything outright barbarous.”2
1. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” Horizon, 13, no. 76 (1946): 264.
2. Ibid.