Irami's Four Page Guide to Clearer Writing and Higher Paper Grades

This advice is controversial; you can get noncontroversial advice in any library.
Sections:
I. General Guidelines
II. Tips for Your Introduction
III.Three Easy Tricks to Develop your Paper's Argument

Your Goal: A clear, confident, and persuasive essay.

General Guidelines

1. Avoid cliche.
2. Avoid pronouns. The pronoun “I” is an exception.
3. Imitate clear writers.
4. Be able to identify the subject of your sentence.
5. Be specific.
6. Revise viciously.
7. If you think your argument is a bit muddled, your reader thinks your argument is
incoherent.
8. Again, if you think your argument is a bit muddled, your reader thinks your argument is
incoherent.
9. Shorten your sentences to clarify your thinking.
10. Simplify your sentence structure to clarify your thinking.
11. Clarify your thesis.
12. If you are going to write a paper in one night, do your all-nighter three nights before the
paper is due.
13. Practice courage. The fear of formulating a specific thesis ruins a shameful number of
papers.
14. Fold persistent objections into your thesis. A sophisticated thesis is not a bad thesis; a
vague thesis is a bad thesis.
15. Develop your argument; do not merely repeat your thesis.

Pronouns
Pronouns are cancers in the body of a philosophy paper. Delete them. Many pronouns are malignant; others
benign. But all pronouns should be checked. If I, as a reader, have to spend time finding out what, exactly, “it”
refers to, I will grade you down. Philosophy is a careful enterprise where entire arguments hang on fine
distinctions. Pronouns like “it,” even “he” and “she” mask these fine distinctions. If you want a higher grade,
stop using pronouns.

Sentences
Philosophers deal in two kinds of sentences: simple propositions and conditionals. A simple proposition is “that
which asserts or denies something of something.”1 For example, “John went to the car” is a simple proposition.
The proposition asserts something(went to the car) of something(John). John is the subject of this proposition.
“Went to the car” is the predicate of the above proposition. Be able to identify the subject of your
propositions. A conditional, generally, is an “If...then...” statement.

1 "The Internet Classics Archive | On Interpretation by Aristotle." The Internet Classics Archive: 441 Searchable Works of
Classical Literature. Web. 26 Mar. 2010. <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/interpretation.1.1.html>.

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If, at any point, you have to ask yourself, “What is the subject of this proposition?” then you should rewrite the
proposition. If I have to ask myself, “What is the subject of this proposition?”then I will grade the paper down. If
“it” is the subject of your proposition, and I do not know what “it” refers to, then reading your paper becomes a
waste of my time. I will grade you down. Other people will grade you down, also, but they won't tell you why.

Tips for Your Paper's Introduction

a)Motivate the question.
b)Deliver your thesis.
c)Briefly reveal the structure of your paper.

Please practice copying the structure of and the words in these examples to form your own
introductions:
Introduction Example #1
This essay has two aims. The first aim is to clarify a distinction between, on one hand, value statements2
in David Lewis's dispositional theory of value3, and on the other hand, moral statements treated by
James Dreier's Internalism and Speaker Relativism4. In order to show the distinction between Lewis's
theory and Dreier's theory, I apply the two theories to a single, value-fraught speech-- namely, Pope
Urban II's urging of Christendom to destroy the infidels during the run-up to the first Crusade. The
second aim of this essay is to show how, according to standards of judgment shared by both
philosophers, Lewis's theory offers a more successful account of Urban's speech. To make this case, I
begin with a few words about a common feature of Lewis's and Dreier's theories. I then separately
rehearse the relevant features of Lewis's and Dreier's theories. Then I cast their theories in terms of
Urban's speech. I finish with a review of why Lewis's theory seems to better capture the phenomenon of
Urban's speech.

Introduction Example # 2
John McDowell spends the seventh essay of Reason, Value, and Reality taking issue with J.L. Mackie's
view of moral judgments. In my essay, I aim to clarify McDowell's interpretation and response to
Mackie's view. In order to clarify McDowell's case, I briefly rehearse the relevant moves in Mackie's
argument as rendered in The Claim to Objectivity section of Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. I then
review how McDowell re-articulates Mackie's argument in terms of Locke's distinction between primary
and secondary qualities. In conclusion, I show how McDowell leverages this distinction between
primary and secondary qualities to rescue the possibility of fruitful debate and discussion concerning
moral judgments.

Introduction Example #3
This paper surveys the concept and practice of leadership in the first three chapters of W.E.B. Du Bois'
Souls of Black Folk. The paper treats leadership, in its myriad expressions, by emphasizing the latent
themes of sovereignty, democracy, and freedom pregnant within Du Bois' text. I argue that Du Bois'
work paints a provocative picture concerning the ticklish question of what constitutes appropriate
expressions of leadership in a free society, as he often and tacitly traverses the gulf between, on one
side, representing leadership as responsive democratic conciliation, and on the other, depicting

2 Value statements are statements of the kind, “X is a value.”

3 David Lewis, “Dispositional Theories of Value,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 63 (1989): 113-138.
4 James Dreier, “Internalism and Speaker Relativism,” Ethics 101, no. 1 (October 1990): 6-26.

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leadership as a naked aspiration to sovereignty, if we understand sovereignty as one member's will to
assert absolute authority over another in a political community.1
The structure of this paper provides a chapter by chapter treatment of Souls' conception of
leadership, with contrasts supplied by Du Bois' own commentary and ancillary essays of thinkers who
were wrestling with similar issues. I admit to finding Du Bois' thought difficult to understand as a
unified whole- Du Bois' views on leadership in Souls seems to grapple with democratic leadership's
seemingly contradictory demands in a way that shades the form of possible solutions while showcasing
ineluctable problems, particularly concerning the limits of human political judgment.

Introduction Example #4
The philosophical problems contained in the story of Moses and the burning bush are legion5. This essay
aims to extend the framework furnished by R.M. Hare's Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method and Point6
to provide a utilitarian account of Moses' act of heeding God's command, a command issued from the
body of a burning bush, to go and deliver the Israelites from Egypt. The essay also puts forth an
epistemic argument for moral philosophy to expand its evaluative scope to account for interactions
between persons with the phenomenal features of Moses-- a person expressed in the usual sense-- and a
person like God in the body of a burning bush.

Three Easy Tricks to Develop your Argument:

I. Reduce to the absurd(Reductio ad absurdum)
II. Parallel Logic
III.Dilemma
I. Reduce to the absurd(3 steps) (Assume the opposite of your thesis, then follow the
consequences until you develop a contradiction.)
Step 1) Establish your given and situate your thesis.
Establish your given: “Peace is always preferable to war.”
Your paper's thesis: “Torture is bad, even when we are trying to get information to stop an act of war.”
Step 2) Assume the opposite.
“Torture is good, when we try to get information to stop an act of war.”
Step 3)Follow a string of logical or causal consequences until you hit upon a contradiction.
a)If we stop the war using torture, then the victim’s family and friends will never forgive us.
b)If the victim’s family and friends never forgive us, then they will always be eager to revenge the
torture by starting another war.
c)There will never be peace if the victim's family and friends are looking to start a war.
d)There will never be peace if we torture. (Here is my contradiction. Yeah!)
Conclusion: Given that peace is always preferable to war, and torture keeps us in a state of perpetual
war, then we should never torture.
Parallel Logic(Part 1)
Thesis: Stealing is wrong because it hurts people.
Find an alternative “wrong thing.”
a)The prick from a vaccination hurts people, also.
b)If stealing is wrong because it hurts people, then getting vaccinations is wrong because it also hurts

5 Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, eds., The Bible: Authorized King James Version (Oxford University Press, 1998),
bk. 3: 4. : “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.”
6 R. M Hare, Moral Thinking: Its Levels, Method, and Point (Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press, 1981).

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people.
c)But we like vaccinations.
d) Hurting people is not a sufficient ground to call an action wrong.
Conclusion: Stealing may be wrong, but if we are going to understand the relation between stealing
being wrong and stealing hurting people, we should understand the relevant ways in which stealing
hurting people is different from the ways the prick of a vaccination hurts people.
Parallel Logic(Part 2)
Thesis: Giving a good speech can help save lives.
Argument by exemplification:
Kennedy’s Presidential inaugural speech helped start the Peace Corps.
Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech helped the American Civil Rights movement.
Parallel Logic(Part 3)
Thesis: Helping people is a good thing.
First Argument by analogy:
When Frank helped Jennifer with her math homework, we all considered that gesture a good thing.
What is the difference between Frank helping Jennifer with her math homework, and you helping
Sandra with her flat tire? Is there a relevant difference? One is schoolwork, the other is a car. Is that
relevant?
Parallel Logic(Part 4)
Thesis: Helping people is good, but one should be careful.
Second Argument by analogy:
When Frank helped Jennifer with her flat tire, we all considered that gesture a good thing. But there is a
relevant difference between helping someone with a flat tire and helping someone cheat on an exam.
-Explore the relevant differences (The entire class is implicated, you degrade the institution, etc…)
Conclusion: Helping people is good, but one should be careful about what it means to help someone.
The Dilemma
The word “dilemma” comes from the Greek “di” meaning “two” and “lemma” meaning “proposition.”
To develop a dilemma, show that your opponent’s position leads to either of two propositions and that
neither of these propositions is acceptable.7 “You say that we should intervene in this foreign war. If we
intervene this war and win, we'll be asked to intervene in every war until we are bankrupt, and if we
intervene and lose, we'll have wasted lives.” Here, I've created a lose/lose situation for my opponent.
Closing Remarks
My prejudices and grading habits are various, sacred, and profane. They are noble prejudices and
common to academic graders. You would do well to express your creativity in the content of your
arguments, but in the form of your arguments, write in a way that agrees with my prejudices. If you have
any suggestions about how to improve this four page guide, please email snowden440@hotmail.com
Resources
Strunk, William, and E. B. White. The Elements of Style. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Print.
"George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946." Mount Holyoke College, South
Hadley, Massachusetts. Web. 26 Mar. 2010. <http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm>.
Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose. New York: Broadway,
1999. Print.
7 "Ethics Updates. Tips on Writing Ethical Theory Papers." Ethics Updates Home Page. Web. 25 Mar. 2010.
<http://ethics.sandiego.edu/lmh/E3/Appendix/Appendix.html>.

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