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A Brief Guide to
Critical Writing
by Valerie Ross

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A publication of the
Critical Writing Program
The University of Pennsylvania
3808 Walnut Street
Philadelphia PA 19104-6221
2013 by Valerie Ross
All rights reserved.

Contents

The Critical Writing Seminars: Overview and Statement of Goals ........................ 2

What to Expect: The Writing Process ......................................................................5
Style and Grammar ..................................................................................................9
Reasoning...............................................................................................................17
Propositions: Introduction......................................................................................22
Analysis and Synthesis ..........................................................................................24
Justificatory Reasoning ..........................................................................................31
Introductions ..........................................................................................................34
Reasons Versus Evidence ......................................................................................41
Counterargument....................................................................................................43
Prewriting...............................................................................................................46
Arrangement ..........................................................................................................48
Endings ..................................................................................................................54
Timed Essay Tips...................................................................................................59
The Cover Letter ....................................................................................................60
Making the Turn to Research Writing ...................................................................66
Appendix: Logical Fallacies ..................................................................................69
Works Consulted....................................................................................................71
Index ......................................................................................................................80

The Critical Writing Seminars:

Overview and Statement of Goals
The Critical Writing Seminars are discipline-based and organized around a specific
scholarly inquiry or debate. Curriculum is based on the discourse theory of learning,
which emphasizes collaborative problem-solving, prompted self-explanation, peer
review, and dialogue. Instructors teach a common writing curriculum that they integrate
with their individual topics, readings, and scholarly conventions (types of evidence,
genres, etc). The first part of the seminar introduces a network of active concepts: the
course topic and discourse community; strategies of reasoning; fundamentals of rhetoric
(genre, audience, purpose); reading and writing like a rhetor; collaborative learning and
decision-making; peer review; and the writing process. The second part integrates and
links these concepts to others that students encounter as they immerse themselves in an
advanced research project on the topic. Guided by the instructor and a librarian assigned
to the course, students learn the fundamentals of scholarly research (e.g., Boolean
searches, subject-specific databases, keyword and known-item searching) as they create
their own text-based knowledge through analysis and complex synthesis of sources, and
move from novice to apprentice writers in a scholarly or professional community.
Creative thinking and collaboration are at the heart of the curriculum. Students are
obliged to understand and account for their interlocutors positions, beliefs, values, and
knowledge. This rigorous rhetorical demand gives them substantial skill-building in
empathy, judicious interpretation, and problem-solving. Students are also obliged to
identify and evaluate others lines of reasoning, as well as their own, distinguishing these
from the accompanying verbiage. They exit the course able to provide a concise, wellreasoned explanation or argument attuned to a diverse readership and to the demands of
specific genres. They experience all stages of Blooms Taxonomy (original and revised)
and end the course at the top, engaging in higher order reasoning and the ability to share
it with others as discussants and writers. We aim for our students to be able to transfer
the skills and knowledge they acquire in the seminars to the many new writing situations
they will encounter at Penn and beyond.
All undergraduates are required to earn a C- or better in the course as well as in a final
portfolio assessment performed by the students writing instructor and one or more
outside readers drawn from the writing faculty and administration. The coursework
grade is based on students demonstrated knowledge of the fundamentals of writing and
participation in a discourse community: knowledge of topic, rhetoric, genres, and writing
process, as briefly outlined above. The portfolio grade, in turn, is contingent on students
demonstrated competence in the following areas: cognition, invention, reasoning, and
presentation, this latter including grammar, mechanics, style, and adherence to genre and
discourse conventions.

The Critical Writing Program engages in a range of assessment strategies tied to the
teaching and learning process as well as learning outcomes, including diagnostic timed
essays to assess students command of basic writing skills; self-directed placement and
ongoing self-scripts to facilitate the level of metacognition fundamental to knowledge
transfer and application; detailed rubrics for each writing assignment; and mid- and final
portfolio assessment, scored by the instructor and at least one other member of our
writing faculty.
Student self-assessment begins with self-directed placement, offering students
descriptions of three types of seminars and encouraging them to choose the type that most
suits their needs. All seminars follow the same writing curriculum and varies according to
the discipline, mode of inquiry, topic, and readings. The same methods and criteria of
assessment are used in all of the seminars, and all students must pass the coursework and
final portfolio assessment to fulfill the universitys writing requirement.
Our writing assignments are scaffolded and designed with particular outcomes that
introduce a range of concepts and provide practice and reflection, allowing students to
build skills and knowledge of writing and rhetoric, as well as research strategies. Our
learning outcomes encompass and exceed those recommended by the Council of Writing
Program Administrators, and our assessment criteria are geared to the categories of
writing knowledge and skills delineated by leading scholars in the field of writing.
Assessment of student metacognition, integral to successful transfer, is conducted
throughout the semester by various self-assessment scripts and strategies, with students
producing pre- and post-outlines and assessments of their work and that of their peers;
student mid-and final evaluations of what they have learned from the course; and a letter
of self-assessment in the mid- and final portfolios in which they analyze their writing
prior to or at the beginning of the semester and compare it to their final work for the
seminar, providing concrete evidence of their ability to evaluate writing as rhetors. These
self-scripts are quite useful for our instructors and the program at large as a diagnostic
tool, demonstrating what students are learning and are able to articulate about their
learning. They are also a basis for knowledge transfer, according to recent research on
this topic, which finds that students must be able to identify and articulate concepts, as
well as apply them, if they are to put them to use in new writing situations. For example,
a student who can recognize and create a counterargument or identify and deploy
quantitative evidence in one field will be able to discern whether these are being used, or
might be used, in another class or on the job.
Along with self-assessment scripts and strategies, students review their peers work
throughout the semester with guidelines that incrementally expand their ability to practice
and apply to other writing the lessons and criteria they are learning. In turn, the instructor
assesses each assignment and each peer review by means of a rubric shared with the
students that articulates the expectations of the assignment, listing the assessment criteria
and describing levels of quality in relation to each of the criteria. The rubrics are detailed

scoring guides used for individual assignments as well as for the multi-dimensional
assessment employed for the mid- and final portfolios, which, by gathering a range of
student writing, provide a more holistic and productive assessment of the students
achievements than can be grasped in a single document or test.
Finally, our assessment practices, including our rubrics, are not confined to a summative
function (i.e., grades). They serve a central pedagogical purpose in our program as
formative assessment tools that inform students about their progress and aid them in their
development as writers and critical thinkers.

What to Expect: The Writing Process

The curriculum of your critical writing seminar is structured such that each weeks
assignments build upon prior weeks. This habit of regular, concurrent research and
writing is the process employed by most successful writers in the disciplines and
professions. The professional workplace is also characterized by a steady flow of writing
tasks, from emails, reports, and letters to contracts, websites, and, increasingly, social
media of all kinds. Such daily forms of written exchange require writers who can quickly
turn out well-reasoned, clear, concise texts that are relatively error-free.
You will typically have reading and writing assignments due before every class meeting,
as well as peer reviews that are sometimes due that evening to allow you to make use of
this valuable feedback. This schedule of frequent writing will require a new or altered
writing process for those accustomed to classes that assign papers as the last thing one
does upon completion of assigned readings, discussions, quizzes, and research. Such
classes also often provide the topic, prompts, and guidelines for content of the papers
they assign, and students can get quite adept at turning out papers in response to these,
sometimes in a sitting or two, taking a few hours to draft and polish before submitting.
That sort of writing process generally backfires in the writing seminar for several reasons.
The first is that we dont give you prompts and guidelines for what to write about. You
are joining a scholarly conversation. As with any other conversation, you are going to
need to find your own way in by paying attention to what the scholars and your
colleagues are talking and writing about and how theyre doing this (i.e., what reasons,
what evidence, what counterarguments, what language are they using)and then figuring
out for yourself how and where you are going to join in.
Second, and related, such ideas are generated by daily contemplation, and writing is one
of the best methods for gathering and forming ones thoughts.
Third, pragmatically speaking, you dont have hours to spend polishing and drafting these
daily assignments: You have many other things to do.
Fourth, we want you to learn how to write well-reasoned, lucid, brief texts in short order.
This will help you take timed essay tests (one of the most frequently assigned forms of
writing in college) but will also prepare you for writing in the workplace and the various
kinds of public and social media writing that you may already be engaging in, such as
blogs and editorials. Being able to engage in social media with mindfulness, as well as
speed and clarity, will also be sharpened by means of this curriculum.
Yet another reason for the daily stream of brief assignments is to acquaint you with a
routine of writing in units of thought that allow you to capture and rework over time your
research and ideas as these develop. It can be counterproductive to polish these units of
thought since they are going to be edited and rearranged until one gets near the deadline,
at which time a writer gives the piece serious proofreading and polishing. Until then,
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light revision for clarity is the most efficient approach. This routine of accumulative units
of thoughts and research is how professional writers and scholars typically work. Such a
writing process will be of increasing value to you later in your academic career as you
write longer papers and senior theses, as well as the lengthy reports, proposals, articles,
and perhaps books you will write in your future careers.
Finally, there is much evidence to suggest that all that perfectionist polishing at the early
stages of a project actually inhibits your creativity. You end up pruning what might be
the beginnings of a brilliant idea, simply because you arent yet able to articulate it
elegantly. Shedding your draft and polish perfectionist strategies will not only free up
your time, but also release your creative, problem-solving capacities.
We thus advise you to aim for courageous drafts, which are accomplished by
prewriting, planning and outlining, and attending to the logical and evidentiary demands
of your work. Courageous drafts are not literary performances. Instead, they are
straightforward, clear, logical, and relatively error-free. Do not fear that you will be
losing your literary style by engaging in this kind of writing. Instead, you will be adding
a new writing process and style to your writing toolbox that you will be able to use in
instances where other methods and styles arent going to be as suitable.
In any case, if you find that you are exceeding the recommended six to nine hours of
homework that you should devote weekly to each of your college classes, consult with
your instructor or with a tutor at the Writing Center. They can give you some advice
about how to manage your writing process more effectively.
Joining a Discourse Community
Your writing seminar is designed to immerse and engage you and your colleagues in a
specific, discipline-based scholarly conversationa particular debate or inquiryas well
as in the basics of scholarly and professional rhetoric. While your writing professor is a
member of your audience, you are actually expected to write to other students in the
class, whom you should regard as members of your scholarly discourse community.
As a member of a scholarly community, you are expected to take seriously your own
ideas, your writing and peer reviews, as well as those of your colleagues. As
rhetoricians, you are obliged to learn about your colleagueswhat they know and believe
about the topic, what will and will not move them, what kind of knowledge you have to
share as well as to learn. Through discussion, peer review, consensus-building and other
collaborative exercises, you will quickly get to know other students in the class, some of
whom are likely to become good friendsone of the advantages of the small seminar
setting and emphasis on community-building.
Learning how to participate in a scholarly community, engaging respectfully and
knowledgeably with others as well as with some of the major scholarly texts in the field,
will help you to understand how to recognize and enter the other scholarly and
professional communities you will be encountering at Penn and beyond.

Form Follows Function

This is not a creative writing course, and thus your focus in the semester will not be on
developing a literary style. In fact, in contrast to creative writing, the task of a critical
writer is to be able to write as a member of a discourse community, able to say what
needs to be said through what some call an institutional voice or perspective. Their
motive for writing is not self-discovery but rather to contribute to the larger
understanding of a particular discourse community. To do this, a participant must
understand the goals of the community and how to contribute to them; he or she also
needs to know and use the genres of the community, its types and rules of writing,
language choices, structures, speech patterns, evidentiary requirements, and various other
features and constraints. Entry into such a community can initially be daunting, but upon
initiation, becomes increasingly naturalized such that experienced members of a
community may no longer notice that they are operating within a set of constraints. Of
course, constraints and rules make it possible for individuals to contribute to a
communitys pool of knowledge and goals.
Typically the more collaborative and collective the community, the less it will emphasize
individual style or perspective. Thus for example the sciences, which tend to be highly
collaborative, are spare in their use of the personal pronoun I and are not timid about
the use of passive voice, for the work of science emphasizes process and findings rather
than the individuals who orchestrate these. In contrast, disciplines that emphasize the
producers of knowledge, such as literary studies and cultural anthropology, often insist on
the use of I, and sometimes provide autobiographical information to delineate how
their individual interests and experience have shaped their scholarly work. In the end,
however, whether literary and individualistic or plain and collective in voice, the
practitioners of these disciplines participate in an institutional voice and perspective
particular to their individual disciplines.
While your seminar cant prepare you for each stylistic encounter you will have at Penn
and beyond, it will provide you with an understanding and a set of strategies for
analyzing these different communities to determine, for example, whether it relishes or
scorns literary language and personal pronouns; whether it uses text-based or data-based
evidence; whether it foregrounds its reasoning process and insists on formal constraints
and divisions of written material or develops and legitimates its knowledge with a
somewhat less formal structure.
Our main piece of advice for joining the broader discourse of the critical writing
community is to keep an open mind. It never hurts to learn new methods and ideas. The
cognitively uninhibitedthe open-mindedare the ones who have the ability to adapt to
new situations, to solve problems, and to innovate. Research, as well as our own
observations of students who do well in the seminars, suggests that the cognitively
uninhibited learn more quickly and figure out more ways to use what they learn than do
the resistant because resistance occupies ones mind, blocking out what others are
learning. As you will discover later in the seminar, we think refutation has an important

function in scholarly and community discourse, but only after a thorough understanding
of what it is we are refuting.
Writing in Chunks: Reconceptualizing the Writing Process
! Our brains generally cant handle more than 5 bits of information or 90 minutes
of mental work. Thereafter, like any other overworked muscle, the brain forgets,
loses connections, makes poor decisions. A 500-word chunk will usually take fewer
than 90 minutes to draft and contain no more than 5 significant pieces of
information.
! Writing in chunks teaches you how to write as you research, an interdependent
process that helps you stay on track, testing your short pieces against your
proposition, recording sources, quotations, ideas, and connections as you have
them, rather than attempting to recall and reconstruct them under the pressure of a
deadline. Chunk writing reinforces and nourishes working memory, which
facilitates concept-formation.
! Writing reasoned units of thought disciplines, clarifies, tests, and organizes your
thinking to meet the rhetorical as well as intellectual demands of your readers. It
exposes gaps and contradictions in your reasoning or evidence that you will have
time to address as your project unfolds, rather than being ambushed by them under
deadline pressure.
! Writing in chunks as you research means that your paper is all but done before
the deadline nears. Your main joba challenge of sorts, but nothing like writing a
paper at the last minuteis to cohere the chunks, write your introduction and
conclusion, refine your proposition, polish.
! Writing in chunks is not only a sound approach to incubating and organizing
strong ideas, but is also a superb time management strategy. If you reserve a
modest amount of time each day for writingand stick to it--you will find that you
will be a productive and prolific writer, and have plenty of time to do other things.

Style and Grammar

Many enter the writing seminar expecting it to focus on fixing their grammar and polishing
their style; a few worry that the seminar will change their style. Their understanding of style
is generally linked to a small sampling of specifically literary genrespoetry, fiction, and
creative non-fictionand a limited conception of style and its function.
Individual writing styleincluding ones word choices, tone, attitude, sentence structure and
length, syntax, arrangement, and contentis determined by many factors. The most
influential is, or should be, the general style used by the discourse community the writer
wishes to address, and the genre that the writer, wittingly or otherwise, uses to communicate
with that community. A third factor that determines style is how much the writer already
knows about the community and the genre. A novice who knows nothing about the
community or the genre will try to use the style and genres he learned in a prior community.
A version of this occurs when writers make the shift from writing for high school teachers to
writing for college professors; a starker shift occurs upon graduation, when students enter
professions and graduate programs that expect their members to know or quickly learn their
styles and genres of discourse.
Some novices will blunder in, oblivious to a communitys style and genres, but most will
seek to adapt through imitation, osmosis, and occasional guidance from more experienced
colleagues. Knowing whom and what to imitate is a challenge in itself, much less creating an
individual style, which cannot be built on oblivion or imitation. Individual style should have
a purpose beyond distinguishing its creator. It usually merges in an effort to say or do
something that cannot be accomplished in the current structures of discourse. As
sociolinguist Allan Bell observed in his influential study, people actually develop an
individual style as they grow comfortable in a discourse community. They stop become less
formal, more flexible and inventive. This organic evolution of style is typical of most
discourse communities, with the possible exception of arts communities where stylistic
distinctions may be the artists contribution to the community. In most other professional and
academic communities, a unique writing style is not a prized attribute and may even be a
detriment.
Individual style depends not only on knowledge of ones own communitys discourse, but
also on knowledge of other communities styles and genres. Both style and genre are
dynamic processes created by the synthesis and blending of stylistic and generic
characteristics of different discourse communities. Thus for example Ernest Hemingway,
like Walt Whitman before him, used his knowledge of journalism and synthesized it with
features of short and long fiction to create his distinctive literary style. He then took what he
knew about journalism and fiction and used it to create his distinctive nonfiction style. He
didnt do this just to stand out, however; his nonfiction style, for example, was the result of
his desire to represent a reality that felt incapable of expressing within the generic constraints
of nonfiction.
As an undergraduate, you will be writing for many discourse communities and styles,
beginning with your respective schools--the College, Wharton, Engineering, and Nursing
and the many disciplines that each holds. In turn, the individual disciplines have their own
general style, and so too their subdisciplines and, finally, individual professors within them,

who may have an individual style to which they want you to adhere. Having to adapt to and
write for such an array of discourse communities is a bewildering task demanded only of
undergraduates, but one that will teach you a great deal if you are mindful and use each as an
opportunity to hone your social skills and stock your stylistic cupboard. The seminar will
equip you for this, but in the end you are the one who has to do the intellectual work of
analyzing, adapting, and adding to your stylistic and generic knowledge.
Nonetheless, your individual style is unlikely to stray very far from community norms
precisely because writing is a social act. If we too greatly distinguish ourselves in any social
group, we jeopardize our credibility and persuasiveness, not to mention our membership
status. Thus before expending a great deal of effort developing a unique style, investigate the
wisdom of such an aspiration. A job letter written in stream-of-consciousness style on hot
pink stationery will make you stand out but most likely as a candidate for the reject pile.
If indeed stylistic distinction is welcomed by ones discourse community, the writer has to a
long way to go before being able to develop a distinctive and effective style, one that is
credible, engaging, persuasive, and gets the job done. Each genre, for example, is a world
unto itself: a science lab report, grant proposal, an editorial, long form journalism, a scholarly
article, a cover letter. Make sure you comprehend the terrain before getting stylish. You dont
want to show up dressed for the wrong occasion. For example, an experienced writer will
want to know who will be reading the document and for what purpose? We do not read a
poem and a lab report with the same attitude or needs, nor even with the same expectations
about how much time and effort will be required to read them. A writer will also want to
know what characterwhat kind of person, attitude, ethosis expected of the author?
What information must one include to fulfill generic expectations? Is there a standard way of
organizing the material, or is this left up to the writer? What is the general style: diction,
syntax, sentence structure, tempo, pacing, attitude? What premises, reasoning, evidence is
expected, and in how much detail? What kinds of claims or assumptions can be made, and
what bloopers does a novice typically make? What length, not only of the entire document
but also of sentences and paragraphs? Who needs to be involved in writing, revising,
approving, circulating, or publishing the document? Who should be mentioned and who
shouldnt? Are there particular items or people or processes that must be involved or cited
for the document to be regarded as legitimate? In academic communities, great
significanceand an easy way of spotting a novicecan be generated by something as
subtle as the choice of verb tense.
An effective way of comprehending a particular genre in a discourse community is to
compare and contrast a few different writers versions of it. You will get some instruction
and practice in doing this. Rhetorical analysis illuminates generic featuresstandard
elements and where they appearas well as stylistic distinctions between authors. Its a very
handy tool for a writer, and one you can use on your own to break down any genre or style in
any community, an approach that will rapidly accelerate your adaptation as a writer wherever
you find yourself.
Poetry provides a fine example, for it is a genre with which you already have some
familiarity after years of reading and writing about poems. Within the larger discourse
community of poets in the Western tradition have been innumerable schools or, if you will,
individual discourse communities, akin to academic disciplines: the Metaphysical Poets, the
Cavalier Poets, the Fireside Poets, the Romantics, the Imagists, the Objectivists, the Harlem

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Renaissance poets, the Beats, the Confessionalists, the Fugitives, the Black Mountain poets,
the Language Poets. The list goes on. Broadly, they all write poetry, and we as readers
bring a certain set of expectations to the general genre of poems. For example, we expect
that poems will pay a great deal of attention to language as such and to its artful deployment.
In turn, closer scrutiny of poems by members of particular schools reveals that each school
shares a rather distinctive general style and content as well as a set of principles, beliefs,
aspirations, and philosophies.
Within each of these schools are individual poets who may strive to distinguish themselves
from other members of their own school, for style is, among other things, a central part of a
poets business. However, while each poet is likely to have a distinctive style, the differences
tend to be minor variations of the dimensions and constraints that characterize their particular
community. Someone new to poetry may not immediately discern these differences between
individual poets or between one and another school of poetry. However, comparative analysis
and synthesisthe kind of work that literary scholars sometimes do, and that you will be
doing this semester--clarifies these differences.
For example, take Ezra Pounds famous Imagist poem:
In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Compare it to this famous poem by another Imagist, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.):
Heat
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air-fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat-plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
If you analyze features of these two poems (or read the manifestos by the Imagists) you can
begin to see shared qualities as well as differences. The Imagists strove to create highly
compact syntheses of image and idea; they were spare in their use of adjectives and
description in general, and their voices, at least in these two poems, sound rather like

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incantations. While the poems have much of substance in common, they also differ from each
other in subtle ways, from subject matter to the use of prepositional phrases and verbs and the
tone of voice, one still and observing, the other active and commanding.
We can see all the more how these two poems belong to a particular school of poetry when
we compare their poems to those by the Romantics, from whom the Imagists wished to
distinguish themselves. Here, for example, is the Romantic poet William Wordsworths
Daffodils:
Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Unlike Pound and H.D., Wordsworth uses a formal structure with an ababcc rhyme scheme.
His writing is descriptive, narrative, self-reflective. He observes and is inspired by the
natural world around him, whereas with the Imagists the separation of poet and nature is not
so clear-cut; the Imagists seem to merge with the subjects of their poems.
As this brief analysis of different poetic discourse communities reveals, there is no one
style. Style is discourse-specific. It, too, is a social act. One school of poets may value
plain language and concision, and insist that content be confined to concrete objects and
literal meanings and paratactic structure, while another school of poets might practice highly

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descriptive, historically layered and allusive, abstract and figurative language along with
complex syntactic structures. Still another school may delight in found objects
juxtapositions of words and phrases found on signs, walls, utility bills. An individual poet
may import aspects of one schools style into another to create an individual style or perhaps
even a new school of poetry.
Your seminar is an introduction to a particular scholarly discourse community, which will
bring you into the conversation of that community and help you identify and use its general
style and a few of its genres, and you can use this as a rough guide to identifying other
scholarly and professional communities. We obviously cant teach you how to write for each
such community any more than we could prepare you to write for all the schools of poetry.
All discourse communities require initiation and time, none more than the specialized
communities of scholarship and the professions. The seminar will introduce you to the main
rhetorical strategies of scholars and to some extent professional writers: the processes and
tests of reasonableness, the types and uses of evidence, citation practices, structures of
organization. As you analyze and apply these strategies, you will also absorb subtler features
of style and substance. Studying a discipline is akin to reading Shakespearerough-going at
first, but after a bit of practice and initiation, the work opens up and becomes increasingly
accessible. As the semester progresses, you will become a confident reader of scholarly work
and stylistically adept, even flexible, particularly by the time you finish the research
sequence. However, as with Shakespeare, the ideas you encounter will remain formidable
no matter how much your comprehension of them improves.
A good way to facilitate and retain what you learn in the seminar is to push yourself to
recognize and apply it to the scholarly work you will encounter in other classes, as well as
any professional activities, such as job interviews. For example, many students have found
what they learn in the seminars useful in interviews because they grow quite skilled at
coming up with propositions and demonstrating them on the spot. The more occasions you
find to recognize and refine your understanding of how to apply the curriculum, the more
valuable it will be to you. Search for points of similarity and difference between the
community you are studying in your seminar, and the one you are encountering on your own:
what kinds of reasoning and evidence are used, what questions, premises, claims are
proposed, what citation style, tone of voice, word choice, paragraph and sentence length are
used? Are you being introduced to any of the genres that its scholars use: journal articles,
books, reports, public writing? Are the writing assignments affiliated with a scholarly genre,
or are they versions of what some in the field of writing call school papers, exercises
unrelated to the genres practiced by members of the discipline itself, but useful for exploring
and confirming your knowledge of the course material and becoming a better writer of
school papers, a genre to which you can bid a fond farewell when you graduate. The more
adept you become at analysis and adaptation, the greater your social skills and stylistic
repertoire.
One last thought about style: There is a difference between creating a unique style and
finding a voice that allows you to say what you need to say in a given writing situation. You
are likely to experience finding your voice sometime during the second half of the seminar.
Its a great feeling when you get past what some call the imposter stage and are able to use
the language of the discourse community fluently. This is something different from setting
out to create a recognizable style. A highly stylized writer has to confine himself strictly to a
particular regimen of words, syntax, tone, and content, such that readers can readily identify

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his work because it invariably contains a set of predictable features. Such consistency, as
Michel Foucault pointed out in his landmark essay, What Is an Author? actually produces
an author by systematically eliminating signs of a writers actual individuality, which is to
say, all the inconsistencies, all the bumps and warts and twists and turns of language that a
writer patches together to make his writing acceptable, engaging, and understood by his
readers.
Grammar: The Bugaboo of Academic and Professional Style
Perhaps you are aware of the great grammar skirmishes that have been going on for decades.
Scholars in the field of linguistics have long observed that the rules of language constantly
evolve to meet the needs of speakers in their own historical moments. While everyday
language continues to change, writers in academic and professional communities are
generally obliged to honor a set of rules about grammar and mechanics that in some cases are
helpful but in others are outdated and clumsy. I cant tell you the number of times Ive had to
rework a sentence, making it longer and more convoluted, to avoid breaking some grammar
rule because the violaton of a grammar rule, for certain readers, signals ignorance and thus
jeopardizes my credibility. For example, what if I were to split an infinitive? What a silly
rule, but that matters not to those in ones community who hold such rules dear. Thus no
matter what your position is on grammar and usage rules, you are generally wise to adhere to
them in scholarly and professional discourse communities.
This is not to say that rules of usage are entirely without value. Some are rhetorically shrewd,
such as the rule that tells us not to end sentences with prepositions. The rule forces us to end
our sentences on a stronger word than a little weak blip of a preposition. Its a rule I was
aware of versus Its a rule of which I was aware reveals the differences between the two.
The second ends stronger but its also rather stilted. Most experienced writers will tell you to
go with voice, but I think you are always wise to consider your audience, who are likelier to
be upset that you violated a grammar rule than that you lapsed into temporary stiltification.
There are employers out there who will ding a job application for a minor grammar
infraction.
Teachers of writing have experimented with many methods for mastering the multitude of
usage rules on the books. Nonetheless, by the time we graduate high school, most of us have
acquired a few bad grammar habits that are relatively unique to us. Its much easier to
develop these than a unique style. A small set plague nearly all of us: We confuse its and
its, effect and affect, and, my personal favorite, that and which, where some say that the rule
itself is an error that inadvertently became a rule. In addition to these, we have our very own
personal peccadilloes, of which we are often unaware.
The Critical Writing Program has been experimenting with grammar instruction for years and
has managed to come up with an effective and reasonably painless way of rooting out and
fixing, once and for all, your individual pattern of errors. How effective the method depends
on your level of vigilance and commitment. Our method of Grammar Detox follows the
same principles articulated by those who study brain plasticity and habit-changing. Its
simple: You first must recognize the bad habit, correct it when it occurs, and replace it with a
new good habit.

14

Heres how it works. You, your colleagues, and your instructor (as well as any skilled
grammar enforcers in your writerly community) help you by identifying any instances of
usage errors in your writing. You then gratefully write down the sentence that contains the
error; the rule that you have violated; and the corrected sentence. Do this every time you
identify a usage error. Frequency of error is a good thing, for the more times you identify and
fix it, the likelier you are to banish it from your repertoire. Tedious this may be, but it works.
You can also use your Grammar Detox (GD) as a proofreading guide to help you identify
other instances of the error for writing in this and other classes.
To initiate the process, we ask you to take an online grammar diagnostic, provided by the
publishers of your grammar handbook. The grammar test is a crude tool, since it will only
land you in the general vicinity of your pattern of errors. Nobody has a problem with all
comma usage. Instead, you may have a problem with commas in a very particular context,
such as setting off a dependent clause after a comma series. Nonetheless, the diagnostic will
point you to the broader set of usage rules so that you can deduce your particular violation.
One caution: now and again a colleague or an instructor may incorrectly diagnose a usage
error. Were all too human. In such cases, please be sure to alert the person who thought you
had erred, for you are now helping that person identify his or her own error patterns.
Heres an example of a students Grammar Detox in progress:

Incorrect Sentence

Corrected Sentence Pocket

Style
Manual

They are aware of the

They are aware of the Page 83
standard tasks of a curator and standard tasks of a
artist, however, they probably curator and artist;
have not considered the value however, they probably
in allowing artists to act as
have not considered the
curators.
value in allowing artists
to act as curators.
Through discounting
Through discounting
Page 35
conventional curatorial
conventional curatorial
practices and following this practices and following
unique approach, artists are this unique approach,
able to select pieces that,
artists are able to select
above all, represent a
pieces that represent a
deserving collection of art.
deserving collection of
art.

15

Type

Run-on Sentences
Revised with a semicolon
because the independent
clauses are closely related

Cutting empty words

Incorrect Sentence

This is evidenced by the fact that in

creating his own exhibition,
Eduardo Paolozzi selected over 200
objects for display from the British
Museums reserve storage, where
the objects of less importance are
kept.
Further a curator may choose to
display a certain piece of artwork
simply because of its historical
significance.

Corrected Sentence Pocket

Style
Manual

Type

This is evidenced by the fact Page 86

that in creating his own
exhibition Eduardo Paolozzi
selected over 200 objects for
display from the British
Museums reserve storage.

Commas around nonessential

elements.

Further, a curator may choose Page 85

to display a certain piece of
artwork simply because of its
historical significance.

Commas with introductory elements

All the mentioned authors base their All the mentioned authors
Page 87
writings or at least a portion of their base their writings, or at least
writings on the same premise that is a portion of their writings, on
then discussed and explained in a the same premise that is then
similar manner.
discussed and explained in a
similar manner.
As a result of such scholars
As a result of such scholars Page 92
opinions, present day museums
opinions, present day
have come to represent institutions museums have come to
with the unique power of educating represent institutions with the
the public on artistic matters
unique power of educating
through the simple exposition of the the public on artistic matters
informational matter
through the simple exposition
of the informational matter

Commas were added around the

parenthetical phrase because it
provides supplementary information
that is not crucial to the sentence.

While three of the authors explore

museums educational role,
Montebello and Kimmelman also
explain the societal value that
museums have to offer.

An apostrophe was added to the

word museum to indicate
possessive quality.

While three of the authors

Page 92
explore museums
educational role, Montebello
and Kimmelman also explain
the societal value that
museums have to offer.

Since then, the function of museums Since then, the function of

have greatly transformed and
museums has greatly
evolved.
transformed and evolved.

16

Page 61

An apostrophe was added to the

word scholars to indicate
possessive quality.

Subject-verb agreement (subject

separated from verb by a
prepositional phrase).

Reasoning
Everybody reasons. Our everyday conversations, casual and professional, are most often
acts of reasoning that follow a loose set of rules and procedures referred to as informal
logic. Universities are institutions of higher reasoning. Each of its disciplines requires a
rigorous form of informal logic. A few, such as philosophy and mathematics, insist upon
adherence to the rules of formal logic.
Reasoning, or critical thinking, requires two things: first, you must distance yourself
from your perceptions and experiences sufficiently to put them into words; and second,
you must be able to manipulate those words to create and share your understanding of
something. Reasoning begins the moment you set out to explain, narrate, or justify an
observation, experience or idea.
A conversation will seldom be as tightly structured as the exercises you complete for this
class, nor will it set up and take down an argument as handily as the refutations you will
write. These exercises are blueprints of university-level reasoning transformed into
writing: critical writing. Despite these formal differences, the basic rules, moves, and
effects are the same for both. The difference boils down to that between speaking and
writing. Speakers can exchange ideas and refine, support, question, or refute them in
ongoing dialogue. Writers, in contrast, must imagine and account for their doubters and
opponents, seek their feedback, read their work, represent them in their writing. Writers
must also arrange their arguments to integrate reasons and support, arguments and
counterarguments, in a logical, coherent ordering of what we otherwise haphazardly
achieve in the back-and-forth of a conversation.
Informal logic thus informs everyday conversation, as well as critical and professional
writing. It takes three basic forms and, in a given exchange, we may use all three:
* narrative reasoning: organizes raw data into a story form. The proposition in narrative
reasoning is often implicit rather than remarked. Narrative reasoning in literature
anticipates an audience that wishes to participate in the construction of meaning; in other
fields, narrative is regarded as evidence and explanation. Narrative reasoning takes the
form exposition/rising action/turning point/falling action/resolution,
* explanatory reasoning: organizes raw data into an explanation. The proposition of
explanatory reasoning is typically a summary statement that answers one or more of the
following questions: who, what, where, or when something is, or how it is done or came
about. Occasionally explanatory reasoning answers the question why, such as in Why is
the sky blue? Explanatory reasoning assumes a receptive audience that seeks
knowledge about a specific subject. Its audience does not have to be convinced of the
existence or value of the subject. Explanatory reasoning takes the form of Two (or more)
Reasons and the Nestorian order. It may use narrative reasoning as part of its evidence.
Types of explanatory reason include definition, summary, instruction, chronology,
directions.

17

* justificatory reasoning: organizes raw data as well as other forms of reasoning

(explanatory, narrative) into an argument that justifies, persuades, or otherwise works to
move an audience to accepting that which is not self-evident but instead plausible,
probable or possible. The proposition of justificatory reasoning seeks an audiences
adherence. It tries to change or reinvigorate its audiences understanding of something.
Justificatory reasoning takes the forms of reasons and evidence, concession, and
refutation. Most typically it addresses the question of why we should believe, do, or feel
something. Justificatory reasoning is sometimes referred to as dialectical reasoning
(thesis/antithesis/synthesis). It imagines an audience who does not altogether agree with
the writer or an audience who welcomes reinforcement of a position it already holds.
Narrative reasoningthe story formis the most familiar to us. We know its form so
well that we can readily identify a skillful or clumsy user of it. We appreciate people
able to select and shape sensory data into a fully-realized story. We are disappointed
when a film or a book falls short, loses control of the form (plot) or lacks invention,
proffering instead a boring, banal, predictable story. As with the other types of reasoning,
the form itselfthe plotprovides structure and to some extent the meaning of the story.
Consider, for example, how the choice of a happy or sad ending changes your
understanding of a story. Writers are acutely attuned to the formal elements of narrative
and how, in conjunction with ideas and language, one manipulates these elements,
bringing basic forms to life, creating new stories and meanings.
Explanatory reasoning, like narrative reasoning, is also part of our everyday life but its
artfulness is seldom remarked. We are always giving and getting explanations about
something what or who or how it is, where to find it, how to do it, when it occurred.
Our first encounters with explanatory reasoning typically come from parents and other
authority figures. Explanatory reasoning is the stuff of textbooks, Wikipedia, directions,
instructions, recipes, dictionaries, summaries, classifications. As with justificatory
reasoning, explanatory reasoning depends upon the ability to generalize from raw data.
The formidable task of explanatory reasoning is to summarize a mass of data (a movie,
the making of a cake, the animal kingdom, 500 pages of statistics) in a single sentence
the propositionand then break it down into its main components (the reasons, or
generalizations, that led to the proposition) and support them, as needed, with the details:
Thus, an explanatory proposition might be: All mammals share certain features. One
generalization that led to and thus supports this proposition will be, All mammals have
hair. To illustrate and support this generalization, the writer might note, Some
mammals are covered in thick fur, such as bears, while others have scant hair, such as
humans. In explanatory reasoning, the reasons are generalizations that answer the
questions who, what, where, when, how and sometimes why about which, more later.
The tone of explanatory reasoning is cool, level-headed, objective, perhaps authoritative,
but not forceful. One is explaining, not persuading.
We are as versed in explanatory form as we are in story form, but we are far less likely to
appreciate its finer points, except when were in a fix: trying to assemble a desk from
IKEA, or get directions from a passerby. In these moments, we want absolute clarity and
logical order. We are dismayed by tangents, no matter how juicy. If someone can

18

manage to entertain us while adhering to these stark constraints, all the better, but well
gladly forego invention in such instances if it in any way interferes with understanding.
If, for example, you ask for directions from Van Pelt to 1920 Commons, you will
appreciate a master of the form, who opens with a clear proposition: Its a short walk
down Locust Walk and then provides two or three reasons (generalizations) supporting
and illuminating this proposition: 1) Its five blocks 2) It takes about 7 minutes to walk
and 3) Its right on the other side of the 38th Street pedestrian bridge. A master of
explanation will note if you need further illumination (perhaps you give him a puzzled
look), at which point he will provide some more supporting details (from 34th to 39th
street; a few blocks past the compass and the Franklin statue, etc). Someone not in
control of the explanatory form will typically deviate from giving directions and go off
on a tangent. For example, mentioning the Franklin statue, he may wander into a
discussion of an appalling tradition rumored to involve it, or suggest you stop along the
way to get a great oatmeal cookie at the Bridge Cafe. He has forgotten or muddled his
propositionwhich was to give you directionsand deviated from its form. Consciously
or otherwise, you will be aware of this mangling of form. If youre in a hurry, you will be
annoyed; if not, perhaps you will find his tangents charming. As a listener, you may
interrupt and redirect or allow the conversation to continue its unpredictable course. A
writer, however, has no such advantage. To be successful, she must avoid detours, for
they risk her readers patience and understanding.
Justificatory reasoning boils down to one relative pronoun: why. Why should we find
this person guilty? Why did I earn this grade? Why is this the best interpretation of the
poem? Why should I vote for this candidate? This particular why carries with it an
ought or a should, and must be distinguished from the explanatory why (as in, Why
is the sky blue?). Justificatory reasoning, simply put, justifies. Where the writer of
explanatory reasoning anticipates an agreeable reader, the justificatory writer generally
must imagine someone who needs to be persuaded. The job is to change that persons
mind. As David Faris notes in Reasons vs. Evidence, an essay you will be reading in a
few weeks, the justificatory writer answers the question of why with a because and
implicitly with a should.
In an informal conversation, a speaker who is attempting to persuade others is only
expected to provide her reasons and evidence in support of her position. Her
interlocutors may then question and challenge her reasons, at which point she will likely
explain, counter-argue, refute and in some instances concede one or more points as the
discussion unfolds. Writers do not have any such advantage. The critical writer must
instead anticipate and address a readers objections, testing her proposition and reasons
by being her own worst enemy, reasoning-wise. Justificatory reasoning pulls out all the
stops, uses every form at hand, to capture the readers mind and lead him to a new
understanding. A good critical writer will test her arguments through counterargument
not simply to be persuasive, but because counterargumenttesting ones reasoning and
evidenceis fundamental to any situation or profession where being fully informed is the
goal. Like a researcher, a critical writer is expected to provide as much information, pro
and con, as necessary to give the reader an accurate basis for making a decision. In
everyday life, such full disclosure is rarely given, however deeply we may all desire it. In

19

the worst cases, the persuader deliberately withholds information that would complicate
or contradict her proposition. Such deception is what has given rhetoricthe art of
persuasiona bad name.
The purpose of critical writing is to confirm, build upon, or create knowledge, not to
defeat or trick others into agreeing with you. The critical writer seeks the truth: the cause
of happiness, the meaning of rhetoric, the best economic philosophy. Everyday acts of
persuasion, profit-making, and politics may be considerably less idealistic. If you want to
persuade your friend to loan you his Ferrari, youre unlikely to mention the reasons why
he shouldnt. Only someone of great integrity supplies counterarguments.
In everyday life, justificatory reasoning seldom shrinks from engaging in a range of
logical fallacies, rhetorical tricks that masquerade as reason and that in the wrong hands
turn reason into a dangerous game. In conversation, a justificatory argument will dart
back-and-forth, like any dialogue, with highly fluid movement between proposition,
argument and counterargument, reasons, examples, concessions, refutations, revised
propositions. Logical fallacies, such as calling the speaker insane (ad hominem) or
shifting the discussion to some horrific imaginary consequences of the opponents
position (slippery slope) rather than addressing the actual argument, are not atypical of
undisciplined informal reasoning (See Appendix A, page 69, for a list of some common
logical fallacies.) In academic and professional writing, however, logical fallacies are
avoided and, depending upon the field, formal rules and structure for persuasive
reasoning may rigorously adhere. For example, in the natural and social sciences, the
different types of reasoning are made explicit and even given subject headings:
Introduction, Data, Methodology, Literature Review, Conclusion. In math and
philosophy, the rules of reasoning are often highly formalized and even translated into a
second form of symbolization: numbers, equations, proofs. In still other fields, rigorous
reasoning and its forms are in evidence, but not so clearly demarcated and ordered.
Now and again a critical writer will play with reasons conventions, sometimes at the
expense of clarity. Some renowned theorists, such as Theodore Adorno, Michel Foucault,
and Jacques Derrida, have viewed reason as oppressive, constraining. However, they
have also been quick to admit that the only way to communicate the dangers of reason, its
constraints and limitations, is through the very forms of reason itself; thus their
arguments invariably fall prey to that which they aimed to dismantle.
Whether were writing or speaking, the question of which reasoning strategies to use, and
in which order, always depends on audience, context, and purpose, as well as the interdynamics of the argument itself. In the end the forms of reasoning that you will practice
are merely the framework, the bones, that allow you to present your ideas and achieve
your own designs upon your reader. For most writers, the aim is not to challenge the
forms but rather to become so intimate with them that we can control and manipulate
them, put them to work. Its not easy to write a good story, and its not easy to write a
productive, well-reasoned, engaging work of explanatory or justificatory reasoning.
There are as few great writers of explanatory and justificatory reasoning as there are of
narrative and, like the great novelists, we are typically able to name only the greatest

20

critical writers: Darwin and Freud, for example. The creative side of critical writing
entails an intimacy with the forms of reasoning combined with great invention,
knowledge, command of stylistic devices, and a hand on the pulse of the audience. Boy
meets girl is a basic narrative structure that has supported everything from Romeo and
Juliet, Annie Hall, and The Fountainhead, to 40 Year Old Virgin and Twilight. So too the
plots of explanatory and justificatory reasoning undergird everything from Kelly
Clarksons Because of You to Immanuel Kants The Critique of Pure Reason.

21

Propositions: Introduction
The basic difference between a thesis and a proposition is in the history and therefore in
the precise meaning and resonance of the two words. Thesis has its roots in designating
or calling out the tempo of music and verse. It made its way into rhetoric in the 16th
century as a synonym for proposition, which is defined as a problem put forth for
discussion and solution, or a statement to be demonstrated by means of reasoning. By the
18th century, the term thesis was used interchangeably with theme, a writing topic
assigned by elementary and secondary school teachers, as well as to describe the work of
graduate students (masters thesis) in their demonstrations of the mastery of particular
research methods and topics.
In contrast to thesis, propositions meaning has remained relatively stable: a problem
put forth for discussion and solution; a proposal or plan put forth for implementation; a
statement arrived at and demonstrated as true or false by a process of reasoning.
Throughout, proposition has carried with it an expectation of form as well as function.
The proposition is always found in the introduction and the audience always anticipates
that the writer will thereafter provide the reasoning that supports it.
Proposition also reminds us that critical writing is the expression of reasoned discourse,
of formal or informal logic. Some disciplinessuch as math, philosophy, and the natural
sciencesare tightly bound by formal reasoning, while others, such as literature or the
social sciences, vary in the importance they place on formal demonstrations of validity.
But all disciplines and nearly all professions (business, medicine, law, engineering) use
informal or formal reasoning as a basis for confirming or creating knowledge, achieving
consensus, testing ideas, and making decisions. With this emphasis on logical reasoning,
critical writing is thus fundamentally mathy. For the poetically inclined, who prefer to
be more playful and allusive, this emphasis on logical coherence can initially be rather
difficult if not dismaying, until they understand that the practice of critical writing will
build upon rather than replace their creative repertoire, and prepare them for a host of
new writing situations.
Testing Your Proposition
1. Underline the operative words in each propositionwhich words are doing the
work of the proposition? Be sure as well to underline any word or phrase that is
abstract, vague, or controversial and will need to be explained or defended. For
example, Humanities should be at the center of a college education, may require
me to define what I mean by humanities as well as what I mean by at the
center. I can assume that my readers will not contest or question the other words
in the proposition.
2. List the issues raised by the operative words that you have underlined. What
questions, concerns, and challenges will the words trigger?
3. Determine the kind of relationship the proposition is proposing to demonstrate or
prove. Does it promise to show cause and effect (The death penalty prevents

22

4.

5.

6.
7.
8.
9.

crime)? Does it wish to argue that something must be changed? That two things
are alike?
Evaluate whether the proposition is bifurcatedthat is, are you promising to
demonstrate two or more relationships? For example: The death penalty
prevents crime and criminals should not be given life sentences is a bifurcated
proposition. The writer will have to prove two relationships.
Evaluate whether there are any relationships or assumptions implied but unstated
in any of the propositions you have tested. For example, I might wish to argue
that we should increase funding for public education. That assumes that my
readers support public education and my only task is to convince them to increase
support. However, my readers may be opposed to public education, preferring
instead charter or private schools, in which case my proposition is premature,
dependent on assumptions about the audience that reflect what I am already
willing to accept but which they are not.
Avoid whenever possible situations that aim to prove the absence of something.
Non-existence is a difficult thing to prove.
Avoid needless words.
Aim for a concise, declarative statement that opens with a subject and active (not
compound) verb. Whenever possible, avoid is statements unless you are
proposing to define something.
Insure that your proposition meets the criteria of a justificatory or explanatory
discourse, as appropriate. If it is a justificatory proposition, it should be an
arguable statement of a normative nature that sets out to persuade us to agree with
it by providing a series of reasons (the because test).
If it is an explanatory proposition, it should be a declarative statement that sets out
to demonstrate, through evidence and explanation, the nature of the proposition.
The justificatory proposition raises the question, Why? The explanatory
proposition may raise any or all of the following: How? When? Where?
What? Who? and sometimes Why?

23

Analysis and Synthesis

Both analysis and synthesis are processes of discovery. Analysis teaches us what a thing
or thought is made of. It is the process of breaking something down into smaller parts
and attempting to identify and understand them as things in themselves as well as parts of
a whole. Synthesis is the counterpart of analysis. In synthesis, one seeks connections
ways of combiningwhat appear to be different things, disparate elements. Synthesis
may be based on identifying something that all of the objects or ideas have in common;
or how they interact; or how, combined, they might form a new idea or object, or be put
to new use.
While synthesis is generally viewed as the process of creativity and invention resulting in
new ideas and things, analysis is also inventive. Knowing how to take an idea or an
object and break it into identifiable, meaningful elements calls for careful attention and
creative thinking. Most people regard analysis as a process that goes backward, undoes,
regresses. Analysis takes things apart, de-composes a larger whole into elements, and
calls for inductive reasoning. Synthesis, in turn, is a process that moves forward,
collects, recombines, composes, and calls for deductive thinking. Analysis separates;
synthesis combines.
You may have noted in your first exercise how challenging it can be to explain
something: knowing how and when and to what degree something needs to be broken
into component parts to create a meaningful explanation (explanatory reasons) is an art.
Reasoning, explanatory and justificatory, is a continuous process of analysis and
synthesis, of looking at individual cases and data and then generalizing about this data to
form reasons and propositions.
The iPhone provides a timely example of analysis and synthesis. Andrew Sherman notes
in his blog, Business Technology that we often imagine innovation being generated by a
bolt out of the blue. But most often it is the result of synthesizing existing ideas from
within and without the industry youre working in. Sherman notes that the iPhone
offered no new functions but was instead a synthesis of various popular devices and
functions: mobile phone, SMS, GPS, web browsing, email, Mp3, camera, third party
applications, touch screen interface, online shopping, and accelerometer. Steve Jobs was
a gifted synthesizer. Even the name of his company, Apple, is the result of a synthesis of
the many associations elicited by an appleeven extending to the Beatles record label,
Apple Corps, which attempted to sue Beatles fan Steve Jobs for trademark infringement.
Jobs insisted that he chose the name to be ahead of Atari in the phone book, not for its
association with the Beatles (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4750533.stm). As
this example suggests, the corporate and juridical communities are as attuned as painters
and poets to the subtle syntheses and ensuing resonance inherent in an image or word
choice.
This process of analysis and synthesis is at the very root of understanding; it is how we
come to know things, create new knowledge and insight, and make connections that not

24

only lead to new devices or concepts, but also to forging identification and changing the
minds of audiences. Some instances of analysis and synthesis in everyday life include:

Discovery of previously unremarked connections between things: for

example, shared premises among those who are otherwise in disagreement or
who use these premises to arrive at different conclusions. For example, many
agree that education needs to be reformed. Such an agreement, if analyzed,
leads to three obvious points of synthesis: 1) all agree that education is
important and valuable; 2) all agree that there are problems with education
and 3) All agree that education can and must be corrected. Yet those who
promote education reform may be political rivals with profound ideological
differences; they may propose starkly different solutions; they may disagree
on what the actual problems are, and so forth. Analysis and synthesis are the
operations that allow us to identify these areas of difference and common
ground.
Direct, intentional connections made with particular groups or communities
that ones audience respects or reviles: for example, a Republican or
Democratic candidate in 2012 might mention the Tea Party or the Occupy
Wall Street movement as a way of establishing a synthesis between himself
and one of these organizations.
Indirect connections: creating synthesis through metaphors, images, symbols,
references. Such indirect syntheses are frequently used by artists, poets,
musicians, advertisers, fashion designers, and filmmakers.

When a politician features a flag in the background of a campaign commercial, she is

generating a synthesis that connects her image and campaign to the flag (patriotism).
This form of conceptual/psychological synthesis can be contrasted to concrete
synthesesthe iPhone or, for example, the fashion industry when it combines a fabric
print or skirt length from the 1970s with elements of current fashion.
Some other examples of synthesis include:

A law = a synthesis of the facts/situations it governs

A proposition = a synthesis of facts, events, conditions, intuitions, or feelings
A reason = a synthesis of evidence, observations, events, feelings, conditions,
or experiences
A demonstration of a proposition = analysis that breaks down and arranges the
proposition into a selected set of ideas, arguments or component parts.

Analysis demands accuracy and exactness of observation, attention to all the relevant
details. Synthesis, in turn, requires mental abstraction and generalization. Both skills are
mandatory for substantive intellectual work. Neither can be communicated without
strong command of presentation, the essence of critical writing and the very thing you
have been practicing throughout the first half of the semester: the proposition and its
demonstration through informal reasoning.

25

All of these cognitive processesanalysis, synthesis, and reasoningare closely

entwined and interdependent. One analyzes a set of data, an experience, a group of texts,
a situation or series of situations, or sometimes merely an intuition, and detects a pattern,
some kind of connection. The analysis, in turn, leads to one or more syntheses that result
in a conclusion. For example, after an encounter with a gas stove, a bonfire, and a
candle, one is likely to come up with the proposition that no matter the means, fire burns
ones skin. This conclusion is based on analysis of individual experiences and then a
synthesis of these; if one challenged the burn victims proposition, he would likely
respond by providing informal reasoning
There are many routes to and forms of synthesis. Hegel, for example, proposed this form
of synthesis, known as dialectical reasoning:
Thesis/Proposition (he says X about A)
Antithesis/Counterargument (she says Y about A)
Synthesis (but I say Z about A)
This model proposes that knowledge is a continual process in which a synthesis becomes
a thesis that is then opposed and subsequently synthesized with its opposition to
transform into a new idea or event. .
Syntheses can also be accidents or mysteries, bolts out of the blue. One can be as
systematic as possible, carefully analyzing evidence and arguments, and turn up nothing.
Then, when one least expects it, one experiences a flash of insight that is probably not
quite as mysterious as it seems; one has, after all, been filling ones mind with ideas
about, say, consumer technology. The mind needs time to consider the various elements
of the analysis. Paradoxically, one sometimes finds that the best syntheses occur when
we take our mind off of our work; in the midst of watching a movie, talking to a friend,
listening to music, things suddenly come together. Other strategies for prompting
syntheses include free-writing or simply discussing your work with others, who may
point out common ground that youre not even aware of presenting to them.

Synthesis of Scholarly Sources

Students seldom have experience writing substantive research essays and thus are
unfamiliar with the necessity or experience of synthesizing the information they gather.
While they may in high school have done substantial researchfinding many sources,
writing lengthy papersgenerally the papers themselves are more of a book report, a
patching together of published research, than a demonstration of a connection they made
between and among the sources. In college, this book report structure may be viewed
as patchwork plagiarism, depending on the assignment. Patchwork plagiarism is a
collection of paraphrased or directly quoted ideas that are only held together by the
strength of transition phrases:
First, Author X is opposed to Z
Second, Author Y is opposed to Z.
In contrast, Author B is in support of Z.

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And so forth. Instead of engaging in synthesis, the student has simply made a patchwork
of others ideas. Similarly, a student unfamiliar with strategies of synthesis might
propose, Two scholars argue against trickle-down theory, while one argues for it, and
his demonstration of this patchwork proposition would be a summary of each of their
arguments. He would identify no conceptual link, no deeper relationship, no connection
among these beyond the flat presentation of the different views.
In order to write a solid research essay, the writer needs to drill down and find out what
these three authors have in commonor confirm for the reader that these authors have
virtually nothing in common, which can occasionally happen: no shared premises, no
shared conclusion, no shared evidence. As we know, argument must begin in agreement,
so in such an instance, the writers job may be quite challenging.
Even if the writers project is simply to provide an overview of literature written about a
particular topic, she should generally do more than simply summarize each article.
Instead of writing, The following authors all have written scholarly articles on Huck
Finn, and follow with a series of synopses, the sophisticated writer will analyze the
articles and identify common elements or meaningful divisions. Thus she might note that
all of the articles weigh in on whether the book should be taught in high schools; noting
this, perhaps shell divide them more finely still: those that focus on issues of race,
literary history, or style, for example. Perhaps shell notice that some, pro and con, focus
on moral issues while others, pro and con, focus on literary history or style. In short, the
writer is obliged to do more than just report what other writers said. She must dig deeper
and share with her readers the fruits of her labor, the analyses and syntheses that result
from spending substantial time with texts, or data in the case of some social and natural
sciences. Otherwise, she may as well just distribute copies of the material to her readers
and let them do the work of analysis.
When engaging in analysis, the question arises of when enough is enough. One needs to
break down the material into the smallest elements necessary to produce a productive
connection. At the crudest level, one can note that all of the articles are written in
English, or stored on a database, or published by scholarly journals. These arent very
illuminating syntheses. In contrast, finding common ground that isnt readily available to
other readers can be immensely enlightening. For example:
The authors methodologies: are they all from the same discipline using the
same approach to explaining or justifying their work?
Are the authors relying on the same sorts of premises and evidence?
Do they all cite the same authorities?
Do they all share the same problem definition or goal, though their proposal
for achieving resolution differs? Perhaps all believe that we should pay taxes,
but disagree on how the taxes should be spent. Having identified this
common ground, one can push back a bit more to see why it is these authors
agree on taxation and perhaps find a new avenue for agreement.
However, analysis doesnt always lead to productive linkages. Like oil and water, not all
things lend themselves to combination. While it might be a stimulating exercise in

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creative synthesis to consider how a Honda, an orange, and a staircase are the same,
chances are that if you encounter such profound disparity of elements in your scholarly
research project, you are going to be in the soup. Still, sometimes disparity can be highly
productive, as the iPhone underscores. In any event, in the early stages of research,
analyzing disparate materials requires the writer or thinker to rely on the most obvious
kind of oil and water arrangement strategy: a list or paragraph devoted to each
disparate element, with the hopes that a productive linkage will occur. A word of
caution, however: If you are doing text-based research and encounter such stubborn
disparity, you may not have sufficiently researched and refined your line of inquiry. You
may have to drill down a bit more. On the other hand, some of the most interesting work
comes from audacious synthesestheres really no predicting. In real life, you will have
time for syntheses to occur more organically, but in the seminar youre going to need to
be a bit more pragmatic about your analyses and syntheses. Fortunately, you are working
within a relatively narrow topic so the materials you encounter should lend themselves to
these processes.
You will know that you have a solid synthesis when your proposition and reasons
demonstrate a clear conceptual link that joins them. In the example below, the student
identified a common element: all of the authors studied had challenged the evidence used
by the author of the research text. He pushed the analysis further, however, so that there
was a conceptual rather than simply a concrete synthesis. He observed that the authors,
while challenging the evidence, did so for different reasons. Thus the student went from
analysis to synthesis and then analyzed the product of his synthesis:
Proposition: The majority of scholars challenged the evidence of Book C.
Reason: Scholar X and Y pointed to what they felt were serious flaws in the
books data collection methods. In the paragraphs developing this reason, the student
would explore how Scholar X focused on the survey tool used, while Scholar Y noted
that the individuals surveyed were chosen for their availability rather than selected
through more formally valid means.
Reason: Scholar Z, in contrast, argued that Book C should not be judged by the
evidence it obtained from quantitative research, since a close analysis of the book reveals
that its conclusions are derived exclusively from its qualitative, not quantitative, data. In
the ensuing paragraphs developing this reason, the student would provide Scholar Zs
demonstration of how criticisms of data collection do not matter by showing that the
book depends on its qualitative research.

Analysis and Synthesis: Rhetorical Considerations

Analysis and synthesis are complementary and interdependent. The writer needs to
decide which results to emphasize, the analytic or the synthetic. Psychologically, as well
as logically, each implies the other. Sometimes its more important to emphasize the
connections, the concept that ties the elements together, but for other purposes an

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emphasis on the divisions may be more effective. For example, if we take the
proposition:
All four authors demonstrate the great demands made of college athletes.
We might wish to emphasize reasons that highlight the analytic division, demands made
by each sport because we have decided that a particular sport makes too many demands
on our students. Then our demonstration might look something like this:
Explanatory Reason 1: Two authors show how basketball makes great demands
Explanatory Reason 2: Some authors point to the lesser demands of certain other
sports, such as fencing.
Explanatory Reason 3: Many authors point to football as the most demanding.
In contrast, the writer may wish to show that all sports are too demanding and therefore
would only distract readers by pointing to the differing demands made by individual
sports. Instead, this writer would likely wish to present the result of analysis and
synthesis across the sports. The reasons might look something like this:
Explanatory Reason 1: Time commitment demanded by sports
Explanatory Reason 2: Physical demands (fatigue, injury)
Explanatory Reason 3: Emotional/intellectual demands

More Examples of Analysis and Synthesis

A recent New Yorker article provided a fine example of analysis and synthesis in a
description of a current event:
Something Tea Partiers and Occupiers [Occupy Wall Street] might agree on is
that the groups are not like each other. (They certainly don't look alike.) Yet
there's an irresistible symmetry. Both arose on the political fringe, more or less
spontaneously, in response to the financial crisis and its economic consequences.
Neither has authoritative leaders or a formal hierarchical structure. Each was
originally sparked by a third-tier media outlet, albeit of opposite types--one by a
cable business-news reporter's rant against "loser's mortgages," the other by an
email blast from an anti-corporate, nonprofit, incongruously slick Canadian
magazine. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are both protest movements, not
interest groups, and while both are wary, or claim to be, of established political
figures and organizations, each welcomes their praise, if not their direction. Both
have already earned places in the long, raucous history of ideologically
promiscuous American populism.
Hendrik Hertzberg, "Occupational Hazards" New Yorker, Nov 7, 2011, p23
Analysis: contrasts, classifies, divides, sorts, unlinks, disassociates, de-composes, breaks

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down, identifies elements: Let's sort these mice into groups (by color, by habitat, by size)
Synthesis: compares, links, associates, composes, establishes a relationship among unlike
objects: How are a mouse and a refrigerator the same?
Analysis: How might you sort the apples that you buy at the farmer's market? How might
you divide an apple into parts? How are apples purchased at the farmers market different
from apples purchased at a grocery store?
Synthesis: What do apples, pears, peaches, plums, and oranges have in common? What
do farmers markets and grocery stores have in common?
Analysis: How might you classify the different religions of the world? Different genres
of poetry? Different stanzas, lines, words in a poem?
Synthesis: How are religions and poetry the same? How are sonnet and limericks the
same?
Analysis: Identify the various breeds of dog; identify the differences between the breeds.
Synthesis: Determines that all dogs are mammals.
Analysis: What are the different elements of each of your three keyword articles? Can
their authors be sorted in terms of their position on the subject, their methodology, the
kind of evidence they use, the conclusions they reach, the authorities they cite?
Synthesis: What does the author of your research text have in common with the sources
s/he cites? Do they all share the same goal? Do they all define the problem similarly?
Do they all cite the same scholar? Do they all agree on what constitutes persuasive
evidence?

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Justificatory Reasoning
If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink,
Good wine, a friend, because I m dry,
Or lest I should be by and by,
Or any other reason why.
--John Sirmond (1589)
Justificatory reasoning is demanded whenever we advance a proposition that is
debatablethat some or most readers may not accept. John Sirmond, in the toast cited
above, offers five reasons why men drink, satirizing the rigorous, grinding study of logic
demanded of students in the 16th century. As things change, so they remain the same.
Justificatory reasoning may defend or revise (or satirize) a proposition that most take for
granted: Bicyclists should obey traffic regulations could be one such. Or a proposition
might advance a new or generally unfamiliar idea: Plants have emotions. Whatever
the occasion, the justificatory proposition must have as its goal to justify something, and
all reasons, evidence, and explanations in the text must be aimed at this justification. The
object is to gain the audiences adherence, filling their minds with reasoning,
conditioning them at every turn to accept ones proposition: a convergence of arguments.
To locate good reasons, a writer should take Aristotles advice: use your imagination,
observation, and research to discover every possible reason, bit of evidence, figure of
speech, feeling, analogy, experience in support of your argument. Then select from
among these the few that your reader will find persuasive. Aristotle and others also
encouraged aspiring rhetoricians to keep their eyes and ears peeled for situations and
premises that the people around them seemed to find persuasive or that incited strong
emotions. Aristotle created a catalogue of emotions and the situations that inspired them,
while Cicero made lists of premises that people seemed to find compelling.
There is more to good critical writing than identifying persuasive premises, reasons and
evidence, however. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare criticizes the weak
reasoning skills of Gratiano, because he speaks an infinite deal of nothing. He
continues, His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff: you shall
seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.
Good reasoning, as Shakespeare asserts, depends on strong reasons, to be sure, but also
reasons that can be easily located and identified as such. Those who read critical writing
are in search of reasons and evidence. The pleasure of reading critical writing is its
reasoning. Aesthetic pleasure is a plus, but not at the expense of clarity.
Thus skillful critical writers tend to foreground the architecture of their arguments. The
reasoning is, after all, what informs and persuades us, unless we are of the sort who
embrace propositions at face value, regardless of the quality of reasoning behind it. For
those versed in critical reasoning, however, how a writer arrives at his position is what

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we will use as the basis of our reaction. If a writer has not clearly reasoned his way to his
proposition, the skillful critical reader will remain unpersuaded.
Barbara Ehrenreich exemplifies this approach to critical writing in her essay, Are
Women Getting Sadder? (2009). In it, she responds to pundits who cite a recent study to
support their claim that feminism has made women unhappy. Her proposition is that such
a conclusion is misguided.
For starters, happiness is an inherently slippery thing to measure or define.
Philosophers have debated what it is for centuries, and even if we were to define it
simply as a greater frequency of positive feelings than negative ones, when we
ask people if they are happy, we are asking them to arrive at some sort of average
over many moods and moments. Maybe I was upset earlier in the day after I
opened the bills, but then was cheered up by a call from a friend, so what am I
really?
In one well-known psychological experiment, subjects were asked to answer a
questionnaire on life satisfaction, but only after they had performed the apparently
irrelevant task of photocopying a sheet of paper for the experimenter. For a
randomly chosen half of the subjects, a dime had been left for them to find on the
copy machine. As two economists summarize the results: "Reported satisfaction
with life was raised substantially by the discovery of the coin on the copy
machine -- clearly not an income effect."
As for the particular happiness study under discussion, the red flags start popping
up as soon as you look at the data. Not to be anti-intellectual about it, but the
raw data on how men and women respond to the survey reveal no discernible
trend to the naked eyeball. Only by performing an occult statistical
manipulation called "ordered probit estimates," do the authors manage to tease out
any trend at all, and it is a tiny one: "Women were one percentage point less likely
than men to say they were not too happy at the beginning of the sample [1972]; by
2006 women were one percentage more likely to report being in this category."
Differences of that magnitude would be stunning if you were measuring, for
example, the speed of light under different physical circumstances, but when the
subject is as elusive as happiness -- well, we are not talking about paradigmshifting results.
Note that Ehrenreich opens paragraphs one and three with a clearly stated reason to
support her proposition. Each paragraph is then devoted to developing the reasons with
examples and other concrete evidence. Her first reason is supported by an example
drawn from philosophy and a hypothetical example. Paragraph two develops a third
example by drawing upon a different study on life satisfaction. Each of these examples
clearly supports and illuminates reason one: defining and measuring happiness is very
difficult.

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Ehrenreich opens her third paragraph with reason two: the study is unreliable. She
develops this reason throughout the paragraph by pointing to the data and how it was
interpreted by the researchers. As in the prior paragraph, she provides concrete evidence
to support her reason. This paragraphs concluding sentence manages to support the
reason of the paragraph while tying it to the reason of the previous paragraph, a masterful
display of convergence.
As Ehrenreichs argument suggests, ones reasoning may be subtle, imaginative, even
playful, but ones structure of reasoningits architectureshould be solid and
transparent to reader and writer alike. Demonstration of reasoning is fundamental to
persuasion. It is not sufficient for Ehrenreich to declare that people have drawn the
wrong conclusions from a recent happiness study and then to meander about, offering
stories, evidence, ideas about happiness and feminism, no matter how lyrically she writes
about these. Tangents and associative trails are red flags of weak reasoning, of a writer
not in control of what he is trying to say. Muddled structure is muddy thought.
While the framework (though not necessarily the ordering) of reasoning is relatively
consistent across disciplines and professions, members of specialized audiences,
scholarly, professional, or social, have rules and evidence that are acceptable, or
unacceptable, to their community. The most obvious example is the court of law, where
some evidence and some lines of argument are admissible, and others are not. Similarly,
hauling in charts and graphs to support your interpretation of a poem is unlikely to move
your English professor. Quotations and close readings of poetry will not move your math
and science professors. Some of your readers will put great stock in number crunching,
while others will prefer ethnographies and case studies, and still others will seek material
objects or recordings, or evidence exclusively confined to a particular text, such as a
poem or film or religious tract. In such fields as philosophy, how the writer reasonsthe
nature of the proofis what most matters; in others, such as literature, how well the
writer demonstrates skill with language can be as persuasive as the textual evidence itself.
When you set out to persuade others, begin by thinking of reasons that cover the gamut:
numbers, stories, analogies, studies, examples, abstract and concrete universal premises.
Sort through these to find the ones you think will be most compelling to your particular
readership. And if you are an undergraduate student with a writing assignment, or a
newbie at a professional firm, you should find out what kinds and rules of evidence are
permitted and persuasive in that particular field.
Works Cited:
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Are Women Getting Sadder? Huffington Post, 13 Oct. 2009.
Web.

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Introductions
Introductions set our readers expectations, secure their goodwill, and prepare them for
the proposition. They must also, subtly or explicitly, cohere the entire essay. To do this,
introductions must have integrity, which is to say, they need to form a seamless whole
with the remainder of the piece. There should be no division between the purpose, style,
and tone of the opening lines and those that follow. To achieve this, the introduction
needs to be written last. We cannot introduce that which does not yet exist.
Young writers are taught to make their introductions catchy: dramatic, striking, emphatic,
bodacious, bold, arresting, commanding! Catchy openings are a good exercise for the
novice writer, compelling them to give real thought to their readers. For critical writers,
however, catchy is a dangerous opening act. The contents of critical texts are seldom
dramatic in the same fashion as the typical catchy opening, and such disjuncture will
destroy the integrity of the piece. Jugglers and fire-breathers are a circuitous way to
prepare actuaries for the nuances of risk management in the insurance industry.
Gruesome details of serial murder are a lurid but unlikely preparation for a reasoned
analysis of the insanity plea and, while plastic plays a big role in our lives, such a broad
premise is a poor opening for an engineering report on the design of plastic injection
molding equipment.
The critical reader is disciplined, purposive, realistic. When he turns to a piece of critical
writing, he is not seeking entertainment. He is reading with an eye toward advancing
knowledge and solving problems. Most likely he has gone to some trouble to find the
article or book. He is, in short, a motivated reader who doesnt need to be caught like a
fish. He does need to be engaged, however, and he does want to know whether the text he
is about to read will address his purpose for reading it.
Introductions have a series of tasks:
engage the reader
set the readers expectations
secure the readers goodwill
prepare the reader for the proposition
introduce the proposition
As with all parts of the text, the introduction must be written for the reader: what does the
reader know, what is his attitude toward the topic, what is his purpose in reading this? In
turn, the introduction must be conscious of the writers goals and the content of the essay.
Audiences and purposes differ. Authors of textbooks, instruction manuals, and parking
tickets, for example, do not have to work hard to engage their readers. They have captive
audiences. Scholars and professionals do not have captive audiences, but they do have
specialized audiences, so they are able to take certain things for granted, such as a
relatively committed reader. Students have a peculiar position as authors, for their
audience is captive and specialized. The teacher has assigned and must read their work.
However, the teachers goals for reading a students paper are quite different from that of
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an ordinary critical reader. It is no surprise that students always want to know, What
should be in this paper? Despite that this question frustrates professors, the fact of the
matter is that students are filling an order, not writing to an audience who expects to learn
from an expert. If instructors wanted to learn about the topic, theyd spend their time
reading work by experts. Students must thus negotiate a treacherous terrain in which they
are meant to sound like experts in short order while of course being novices to the field,
the topic, the conventions of writing, and the audience.
But do not despair. Practice the rhetoric of reasoning you are being taught in this seminar,
and follow the synthesis and research techniques you will be taught in the second half of
the seminar, and your professors will be pleased with your work.
Of course, we should try to engage our readers, even if they are captives. To the extent
possible, use your title and opening lines to capture your readers attention and draw him
into your world, where your aim is to fill his mind with your ideas and work to change
his understanding or disposition. The million dollar question, as ever, is: What is your
readers state of mind as he glances at your title and peruses your introduction?
News stories provide a fine illustration of the challenges of attracting an audience given
that their task is to deliver information, most of it hardly sensational. The newspaper
reader is a generalist with limited time and no particular motive for reading the paper
beyond perhaps catching up on a few points of interest and finding out whats new. She
likely has many things on her mind as she opens her morning paper, which greets her
with a cacophony of competing headlines.
A recent New York Times story by Pamela Paul provides a good illustration. Her title,
By Her Support, Does She Earn His Infidelity? is something of a teaser. Its topic isnt
altogether clear, but it does strike the chords of a popular theme in American culture:
money and betrayal. Paul opens with what is called a soft leadcolorful and dramatic:
Heres a useful nugget for misogynists and man-haters alike: The more a man
depends on his female partners paycheck, the better chances he will cheat.
Having multiple sex partners may be an attempt to compensate for feelings of
inadequacy, suggests a paper presented at the 105th annual meeting of the
American Sociological Association in August. The study looked at 18-to-28-yearold-married and co-habitating heterosexuals who had been in the same
relationship for at least a year. Data was culled from the continuing National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth begun in 1997.
Despite the breezy tone and loaded languagemisogynists and man-hatersPauls
opening paragraph offers a solid, substantive proposition, engaging the reader, preparing
her for the contents, and honoring journalisms demanding inverted pyramid form by
beginning with a story summary in 20 to 30 words.

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The second paragraph has a marked shift in style and tone. Pauls language is now
straightforward, neutralin fact, scholarlyas she restated her lead, adding new details,
in keeping with the journalistic form. Why did Paul choose to open with a soft, rather
than conventional lead? Some argue that the more tabloid-like voice of the soft lead
weakens the credibility of journalism, while others argue that the soft lead gives news
stories a more literary, engaging voice. Perhaps Paul, or her editor, decided that the soft
lead in this instance was preferable because her story is not conventionally newsworthy
or urgent. Scholarly studies are not known for grabbing the attention of general
audiences. In any event, such consideration shows how even in journalism, where
grabbing the attention of a generalist reader is paramount, catchy openings are a subject
of debate.
In contrast to the news story, which grapples with the exigencies of such audiences,
scholarly authorsincluding students writing academic papersaddress a specialized
audience. Specialized audiences read titles and introductions to discover, as quickly as
possible, whether the article is relevant to their needs and interests (or, in the case of
professors, to see if the students paper addresses the assignment). Such readers are
already psychologically disposed and intellectually prepared to read about the topic. The
introduction, in these instances, should get immediately to the business of securing their
goodwill and preparing them for whats ahead, filling them in on what they need to know
to get oriented, rather like a colleague or friend might prepare us for an upcoming
meeting, speech, or confrontation.
Philosopher Peter Singer provides a good example of a productive introduction with his
article, All Animals Are Equal. Like Paul, this scholar has taken up a controversial
topic and would probably like to reach a general audience. Unlike Paul, he does not have
to bob in a sea of titles clamoring for their readers attention. Nobody is likely to read his
article unless they already have an interest in the topic and have picked up the book that
contains it.
Singer opts for a title that clearly encapsulates their proposition: All animals are equal.
This strategy sets the readers expectation about the topic, position, and style of
presentation. The reader will continue not because she has been lured by a charming
voice or an exciting story, but rather because she is interested in learning more about how
and why Singer regards animals as equal:
All Animals Are Equal
In recent years a number of oppressed groups have campaigned vigorously for
equality. The classic instance is the Black Liberation movement, which demands
an end to the prejudice and discrimination that has made blacks second-class
citizens. The immediate appeal of the black liberation movement and its initial, if
limited, success made it a model for other oppressed groups to follow. We
became familiar with liberation movements for Spanish-Americans, gay people,
and a variety of other minorities. When a majority groupwomenbegan their
campaign, some thought we had come to the end of the road. Discrimination on

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the basis of sex, it has been said, is the last universally accepted form of
discrimination, practiced without secrecy or pretense even in those liberal circles
that have long prided themselves on their freedom from prejudice against racial
minorities.
One should always be wary of talking of the last remaining form of
discrimination. If we have learnt anything from the liberation movements, we
should have learnt how difficult it is to be aware of latent prejudice in our
attitudes to particular groups until this prejudice is forcefully pointed out.
A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons and an
extension or reinterpretation of the basic moral principle of equality. Practices that
were previously regarded as natural and inevitable come to be seen as the result of
an unjustifiable prejudice. Who can say with confidence that all his or her
attitudes and practices are beyond criticism? If we wish to avoid being numbered
amongst the oppressors, we must be prepared to re-think even our most
fundamental attitudes. We need to consider them from the point of view of those
most disadvantaged by our attitudes, and the practices that follow from these
attitudes. If we can make this unaccustomed mental switch we may discover a
pattern in our attitudes and practices that consistently operates so as to benefit one
groupusually the one to which we ourselves belongat the expense of another.
In this way we may come to see that there is a case for a new liberation
movement. My aim is to advocate that we make this mental switch in respect of
our attitudes and practices towards a very marge group of beings: members of
species other than our ownor, as we popularly though misleadingly call them,
animals. In other words, I am urging that we extend to other species the basic
principle of equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members
of our own species.
Like the title, the opening line is plain and straightforward: In recent years a number of
oppressed groups have campaigned vigorously for equality. The author wastes no time
reaching for common ground. He states a fact (a universal premise) that is quite close to
their proposition. Properly chosen, the opening premise will prepare the reader, logically
and emotionally, to entertain the proposition. If Singers reader is indisposed to rights for
marginalized people, she is likely to stop reading at this point, or she may continue with
the mindset of refutation, which means that he has most likely lost her, for the task of the
critical writer is to engage the reader and fill her mind with reasons and explanations that
lead her inexorably to agree with or grasp the proposition. Depending upon the writers
ambition and intended audience, losing a few readers over the course of an argument is to
be expected; picking up some readers who wish to refute what we have to say is generally
welcome, if it is a reasoned refutation, for it advances our understanding.
Controversial topics have a complicated relationship to audience. Writers must accept
that they are unlikely to persuade everyone right out of the box. In fact, changing
peoples views about a significant issue is wisely done in stages, moving audiences from
one premise to the next and, more importantly, targeting individual audiences with

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particular concerns and interests. Obviously, owners of meat processing plants and
scientists who engage in animal experimentation have different interests related to animal
rights than do vegetarians or people engaged in animal rescue. A knowledgeable rhetor is
going to aim, one at a time, at such audiences rather than attempt to reach them all,
scattershot. It is worth noting, and a matter of concern, that with the internet now making
such individualized arguments available to unintended global audiences, a fundamental
means for building consensus has been lost.
Along with establishing the premise and suggesting the type of audience being addressed,
Singers opening sentence also anchors the reader temporally. The reader will anticipate a
discussion of recent events and arguments, not an historical overview of animal rights. In
addition, the opening statement forecasts the logical structure of the entire piece: an
equivalence between animal and human rights. Thus in a title and a single sentence,
Singer has already acquitted most of the responsibilities of introduction. They have set
expectations, secured adherence, and provided a coherent framework for what will
follow.
At this point, the job of the journalist and the scholar converges. Both will seek to orient
and condition the readers mind as quickly as possible. No meandering, no tangents, no
tarrying in the field of overgeneralizations: everything in the opening directly illuminates
and moves the reader toward a better grasp of the proposition. In contrast, the novice
writer typically opens with such a loosely-related anecdote or broad premise that the
reader, instead of moving seamlessly from opening lines to proposition, feels as if she has
fallen off a cliff and has been caught, midway through her downward plunge, by a jutting
branch, where she will dangle for the duration.
Pauls job as a news journalist is explanatory: she is not going to persuade her readers
that women should earn less than men, or that men should learn how to be faithful to
women who earn more than they. Her task is to engage a general audiences interest and
present them with the findings of a scholarly study. She makes quick work of it. Singer
has a bigger row to hoe. His task is justificatory. His goal is to change their readers
understanding and indeed way of life, and he has chosen to do this through the rhetoric of
reasoning. Had he chosen to open with a heart-rending story of animal abuse, he would
have immediately created a significant disjuncture between opening and essay in terms of
style and approach.
Such disjunctions can have calamitous effects. Along with being a clumsy guide to ones
own work, the incoherent introduction may actually contradict the arguments later made,
rendering your argument illogical and easy to refute. More important, any argument
worth having must begin in agreement and with goodwill. If you open with stories or
statements that put off your readers or raise objections or questions, you have squandered
the goodwill of your reader, and jeopardized your credibility. In this instance of animals
rights, what might seem like a catchy story would actually have been, for most readers, a
clich. For the most part, our first stabs at an introduction are the worst; they are
generally the most obvious and uninventive. Nearly everybody these days has
encountered hair-raising tails of animal abuse. If these stories havent already moved us,

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there is no reason to think that another one will do so now. Once a rhetorical strategy
becomes this clich, the writer needs to put on his thinking cap and come up with
something new. Writers who seriously seek change must attend carefully to the overly
familiar, and continuously adapt their strategies to the knowledge and state of mind of
their audiences.
Singer has chosen a superb premise with which to launch his argument. Few readers will
contest the validity of human rights. The first paragraph thus creates a solidarity between
the writers and most readers, who join in opposition to the oppression of human beings.
The second paragraph builds upon this premise by adding another, this one steeped in the
concrete of social relations values, as well: the importance of being open and sensitive to
future instances of injustice: again, who could argue with that? The third paragraphs
premise now builds upon the last and seeks yet another modest agreement that we should
continue to improve that which we agree needs improvement. This sequence of linked
premises, aimed at an audience likely to accept all of them, joins the reader with the
author in a series of logical moves. We are now psychologically and intellectually
prepared to entertain his proposition, which he restates and refines:
In other words, I am urging that we extend to other species the basic principle of
equality that most of us recognize should be extended to all members of our own
species.
Each discipline and profession has its own way of introducing its propositions, though all
are charged with the same basic tasks. Some disciplines and professions, such as the
sciences and engineering, have highly formalized rules for introducing, including a
relatively uniform notion of length, content, and voice and a subject header that plainly
states: Introduction. Others, such as history, literature, and anthropology, may be rather
free-wheeling. All fulfill the same function, however. Once you understand this, your
best way to get a handle on the conventions of the discipline or publication for which you
intend to write is to study a few published examples, just as a professional writer would
do, and just as we are doing here and you are likely doing in your seminar. Rough out a
quick outlinein fact, just an outline of function or does will do the trickof two or
three examples and synthesize these into a general pattern. For example:
The introductions in this field always open with a playful title and then a serious
subtitle separated by a colon; the title announces the proposition. The first
paragraph is typically a story of personal experience that links to the proposition
implicitly. The second paragraph states the main premise and quotes two or three
experts in the field supporting the premise.
Doing this will create your very own blueprint tailored to your assignment, whether you
have graduated from college and are now working for a company that has asked you to
write a business report, or a student in an unfamiliar discipline (theyre all unfamiliar at
first!). If you note variations across the samples, all the better. These are additional tools
to add to your writing toolbox, variations on the patterns.

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Here are some strategies critical writers may use in their introductions:

Provide a premise, or series of premises, to establish common ground with your

readers and prepare them for the proposition
Summarize the text you will be discussing
Describe the problem you are setting out to address
Introduce an argument against your proposition
Define a key term that will help readers grasp your proposition
Provide some historical background leading up to the proposition
Tell a story or describe a person, place, thing, event, or situation that will prepare
the reader for the proposition
Provide a brief overview of other points of view or writings on the topic
Quote an authority on the topic who supports, or refutes, your proposition

Its important, however, not to simply grab a strategy and run with it. The best strategy is
to know who your reader is, what your proposition is and how you have presented it.
Study the conventions in your field and imagine your readers state of mind, knowledge,
attitude and purpose as she turns to your text. Consider how to bring her into your world,
how to capture her imagination and goodwill, how to meet her at the premise nearest to
your proposition. Ask yourself a few questions: How is she going to feel about your
proposition? What does she already know and believe about it? Why has she chosen to
read your work? What is she going to be encountering ahead? Of course, these are mostly
questions that you have been addressing with each chunk of reasoning, each building
block, you have been creating. But now, in the introduction, it is time to renew your
acquaintance and consider the reader who has yet to meet you and your reasoning. With
such sturdy, thoughtful construction, your reader cant help but take you seriously.

Works Cited
Paul, Pamela. By Her Support, Does She Earn His Infidelity? The New York Times,
26 September 2010. Web.
Singer, Peter. All Animals are Equal. Animal Rights and Human Obligations. Eds.
Tom Regan and Peter Singer. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: 1989. 148-162. Print.

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Reasons Versus Evidence

-- David Faris
One of the first hurdles in teaching our method is communicating to students a true
understanding of the difference between examples and reasons. There is nothing wrong
with examples they are the foundation of reasoning and crucial for any convincing
argument. Lets say Im going to argue that the internet has transformed American
politics, and my two reasons are the ability of candidates to fundraise on the Internet, and
the ability of ordinary citizens to hold politicians accountable for their statements. If I
cant come up with a single instance of online fundraising or political accountability I
will have a very weak argument indeed. But examples are insufficient to make a truly
compelling argument by themselves. If your thesis is Russell Banks is one of the
greatest living American novelists, you cant make a persuasive argument to support it
by saying that The Sweet Hereafter is a wonderful novel, and that Affliction too is a
wonderful novel. You need two reasons why Russell Banks is a great novelist, and you
need examples from his novels to support those generalizations something along the
lines of Russell Banks creates tragic heroes with whom we can identify. In The Sweet
Hereafter, for instance.
In my discipline of political science, youll often find many papers in this format, which I
like to call the Two Examples Essay. Your students will start off with a perfectly
reasonable point, like America loses wars fought without the support of its people. This
is, I think, a defensible proposition. The students then provide their two reasons
Americans turned against the Vietnam War and the United States lost, and then
Americans turned against the Iraq War and the United States lost. The students may
even provide ample data public opinion polling and academic essays to support their
contentions about the two wars. The essays may look and sound sophisticated. But even
if you happen to agree that both of these wars were lost because the American people
didnt support them, you are left with the question of why. The central task of providing
cause and effect remains untackled. The idea that America loses unpopular wars
becomes to use social science jargon a finding in search of a theory.
What your students must be able to do is continue their proposition with a because
statement. Force them to do this in your meetings. America loses wars fought without
the support of its people because. Because why exactly? You should see that to finish
that sentence with because America lost the Vietnam war simply will not do. It is
tautological reasoning. And so while your students may be quite skilled at illustrating
their arguments with examples, they have failed to make a convincing case for their
arguments. You can think of many reasons why wars cannot be won without public
support. Perhaps soldiers in the field fight halfheartedly if they believe their countrymen
are not with them, or perhaps commanders are reluctant to prosecute such a war. Perhaps
leaders will not allocate sufficient funding to win an unpopular war. Or perhaps
unpopular wars are unpopular because they are unwinnable and the public sees that.
Whatever reasons they choose, they must be able to answer the question of why?
implicitly posed by the proposition.
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The great reward of stressing this point is that your students will eventually come to
terms with this distinction, and in doing so they will write more provocative essays. They
will look at the world around them and start asking Why? when other people are just
providing litanies of examples. Their friends will argue, Democrats cant win national
elections! Look at 2002 and 2004! And your students will be able to offer reasoning that
either confirms or rejects these kinds of hypotheses. Theyll say things like, Thats
because the Democratic coalition includes groups whose values are only shared by
minorities of the population. Instead of haggling over examples and reason, as an
instructor you can then spend more time debating the merits of these claims, and more
time pursuing the truth.

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Counterargument
On the face of things, the more reasons and evidence you provide your audience, the
stronger your argument should be. But alas, amplification has its dangers. The more
reasons and evidence and explanation you give, the more you stick your neck out. Your
opponents are likely to find inconsistencies between some of your reasons, or flaws in
your evidence. And those who are intent upon winning the argument at all costs will
simply fixate upon your weakest reasons and refute them, giving your proposition the
appearance of being invalid when indeed it might be quite strong. Focusing on the
weakest arguments of ones opponentthe classic straw man fallacyis a subpar
move for a critical thinker worth his salt, but a highly effective strategy for an audience
untrained in rhetorical analysis.
The forms of refutation and concession help to mitigate the problems of amplification.
Refutation requires that you present an opponents argument and then show why it is
wrong. Concession requires that you present an opponents argument and show why it is
partially correct.
How do these strategies strengthen your argument? First, and most importantly, many if
not most errors in decision-making can be attributed to faulty reasoning. Testing your
reasons insures that your reasoning is as sound as you are able to make it. It also exposes
weaknesses in your argument that will make you vulnerable to opponents and less
persuasive to even your most receptive readers. Better to test your ideas yourself rather
than leaving this entirely in the hands of your readers. Untested reasoning is little more
than an opinion dressed in Sunday clothes.
Second, demonstrated refutation or concession assures your audience that you have given
serious thought to your proposition and the reasoning underlying it. These strategies give
the appearance and ideally the reality that a reasonable person has tried to anticipate and
address every possible weakness.
Third, the strategies of refutation and concession are an excellent means of bolstering the
weak points in an argument as well as heading off certain types of attack. Take, for
example, the problem of inconsistencies in an argument. If you are arguing for the death
penalty, you may encounter a basic contradiction: arguing for the sanctity of the victims
life and against the sanctity of the victimizers. Using the strategy of refutation (or
concession), you can acknowledge and address this contradiction yourself, denying the
opponent the opportunity to dismiss your argument out-of-hand for what is otherwise a
glaring contradiction. More importantly, identifying such weaknesses in your reasoning
will compel you to strengthen it.
Ehrenreichs Are Women Getting Sadder? is an essay predominantly in the refutation
form, with the writer mainly refuting the arguments made by those she opposes. About
halfway through the essay, in which she has provided a series of reasons supporting her

43

position (or refuting the oppositions), Ehrenreich employs the concession form as a
fulcrum:
But let's assume the study is sound and that (white) women have become less
happy relative to men since 1972. Does that mean that feminism ruined their
lives?
She concedesfor arguments sakethat the study is sound. She then moves to break
the link between the study and what it is able to reveal about feminisms impact on
womens happiness. She uses the study itself as evidence in support of her own position:
Not according to Stevenson and Wolfers, who find that "the relative decline in
women's well-being... holds for both working and stay-at-home mothers, for those
married and divorced, for the old and the young, and across the education
distribution" -- as well as for both mothers and the childless. If feminism were the
problem, you might expect divorced women to be less happy than married ones
and employed women to be less happy than stay-at-homes. As for having
children, the presumed premier source of female fulfillment: They actually make
women less happy.
And if the women's movement was such a big downer, you'd expect the saddest
women to be those who had some direct exposure to the noxious effects of second
wave feminism. As the authors report, however, "there is no evidence that women
who experienced the protests and enthusiasm in the 1970s have seen their
happiness gap widen by more than for those women were just being born during
that period."
What this study shows, if anything, is that neither marriage nor children make
women happy. (The results are not in yet on nipple piercing.) Nor, for that matter,
does there seem to be any problem with "too many choices," "work-life balance,"
or the "second shift." If you believe Stevenson and Wolfers, women's happiness is
supremely indifferent to the actual conditions of their lives, including poverty and
racial discrimination. Whatever "happiness" is...
When testing your ideas, its important to avoid confirmation bias, selecting those
arguments and evidence which confirm what we already believe. Ehrenreich is
perhaps a little in danger of this by assuming rather than testing the assumption
that stay-at-home married women with children would be less affected by
feminism. This leaves her vulnerable to an opponent saying that such women
might be most saddened by feminism, for feminism has made them feel that such
a life is not as rewarding or valued as work outside the home. Its important,
when refuting, to consider the strongest arguments of your opposition, and test
your argument against those. If not, you risk weakening your credibility as well
as your argument.

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The best critical thinking challenges its own beliefs, taking refutation seriously and
testing its own and its opponents strongest arguments with the greatest possible
intellectual rigor. Sometimes such challenges to ones own beliefs can result in a
revision or even reversal of position: a risk you take when you engage in critical
thinking.
Works Cited:
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Are Women Getting Sadder? Huffington Post, 13 Oct. 2009.
Web.

Conceding to Concession
After years of statewide timed essays, I have enjoyed taking justificatory essays out of
the nursery and into the field of reasoned adult conversation. This is accomplished,
partially, by putting meat behind ones thrusts. Truly persuasive essays do not rely solely
on moral appeals or blatant commandsthe Am not! Are too! back-and-forth of the
playground, and, increasingly, of modern politics. Real evidence is necessary.
Yet I have also learned that the justificatory essay grows up when we recognize
(concede?) the value of concession. This is the parry-and-thrust of real conversation,
rather than a stilted model that imagines the writer as an orator on her soapbox, ideally
with an audience straitjacketed to their respective seats.
Concession can feel like weakness. It is, in fact, a form of strength. Acknowledging
counterarguments can enhance one's arguments and persuasive power. It's a doff of the
hat to the reader's intelligence; it recognizes that the reader comes equipped with mental
faculties, and is likely scanning the essay for faulty logic or misleading statements.
Concession is also valuable because admitting one's own failings bespeaks a certain
generosity of thought. Concession can win the reader's trust. It looks good to look down
on oneselfor, at least, to look critically at oneselfand to put sophisticated words in
ones opponents mouth is to regard him with dignity. This makes for adult conversation.
And it makes concession an indication of self-awareness, which is critical to
understanding and improving the logical structure of ones arguments. When done right,
the writer gets much more from concession than she cedes. Jamie Fisher, CAS 2015

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Prewriting
Each writer has a different way of preparing to write. Some write in their minds,
consciously or unconsciously puzzling through the task at hand, exploring what to say
and how to say it before ever putting a word on a page. Others make lists, cubes, maps,
or outlines. Still others simply sit down and write their way into an idea.
Its important to find the process thats right for you, as well as to remark that this is the
first step in the process and shouldnt be confused with the final presentation, a danger
particularly for those whose prewriting process consists of writing their way into an idea.
Such writers need to understand that this process is no different from lists or maps:
though you are writing sentences, you are still in the midst of conceptualizing, not at the
stage of presenting a carefully considered, deliberately arranged piece of writing.
One last observation: your process for coming up with a poem or a novel may not be the
same as that for creating an academic essay, grant proposal, or engineering report. Thus
if you are accustomed to a creative writing process, you may find it useful to explore
other approaches that work better for you as a critical writer.
Here are the most common prewriting strategies. If you have another, please be sure to
share it with your instructor and colleagues when you discuss prewriting in class.

Freewriting
Freewriting is letting yourself write your way into an idea. Some people constrain
themselves, freewriting on the particular topic or assignment, while others just write
about whatever comes to mind until, finally, the mind relaxes and focuses and ideas are
generated. In freewriting, its important to be receptive rather than critical: dont revise,
dont correct errors, dont worry about grammar. Just let the words flow. Often its
helpful to give yourself a time limit (5 minutes of freewriting) or a page limit (one page)
to encourage your mind to focus. Thereafter sort through the pile of verbiage and you
will often find terrific ideas and evidence. A writer often works her way to a strong
proposition somewhere toward the end of such a drafta novice writer sometimes turns
in such papers as if they were final drafts, rather than prewriting, and it shows.

Mapping/Clustering
This is a graphic technique for those who are inclined to be visual and associative. You
might use mapping/clustering software or you can do this the old-fashioned way, with a
large piece of paper, a pen, and perhaps a few differently colored highlighters or pencils.
Instead of writing sentences or sentence fragments, you simply jot down in brief the ideas
that come to you. When youve run out of ideas, review your various jottings and seek
relationships between and among them. When you identify a relationship, draw a line to
connect the related ideas. These relationships are often the basis of a solid proposition.
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Once youve identified a relationship, you might wish to differentiate elements of it with
different highlighters: reasons, examples, and counterarguments.

Listing
Listing is also a graphic technique, similar to mapping. The difference is that instead of
writing words across and around a page, you write them in column form.

Reading/Research
If, as in this class and in professional life, you have a general idea of what you need to
write about, a good way of generating ideas is to review the assigned reading and lecture
notes (if youre taking a lecture class). You might also search the Internet for articles and
websites about your topic, or do library research and find peer-reviewed, scholarly
sources that might provide you with substantive material for the assignment. By
semesters end, you will become quite familiar with database researching and other such
strategies; for the time being, dont hesitate to seek the assistance of Penns excellent and
friendly library staff, including the reference librarians as well as online chat service. Its
a good idea to write as you research, using one of the prewriting strategies listed here.

Talking
Another excellent prewriting strategy is to talk to others about your writing task, whether
just discussing the assignment as such (Im not sure what this professor is asking me to
do) or discussing the topic or approach you have in mind. Having someone who listens
and respondsan interlocutoris a superb way of preparing to write because it helps
you to consider your audience as well as generate, organize, and refine your ideas. With
this strategy, you should also take notes, combining talking with one of the other
prewriting strategies above. The Talking Prewrite works well with anyone who will
listen and engage, from roommates to family members. If you are looking for skillful,
encouraging listeners, you should also consider making an appointment or dropping in at
the Writing Center, where trained peers, knowledgeable writers themselves, are happy to
function as your interlocutor.

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Arrangement
The most persuasive argument is undoubtedly one that can be dealt with by a powerful
reason or two: You should not touch this live wire. Reason? It will kill you.
Confining your argument to a few strong reasons means that you have less ground to
defend against opposition, and more time to sharpen the evidence and presentation.
Another advantage of focusing on one or two reasons is that you dont have to worry
about how to order them.
But what if a writer has several reasons, some stronger than others, but none as
convincing as imminent death? Easy to remember, difficult to do, the rule of critical
writing is always this: adapt to your audience and purpose. Dont provide twelve
reasons simply because that is the number you amassed. Present only those likeliest to
gain your readers adherence, and least vulnerable to attack. Too many reasons can be
dreary, distracting, overwhelming. Your reader may tune out, or fix upon your weakest
reasons and exit unpersuaded, if not antagonistic. Paradoxically, the more reasons you
provide, the more opportunities you have both to persuade and dissuade your reader.
Seldom does a rhetor have the advantage of two strong, case-closing reasons. Even
specialists writing to other specialists, who actually agree on what counts as persuasive,
are unlikely to be persuaded by the same few reasons. They probably do not share the
same motivations, emotions, concerns, and relationships to a given proposition, which
means that the writer must provide diverse reasons to meet these diverse dispositions.
Some readers may be quite passionate about the subject, while others may have no strong
feelings whatever. Some may have spent years studying and meditating upon a
proposition rather like yours, while it may be news to others. Your reader may include a
major scholar in the field (such as one of your professors), or may be from disciplines
outside of the writers specialty who are interested in what other writers have to say on
the topic. Each reader brings a different understanding of the proposition, in short:
different premises, different feelings, different temporality and depth. What is at stake in
agreeing or disagreeing with the rhetors position may also differ greatly depending upon
personal and professional experience and perhaps demographics. Two reasons, with
such diversity of readership, probably arent going to do the job.
Take, for example, the topic of spanking children.
Depending upon how old you are, how or whether you were disciplined by your parents
and other authority figures, how you felt about it, how you turned out, whether your
family had ample help with childcare, how many children there were in your family,
whether you have children, whether you intend to have children, how others in your
family are raising their childrenwell, you get the idea. Now add to this such issues as
whether you have done research on this topic (and if so, for how long, of what kind, and
in which of the many disciplines that treat this issue?) and whether you have a personal or
professional interest in the topic (social worker, teacher, judge, school psychologist;
abused child or child abuser). Its unlikely that there are two reasons that will address
this potential readership.

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One of the ways to address this dilemma is to direct your writing to a narrowly
specialized audience, and not attempt to reach all the likely interested parties.
But even with a narrow audience (say, other scholars in psychology who work in the field
of corporal punishment of children) a great deal of diversity obtains, particularly for a
topic as ultimately personal and freighted as the spanking of children. In all such
instances, a rhetor will need several reasons, and will want to present those reasons in the
most effective order possible.
Ordering, however, is a tricky business. Some reasons, for example, depend upon other
reasons: one might need to secure an audiences adherence to a particular premise before
being able to move on to the next one (convince them to go out for dinner; then convince
them to go to the Moroccan restaurant). Some good reasons might indispose the reader to
certain other reasons. For example, fear of change or simple inertia may be a reason
why, despite overwhelming evidence that spanking is not a good idea, parents continue to
spank. A parent/scholar who spanks his children is likely going to be offended by that
idea, so opening with it is probably unwise. One doesnt want to begin by alienating
those whom one hopes to persuade.
In arranging her reasons, a rhetor must take into account the dynamics of her
argumentationhow each reason might act upon others and upon her reader. If she is
writing a refutation essay, she may choose to refute her opponents reasons point by
point, in the same order. If her opponent ordered his reasons with care, however, she
might be playing into his hands and ordering her refutation such that it reinforces more
than troubles his argument.
Writers may also choose to arrange their essays in terms of other features: for example,
chronologically, or perhaps in a cause/effect or comparison/contrast structure (both of
which mimic the structure of the refutation form). One of the weaker but commonly
used types of organization is division, which generally means dividing the reasoning into
parts and numbering and naming them: First, Second, Third; or Proponents,
Opponents, Neutrals. This is essentially the additive model of ordering (and and
and) and, while lacking a deeper psychology for ordering, does have the virtue of
providing some organizational structure. Ideally, division calls attention to the reasons so
that one doesnt have to hunt for them.
Along with taking into account these internal and external dynamics of arrangement, the
rhetor has three basic strategies for ordering her reasons or, for that matter, her division
of reasons or categories:

Weakest to strongest
Strongest to weakest
Nestorian order (second strongest, followed by weaker reasons, and
concluding with strongest reason)

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The advantage of the weak-to-strong arrangement is that the reader ends the essay with
the rhetors strongest reason in mind. The disadvantage is that the reader may grow
impatient and reject the reasoning before arriving at the strong suit. The advantages and
disadvantages of the strong-to-weak ordering are pretty much the same, only in reverse:
as the essays reasons grow progressively weaker, the reader may grow impatient,
forgetful or argumentative. The last impression he is given, if he gets to the end, is of
weak reasoning.
The Nestorian provides a good alternative to these. It sandwiches the weaker reasons
between two strong ones, giving the reader a good opening and closing impression of
your reasoning. Named after the military strategist Nestor, this order opens with ones
second strongest reason and closes with the strongest. Thus like Nestors soldiers the
rhetor begins strong, then hammers her opponents with a battery of weaker reasons, and
culminates, a little surprisingly, with the strongest reason.
How do you determine which are your strongest reasons? First, be sure to test them, as
discussed in the refutation exercise, to make sure that they hold up under questioning.
Second, consider what is going to most move your audience: what kinds of reasons and
evidence will they find most persuasive? What premises and experiences will they likely
bring to the topic? What kinds of emotions does this topic elicit and why? Will your
readers regard your proposition as probable, plausible, or possible?
With such questions in mind, lets return to the messy topic of spanking children. In
Children Should Never, Ever, Be Spanked No Matter What the Circumstances, Murray
A. Straus organizes his reasoning in chunks, such as the one presented below: The
Myth that Spanking Is Harmless. In this section, Straus takes on a major reason people
use to justify spanking:
THE MYTH THAT SPANKING IS HARMLESS
In a meta-analysis of 88 studies, Gershoff (2002) located 117 tests of the
hypothesis that corporal punishment (CP) is associated with harmful side
effects such as aggression and delinquency in childhood, crime and antisocial
behavior as an adult, low empathy or conscience, poor parent-child relations,
and mental health problems such as depression. Of the 117 tests, 110, or 94
percent, found evidence of harmful effects of CP. This is an almost
unprecedented degree of consistency in research findings. A number of these
studies controlled for parental warmth, and showed that CP is harmful even
when done by loving parents. However, because the reviewed studies were
cross-sectional, it is just as plausible to interpret most of them as showing that
misbehavior, delinquency, and mental illness cause parents to use CP in their
attempts to deal with those problems.
That interpretation has become dramatically less plausible since 1997. Seven
studies that mark a watershed change have become available since then.
These are "prospective" studies that take into account the child's misbehavior

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at Time 1 as well as whether or not the parents used CP. They examine the
change in behavior subsequent to the CP. These studies therefore provide
evidence on whether responding to the misbehavior by spanking benefited the
child in the sense of resulting in a better-behaved child as measured two or
more years later (as most parents think),or harmed the child in the sense of
increasing misbehavior and mental health problems three years later. All of
these prospective studies found harmful, not beneficial, effects.
The first two of these studies found that, on average, spanked children had an
increase in misbehavior two years later, whereas unspanked children had a
decrease in misbehavior (Gumoe & Mariner, 1997; Straus, Sugarman, &
Giles-Sims, 1997). A study by Brezina (1999) found that CP was associated
with a subsequent increase in the percentage of children who hit a parent.
Simons, Lim, and Gordon (1998) found that, when children whose parents
used CP were in high school, they were more likely to hit a dating partner
than were children whose parents had not spanked at the start of the study.
Three of my studies (Straus, 2004) found that, after controlling for many
other variables, CP use at the start of the study was associated with:
a slower rate of cognitive development than children who were
not spanked
Lowered scores on a test of educational achievement
An increased probability of crime as an adult
Straus begins this section with his second strongest reasonthat 88 studies confirmed
that corporal punishment is associated with harmful effects. However, anticipating
refutation (that is, attending to the dynamics of his argument) he preempts it by noting
another way of interpreting the data: children with mental problems may require such
spanking. Paragraph 2 follows the refutation form, providing reasons that address the
objection and strengthen his interpretation of the mega-study. Paragraph 3 provides
three reasons (generalizations based on studies) that support his subproposition (spanking
is not harmless) and then closes with his strongest reasons: his own data and findings.
The last of the three he presents would likely be the most compelling for all readers,
whether their interests are personal or professional: spanking increases the probability of
criminality.
Strauss reasons in this section are the result of synthesizing many studies as well as his
own data. While such an approach and ordering of reasons is common to scholars, it is
also used by writers of every stripe who are attempting to justify a position. Here, for
example, is the sportswriter Tony DeMarco, offering his reasons why the Texas Rangers
will make it to the playoffs in 2010:
With the July 9 acquisition of Lee and late addition of Ian Kinsler as an
injury replacement, the Rangers had six representatives on the American
League All-Star squad in Anaheim. Starters Josh Hamilton and Vlad

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Guerrero, and emerging studs Elvis Andrus and Neftali Feliz were the
others. And for the first time in four years, Michael Young wasn't among
the Rangers' representatives.
In other words, this is the AL West's most-talented team. They're
dominating the division, ran off a 14-4 stretch in interleague play, have a
winning record on the road, and sit in the top four in both runs scored and
team ERA.
"It just shows we've been able to improve in a lot of areas, especially
pitching and defense,'' Hamilton said. "The hitting always has been there,
and will continue to be there. But we have the pitching to shut teams down
now.''
In both of these examples, the writers happen to be offering a series of reasons that do not
demand much in the way of amplification: no need for extended explanations or mounds
of evidence. The Nestorian order is handy not only for organizing lengthy sections of
reasons, but also for grouping together a bundle of bare-boned reasons. In addition to
being girded by the two strongest reasons, these collections of reasons induce a quick
reading, giving the reader the impression of momentum, quantity, and substancemany
reasonswithout boring or overwhelming him. Tightly grouped, these weaker links also
do not draw much attention to themselves and, in any event, its clear from how they are
being handled that they are not the writers pivotal points.
Before turning to the task of arranging your essay, it is useful to touch on a few other
things that are probably becoming clearer to you. First, critical writers typically state
their propositions in their titles. Straus actually goes a bit overboard in this regard;
however, his proposition is that experts know about the detriments of spanking but fail to
send a clear message to parents. Second, critical writers, like Straus, write in chunks or
blocks of reasoning, just as you have been drafting. Most write a few pages a day. They
spend the larger part of their time gathering and planning their writing, just as you are
being taught to do here, so that when you sit down to write you are all but done and are
controlling your writing, rather than allowing it to control you. Some professionals write
in ordered sequences, following not only the structures of reasoning for their profession
but writing in the actual order in which they appear in a report. Others take a less linear
approach, writing chunks of reasoning (a reason and evidence, or a refutation, or a series
of reasons) which they then order and cohere as a near-final stage of writing. Both
approaches allow writers to manage their time and research-writing schedule, as well as
allow for the incubation period needed to synthesize the materials of academic or
professional work. Complex synthesis, the highest order thinking, needs to be nourished
and given time to germinate, as you will discover more fully in the second half of the
semester.

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Works Cited:
Demarco, Tony. Several reasons why Rangers are for real. Ask the Expert.
NBCSports.com. August 5, 2010. Why the Texas Rangers are for real.
http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/38473071/ns/sports-baseball/
Straus, M. A. (2005). Children should never, ever, be spanked no matter what the
circumstances. In D. R. Loseke, R. J. Gelles & M. M. Cavanaugh (Eds.), Current
Controversies about Famlly Vlolence (2nd ed., pp. 137.157) Thousand Oak, CA:
Sage.

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Endings
I originally titled this section Conclusions but then realized how misleading that might
be. A section on conclusions would rightly be titled Propositions. In fact, for those of
you still curious about why we have until now prohibited you from writing conclusions,
you should know that you have been concluding all along, at least if you have been doing
the exercises correctly. Your proposition, the statement that you set out to justify or
explain to your readers, is your conclusion.
The ending, on the other hand, is your farewell.
The ending is your penultimate chunk, written before the introduction. There are many
ways to say goodbye. Most are not very good. For example:

the hook linking the final paragraph to the introductory paragraph. This
disconnected, tacked-on device is like a bad pick-up line, easy, cheesy, and
ineffective. The hook makes a hamburger of your essay when what you want to
dish up is a unified, coherent essay in which every part works together to seal
your readers adherence.
the summary: a bore and an insult to your reader unless you have written a very
long or extremely complex text
the apology: awful. If a texts own author doesnt respect what he has written,
why should the reader? If you havent done a decent job of addressing the
subject, revise. If false modesty triggers the apology, beware: Your reader may
accept it.

But, you may protest, we were taught these very devices in high school. Yes, you learned
from practicing hooks and summaries that essays demand closure. The goal of most high
school and some college writing is demonstration of knowledge, rather than the realworld tasks of rhetoric, informing or persuading real audiences. Demonstration lacks
authentic rhetorical purpose and conjures up peculiar analogies, such as, Introductions
and conclusions are like hamburger bunsbetween which you sandwich your essaypatty. You must now set aside your burgers and learn to be real writers, which soon you
shall be, like it or not. Future scientists, engineers, businesspeople, doctors, nurses,
artists: Youll be writing more than you think. Ask your professors and practitioners.
Your livelihood and advancement are going to pivot on writing: grants, proposals,
reports, cases, memos, press releases, promotional campaigns, plans, letters, emails,
websites. In every instance, you will have a real purpose and a real audience upon whom
you shall have real designs. You will need to find endings that accomplish your goals.
What do you want your reader to think, feel, and do upon completing your text? How are
you going to make this happen?
Some of the best critical texts havent much of an ending. They dont need one. A wellconstructed piece of reasoning never lets its reader lose sight of its proposition. Reader
and writer know where theyre going. Unlike the novices conclusion, which may make
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a heroic attempt to cohere the meandering mess that preceded it, strategically-deployed
logic and psychology organize the sophisticated essay. Its arguments and evidence
converge as if inevitable. The masterful writer may thus end on his strongest reason
without need for hooks, chains, exhortations, whimpers or bangs.
There are two basic strategies for exiting an essay:
1) a guided recollection of highlights that provides a somewhat different
perspective on them or on the proposition
2) an exploration of the broader implications of what the reader has just read
Think of the ending as a parting gift. Just as you wouldnt end your visit by giving your
guest a summary of all that you said and did during his visit, so too you dont ruin your
readers experience by droning on about all that he just read. Equally obnoxious is the
host who ends by doubling back to the first day and repeating a story he told you then,
now adding a little twist to it that sums up your time together. And while were on the
subject of obnoxious endings, remember that nobody likes long goodbyes. A good
ending, like a thoughtful parting gift, is handled with alacrity. It strikes just the right
feeling, reminds the reader of your time together, and gives your proposition a future.
There are a variety of ways to end on the right note. For example:

offer a universal premise that has now been prepared-for by the essays reasoning
connect what you have argued or explained to a different context (local, national,
personal, professional, historical, etc.)
consider what you have said from a different perspective (for example, quoting
another writer on the topic or imagining what someone else might conclude from
your piece)
speculate about the consequences of your argument
explain how your argument might be applied to some specific or general situation
tell the reader what to do now that you have gained his adherence
complicate what you have said, perhaps pointing to gaps or flaws in your
reasoning or evidence that remain to be addressed

These techniques, however, shouldnt simply become a replacement for the hook or the
conclusion. Choose an ending, or invent another, that gets your particular job done. Like
all artists and craftspeople, critical writers use forms and techniques purposefully.
Consider the sentence, our most basic form. What if every time you wrote a sentence you
used the same construction? That would make for tedious, predictable, restricted writing.
All of the rhetorical forms have a particular purpose and set up particular expectations in
your audience. Their basic construction and purpose, like that of the sentence, needs to
be understood and honored. But, as with the sentence and its parts, there is much you can
do with these various forms of reasoning. Once you understand how they work, you can
warp and shape and fill and arrange them to suit your purposes, audiences, vision, and
style. You have gained control over your writing.

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Along with introducing broader implications, an ending can do something that is

otherwise frowned upon in critical writing. Endings are a good place to smuggle in a bit
of emotion. Consider not only what you want the reader to think, and to do, but also
what you want him to feel as he departs your essay. If you want to leave him crying or
laughing, end with the sorrowful or comical implications of your piece. Rile him up if
you want to get him out to vote. Calm him down so that he can take considered action, or
keep him on an even emotional keel if you need him to remain neutral and objective for a
clear-headed decision. Maybe you wish to give him hope, or fill him with love, or urge
him to investigate further or even to challenge your findings. Whatever you do, be sure
that you dont alter the register of your voice so radically that you end up creating
stylistic incoherence.
George Orwell, a great critical writer, is often studied for his rhetorical genius. Orwell
typically opens with a very specific focus. For example, he opens one piece by targeting
a pamphlet opposed to any bombing that incidentally kills civilians. Orwell begins:
Miss Vera Brittain's pamphlet, Seed of Chaos, is an eloquent attack on indiscriminate or
obliteration bombing. Orwell goes on to provide a series of reasons why this position
is absurd. His final paragraph contains his strongest reason (Nestorian in action!):
As to international agreements to limit war, they are never kept when it pays to
break them. Long before the last war the nations had agreed not to use gas, but
they used it all the same. This time they have refrained, merely because gas is
comparatively ineffective in a war of movement, while its use against civilian
populations would be sure to provoke reprisals in kind. Against an enemy who
can't hit back, e.g. the Abyssinians, it is used readily enough. War is of its nature
barbarous, it is better to admit that. If we see ourselves as the savages we are,
some improvement is possible, or at least thinkable.
Notice that Orwell does not have a conventional concluding paragraph. Instead, he
simply bends his final two sentences toward closure, in the same way that some of you
have been sneakily doing with your three-paragraph exercises. This strategy of closure is
brilliant, but not recommended for your individual chunks because premature endings
make those chunks difficult to link to other chunks when you get ready to cohere your
final paper. But melding a few closing sentences into the strongest final reason can be an
elegant, satisfying way to bring a well-reasoned piece to a close.
A significant number of Orwells essays end in this fashion. He will use the last
paragraph as his strongest reason and then, in countermotion, add a couple of closing
lines that infuse the entire piece with some larger, overarching premise or perspective. In
this particular essay, he closes with two major premises that he wishes to drive home:
War is barbarous and we are savages. Had Orwell opened with these big ideas, he
probably would have confused and perhaps misled his readers, who would expect a
treatise on war and savagery, rather than a finely-tuned refutation of a pamphlet. Equally
important would have been the monumental writing task he would have set out for
himself, to build a bridge from savagery and barbarism to Miss Brittains pamphlet, akin
to building a bridge joining a mountain to a molehill in the space of a paragraph.

56

Instead, Orwell primes his reader for his larger premises. As we read his piece, we are
not aware that our journey is going to lead to such a grand view, but we are perfectly
prepared for it. We may not immediately embrace it, but it will resonate through and
beyond the proposition and the experience of the essay itself. If the purpose of the
introduction is to warm your reader up and orient him so that he is ready for your
proposition, the purpose of the ending is to show the reader how far he has come, where
you have taken him. Arriving under agreeable circumstances, the reader will be more
receptive to a broader premise, especially because he knows you will be brief: He can
see the white space at the bottom of the page.
Along with the skillful construction of his argument, notice the discipline Orwell
demonstrates in his handling of tone. His closing sentences are flat, nearly matter-of-fact.
A lesser writer would have bellowed at the top of that mountain. The very words savage
and barbarous call for a belch of outrage. But Orwell takes the road less traveled. He
converges purpose, tone, and content, and brings to a fine point the significance of his
argument. If we are ever to end war, reason rather than emotion must lead us.
Before ending this section on endings, let me point out that you are now able to do what
Ive done here. Theres nothing magical about it. If you want more ideas on how to open
or close papers, how to integrate quotations, how to set up a sharp refutation or a moving
concession, analyze the writers you are reading in your courses and professions. Study
what other writers do. That is what you have been learning and practicing: how to read
like a writer.

TRIBUNE
May 19, 1944
George Orwell
Miss Vera Brittain's pamphlet, Seed of Chaos, is an eloquent attack on indiscriminate or obliteration
bombing. Owing to the R.A.F. raids, she says, thousands of helpless and innocent people in German,
Italian and German-occupied cities are being subjected to agonizing forms of death and injury comparable
to the worst tortures of the Middle Ages. Various well-known opponents of bombing, such as General
Franco and Major-General Fuller, are brought out in support of this. Miss Brittain is not, however, taking
the pacifist standpoint. She is willing and anxious to win the war, apparently. She merely wishes us to stick
to legitimate methods of war and abandon civilian bombing, which she fears will blacken our reputation
in the eyes of posterity. Her pamphlet is issued by the Bombing Restriction Committee, which has issued
others with similar titles.
Now, no one in his senses regards bombing, or any other operation of war, with anything but disgust. On
the other hand, no decent person cares tuppence for the opinion of posterity. And there is something very
distasteful in accepting war as an instrument and at the same time wanting to dodge responsibility for its
more obviously barbarous features. Pacifism is a tenable position, provided that you are willing to take the
consequences. But all talk of limiting or humanizing war N is sheer humbug, based on the fact that the
average human being never bothers to examine catchwords.

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The catchwords used in this connexion are killing civilians, massacre of women and children and
destruction of our cultural heritage. It is tacitly assumed that air bombing does more of this kind of thing
than ground warfare.
When you look a bit closer, the first question that strikes you is: Why is it worse to kill civilians than
soldiers? Obviously one must not kill children if it is in any way avoidable, but it is only in propaganda
pamphlets that every bomb drops on a school or an orphanage. A bomb kills a cross-section of the
population; but not quite a representative selection, because the children and expectant mothers are usually
the first to be evacuated, and some of the young men will be away in the army. Probably a
disproportionately large number of bomb victims will be middle-aged. (Up to date, German bombs have
killed between six and seven thousand children in this country. This is, I believe, less than the number
killed in road accidents in the same period.) On the other hand, normal or legitimate warfare picks out
and slaughters all the healthiest and bravest of the young male population. Every time a German submarine
goes to the bottom about fifty young men of fine physique and good nerves are suffocated. Yet people who
would hold up their hands at the very words civilian bombing will repeat with satisfaction such phrases as
We are winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Heaven knows how many people our blitz on Germany and the
occupied countries has killed and will kill, but you can be quite certain it will never come anywhere near
the slaughter that has happened on the Russian front.
War is not avoidable at this stage of history, and since it has to happen it does not seem to me a bad thing
that others should be killed besides young men. I wrote in 1937: Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think
that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that
sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet hole in him. We haven't yet seen that (it is perhaps
a contradiction in terms), but at any rate the Suffering of this war has been shared out more evenly than the
last one was. The immunity of the civilian, one of the things that have made war possible, has been
shattered. Unlike Miss Brittain, I don't regret that. I can't feel that war is humanized by being confined to
the slaughter of the young and becomes barbarous when the old get killed as well.
As to international agreements to limit war, they are never kept when it pays to break them. Long before
the last war the nations had agreed not to use gas, but they used it all the same. This time they have
refrained, merely because gas is comparatively ineffective in a war of movement, while its use against
civilian populations would be sure to provoke reprisals in kind. Against an enemy who can't hit back, e.g.
the Abyssinians, it is used readily enough. War is of its nature barbarous, it is better to admit that. If we see
ourselves as the savages we are, some improvement is possible, or at least thinkable.

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Timed Essay Tips

BEFORE THE TEST:
Prewrite: take good notes throughout the semester on the lectures and books that
will likely be included in a test.
If the question is distributed in advance: ask if you can bring an outline. A
descriptive outline will prepare you well for an essay test.
If the question isnt given in advance: try to predict the test questions and
prepare outlines for them. Ask other students in class to predict questions, as well,
and write outlines for those.
TAKING THE TEST
Plan your time. Dont start writing! Biggest mistake of a novice is to write
before you have planned your time and thoughts. Set aside 15% to brainstorm and
outline, 75% to write, and 10% to proofread and revise.
Read the question carefully. Underline key nouns and verbs. What action does
the question ask you to take: explain, argue, define, analyze, compare, criticize,
explore, summarize? Vague verbs may indicate that the instructor is uncertain of
what he wants from you. Ask. Does the question indicate what elements need to
be in the answer? Underline those as well.
Organize your thoughts: make an outline of the proposition, reasons, evidence.
For objective essay questions (explain, discuss, define, summarize, explore,
classify, compare) use the explanatory reasons form. For justificatory questions
(argue, evaluate, justify, take a position, defend, critique) use the justificatory
reasons form and firm up with refutation or concession piece if time permits.
Open with your proposition. Do not write an introduction. Time-waster,
tangent-maker. You cant introduce what you havent yet written. Timed tests are
not tests of your literary skills; they are tests of your knowledge.
Double-space (if writing by hand). This leaves room for editing and insertions.
Write in pencil if you cant use a laptop. Bring a good eraser and extra pencils.
Follow your outline. Make sure that the opening sentence of each paragraph
links directly to your proposition. Use organization markers (first, second, third;
in addition to, etc) and phrases from the question to underscore your reasoning,
structure, and command of the task.
Use evidence. Examples, statistics, quotations, observations should support your
reasons in keeping with that disciplines use of evidence.
Read and revise. Even if you conform to your outline, your draft is likely to go a little
astray. Be sure to leave time to check your proposition and reasons: do they add up?
Dont try to tack on sentences at the end to make up for things you forgot to say. Instead,
hold to your form and use the ^ sign to insert additional information at appropriate points
in your essay.

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The Cover Letter

Many situations call for cover letters: applications for internships, scholarships, graduate
school, grant proposals and employment opportunities. While your task for this
assignment is to write a cover letter for your portfolio, much of what you will learn from
this introduction and from doing the task itself will prove quite useful to you as the years
unfold. Few people know how to write a good cover letter, and yet they can mean the
difference between success and failure for most professionals at various points in their
careers.
Most cover letters include a brief biography and a set of explanatory paragraphs that
amplify and highlight the contents. The cover letter for a job application, for example,
generally includes a resume, and may also contain some other materials. In the arts and
design fields, examples of the artist or designers work essentially replaces the resume:
photographs of paintings or sculptures; recordings of performances; videos of films,
theater, comedy, or musical performances; print ad clippings; fiction, poetry, essays,
manuscripts, or published work. Readers of art and design portfolios are generally less
interested in the artist than in the art. The artist may be a beast or a bore and this may not
matter in the least if the work is outstanding. However, one should never leave to ones
reader to figure out how and why ones work is outstanding: that is the job of the cover
letter.
Writers are members of the arts community and thus, like artists, their cover letters
address the contents of their portfolio. If a job seekers portfolio consists of a resume,
and an artists portfolio contains photos of their art, the writers portfolio consists of a
body of written work: perhaps some poems or a short story or a manuscript. Unlike job
applicants or other artists, the writers cover letter occupies a peculiar position. It is a
piece of writing, so it is also an example of the writers artfulness. If an artist or job
applicant pens a clunky cover letter but includes a beautiful resume or portfolio of work,
careful readerspresuming they arent seeking a skillful writer, and presuming they
didnt just ditch the entire package in the trashmay choose to overlook the letter.
Indeed, in some fields the cover letters are so abysmal and generic that nobody bothers to
read them. They are instead treated as a convention. Whatever you do, dont blow off
the convention, however, for that is like showing up to a formal event in bare feet.
Nobody cares about your shoes, but they expect you to wear them. Submitting a resume
or a portfolio of work without a cover letter is seen as rude and careless. Its enough to
land your application in the wastebasket. In the case of a writer, the cover letter had
better be well written. Editors will find it difficult to take a writer seriously if he cant
write a serviceable cover letter. In any case, a lousy cover letter means that the writer
has handed over the job of analyzing and evaluating the quality of his work to the reader,
squandering the opportunity to frame and guide the readers response to his work. Not
wise.
The job of the cover letter is to bring the contents of the portfolio or resume to life and to
get the reader to act upon it, to interview you or publish you or give you the grade you
feel you have earned. The letter should distinguish you in some fashion, but not so much

60

that you appear ignorant or disrespectful of the communitys conventions and sense of
itself. Most communities tend to welcome those who understand and honor their ways of
being, while also bringing something new to the mix.
The most important step in writing a cover letter is to do your homework. In the case of
the portfolio cover letter, that means having an intimate understanding of your work,
extending beyond that which you are including in the portfolio. For the Critical Writing
portfolio, you should analyze not only the contents of your portfolio but also the material
that is not included in the portfolio. Its wise to begin with the first work you did for
classthe diagnostic essay. Some students reach even further back to writing
assignments they did prior to the seminar. Carefully analyze these pieces: what were you
saying and doing? What did you know about taking timed tests, responding to
assignments, evaluating a colleagues writing? How did you talk and think about
writing? How did you organize and develop your work? How do you go about writing
now? What does your portfolio say about you as a critical writer?
The trick to writing a good cover letter is not to rely on tricks. Become an expert about
your proposition, which is to say an expert on yourself as a critical writer or whatever is
the focus of your portfolio. The cover letter is a work of explanation and no one wants to
hear vague generalities about, for example, how you improved as a writer. If your
proposition is that your writing has improved, demonstrate that with concrete examples
and sustained credible analysis. Upon what are you basing this claim? Showing that
your writing has improved from one draft to the next is not compelling, any more than
insisting that you have quit smoking because you havent had a cigarette for a couple of
days. As with all work of explanation, your proposition must emerge from substantive
analysis and synthesis, and must thereafter be demonstrated with specific evidence to
support it. Analyze your body of work (not just the contents of your portfolio) and a solid
proposition will present itself. Then choose your supporting points wisely. You have a
word limit that you need to respect.
Another important step is to give real thought to your faculty readers. Always do what
you can to link what you are presenting to the goals and interests of the reader. One of
the great mistakes job applicants make is to write a generic cover letter. If you really
want a job, then take your time to know your audience and tailor the letter to them. They
will read it with interest. In the case of your mid-term and final portfolio cover letter for
the writing seminar, find out what you can about the faculty readers, and then use your
imagination to fill in the rest. As you map out your outline of your letter, ask yourself
why what you are saying might be interesting or useful to scholars and professionals who
teach writing at Penn. How might what youre saying be helpful to a person whose first
concern is to score your portfolio? But dont stop there. Try to humanize your reader,
give him or her a deeper biography. Dont just consider your readers as graders but
rather regard them in all the richness and complexity of being humans, adults, scholars,
teachers. Perhaps they have children; perhaps they are from other parts of the nation or
world; perhaps they are people with amazing senses of humor or are utterly humorless.
What do they likely have in common beyond grading your essays? That is an extremely
valuable synthesis for a writer to make, particularly if you wish to make your cover letter

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work for you. The more limited your imagination of your readers, the less likely you are
to find the right means of connecting with them in this fundamentally social act of
reading and writing.
While were on the topic of readership, do note that we are giving you practice in writing
to two types of audiences: your peers and faculty readers. Your peers will give you the
experience of writing to others in your professiona specialized audience with whom
you share a certain level of knowledge and jargon that you develop over the course of the
semester. Obviously, your cover letters are written to a different audience, faculty
readers. But youll also need to revise the contents of your portfolio to reflect this change
in readership, as well. Unlike your peers, your faculty readers will not have read,
analyzed, synthesized, and written on your topic. They are drawn from a range of
disciplines and professions. While steeped in knowledge of their own fields, they may
know very little about your area of inquiry. Thus you get practice throughout the
semester with writing to specialized as well as generalist audiences, and will discover
how different these tasks can be. You might even muster up a bit of sympathy for that
abstruse scholarly writing you wondered about at the beginning of the semester.
The third significant step in formulating your cover letter is to be acutely aware of your
goal. The goal of a cover letter is to get your reader to do something. This is not a
justificatory essay, the goal of which is to change a readers beliefs or attitude. Your
reader does not approach the portfolio with a justificatory (oppositional/dialectical) frame
of mind. She isnt ready to give you a bad grade so that you must talk her into giving you
a good one. Shes ready to read and assess your portfolio in relation to the rubric. Your
job is to help her do this. Action is the agenda of the cover letter.
Thus you must consider what, precisely, you want your readers to do and how you can
get them to do it, based on what you know or imagine about them and what you know
about your own work and yourself as a critical writer. What should you explain, how
should you divide and categorize it, what details and concrete evidence should you
provide so that your readers are sufficiently informed to make the decision you wish.
Consider that the readers of cover letters also have an idea of your general designs on
them, whether it is to hire you, buy your art, fund your project, give you a scholarship, or
give you a high grade.
The faculty readers of your portfolio cover letter generally analyze the cover letter as a
demonstration of two sets of skills, formal and the conceptual:
1. Formal: evaluation of the writers knowledge of writing based upon her ability
to recognize and discuss such things as the structures of reasoning. The cover letter,
along with the rhetorical outlines and peer reviews, are opportunities for writers to
showcase their ability to engage in rhetorical analysis rather than remained trapped at the
level of discussing only content. The sophisticated writer will help the reader identify and
appreciate the formal elements of her work, as well as her ability to identify and
intelligently discuss these.

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2. Conceptual: less emphasized, but also important, is the ability to discuss the
conceptual skills you draw upon as a writer. This might include discussing your
changing goals, ideas, and concerns as a writer, and how these are made manifest in your
work. Perhaps they have changed over the course of the semester.
As with any piece of explanatory writing, have a clear proposition. If youd like it to be
inventive, produce a synthesis of some sort. Use the Table of Common Elements format
and apply it to the body of your writings, from the first day (or before) to the present. If
you wish to give your letter a thicker architecture, you might also draw upon narrative
reasoning, touched upon in the first reading on reasoning in the course. There are a
handful of plots that implicitly structure such professional genres as the cover letter.
Narrative reasoning, more simply known as story-telling, can profoundly shape how we
receive and recall an idea or person. Scholars continue to study the long-lasting power
and universality of story-telling, and have a great many propositions about why it is such
an enduring and effective form of communicating information. What we do know is that
stories appeal to us. A well-crafted story organizes complex information in economical,
memorable ways and can be all the more pleasing when used as the architecture of a
cover letter. Here are some of the plots one may encounter in such letters:
Conversion/Transformation Narrative: Once I was blind, but now I can see How
Ive improved as a writer, for example. One cautionary note: If you use the conversion
narrative, make sure that your reasons and evidence are carefully considered. A bunch of
generalities insures that you lose your reader: As you can see from my portfolio, Ive
become more concise and organized. Ive also learned how to choose words more
precisely. Another things I now can do is
The Quest: The hero protagonist is tested. Trial and suffering prove to be as necessary
to growth and achievement as getting ones hands on the object of the quest.
Fall and Redemption: I chose to do poorly (acceding to temptation) but then upon
failing at it, I decided to work hard and redeem myself.
Creation: Who am I? Discovering myself (in this case, discovering myself as a writer).
Maturation: Similar to Fall and Redemption, without the temptations and trials; similar
to conversion but without the aha moment. A gradual process.
Crossroads: Finding oneself at a fork in the road so that one must choose to do X or Y.
Some general tips on writing cover letters:
1. Be aware of salutation conventions. Salutations are the written equivalent of saying
hello to a stranger or a friend on the street. Each situation is slightly different, and
salutation conventions can differ significantly from one culture, profession, or circle of
friends to another. In general, politeness strategies in the U.S. call for writers to be
formal in the salutations of their cover letters and emails, addressing them to the last

63

names of the recipients, unless the writer is on a first-name basis with the person
addressed. In all cases, do your best to find out the actual name(s) of those who will be
reading your letter or email. If this is impossible, use the salutation that is conventional
for that profession. When in doubt, call or write and ask. Someone in the office that
receives the letters will be able to tell you: Dear Hiring Officer, or Dear Admissions
Officer.
Never address the recipient of a cover letter or email by first name unless you are certain
that this will not be offensive. In cases where the addressee is older, of a higher status, or
otherwise in a position of authority and from whom you are seeking some sort of action,
never call the person by first name. That will generally be perceived as rude,
presumptuous, impolite. In situations where you have some acquaintance with the
addressee, sufficient to make you fear that a last-name salutation might seem chilly and
off-putting, then you might write: Dear Mary (if I may).
If the writer thereafter gives you permission to call her by her first name, feel free to do
so. Otherwise, continue to call her Ms. Smith. This, in turn, leads us to the question of
how to address women recipients. Unless a woman refers to herself as Mrs. you should
refrain from addressing her as Mrs. You do not know her marital status. You do not
know if she kept her given name. In either case, Mrs. may be offensive as well as
incorrect. In general, Mrs. has become a slightly impolite salutation in that one does
not remark upon or inquire about mens marital status for the purposes of salutation.
Therefore its always best to use Ms. unless you know that the addressee prefers Mrs.
Finally, if you are writing to professors or doctors in their professional capacities, address
them as Dr. rather than Mr. or Ms. While acceptable to address them as Mr. or Ms.,
acknowledging the credentials and status of your addressee never hurts.
2. Be aware of closing conventions. If salutations are the written equivalent of saying
hello on the street to a friend or stranger, the closing convention is the act of saying
farewell. In ancient times, the convention was to wish others good health. The current
convention in closings is to confirm the truth of the message (Sincerely), to wish the
reader well (Best wishes) or to remark ones deference (With regard, Regards).
Note that Best wishes implies at least a bit of acquaintance with the reader.
While closings can provide an opportunity for creativity, they also give writers a chance
to undo all the good work they have done in their letters. Its a bad idea to end a cover
letter commanding the reader to Enjoy! the contents. The writer has misjudged the
readers task. The reader is not poring over cover letters and portfolios or resumes as a
leisure-time activity. Shes not reading for pleasure. If it turns out to be a pleasurable
task, job well done. But let the reader decide that; dont command it. When in doubt,
close a formal cover letter with Sincerely. It draws no attention to itself, which allows
your last paragraph to resonate.

64

3. Watch your tone. Read your letter aloud. Ask someone else to read it aloud. Do you
sound cold, arrogant, biting, whining, indifferent, boring, sarcastic, rude? If so, look for
the words and phrasing that are creating these unpleasant tones, and revise.
4. Do your best to have an engaging opening. Dont forget that your readers are human
beings. A bit of biographical information might be nice so that you also remind the
reader that you are one too.
5. Dont be vague and overly general. Specifics are what interest and move readers.
Generalities are boring and meaningless.
6. Organize using the principles of psychological and logical arrangement. Make sure to
note your greatest achievements: dont get caught up strictly on an interesting detail that
you have synthesized. Your cover letter is your readers tour guide to your portfolio and
your development as a critical writer. Make it work.

65

Making the Turn to Research Writing

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
--Sir Francis Bacon
You will now turn to a series of short, incrementally more demanding research
assignments organized around your seminars assigned scholarly text and designed to
introduce you to scholarly writing. The sequence teaches you how to approach research
writing conceptually as well as logistically, moving beyond papers assigned by
teachers to learning how to gain access to and participate in the domain knowledge of a
discipline or profession. Upon completion of this sequence, you will be ready to enter
professional and scholarly conversations as a young scholar in your own right, limited
like any other scholar by your knowledge of the topic, but not by an ignorance of how to
write about it.
This sequence also provides you with your first opportunity to put to work the tools of
reasoning and writing that you learned in the past few weeks. You will need them as you
now learn how to do advanced research-writing, which is to say learning how to write as
you researchin tandem with your research, rather than as if research (and writing) were
separate, linear steps in which you find and read your sources and then sit down and write
a paper. Writing in units of thought as you digest the research allows you to record data
and sources as well as work through the reasoning and evidence of your evolving
proposition. This approach to research-writing allows you to build upon your knowledge
and fill in gaps as you go along. You never lose track of the facts and insights (as well as
sources) that you gather along the way.
The first step in advanced research is to learn how to reador in the sciences and social
sciences, how to analyze dataclosely and carefully. Thereafter you will put your object
of study, in this case a scholarly book, through the kinds of paces typical of scholars:
study and evaluate it, focusing ever more finely on an issue or hypothesis, researching it
in greater depth, contextualizing it, and finally taking a position on it or perhaps
providing an expanded explanation of it, depending upon your goals and audience. At
this stage, you will have acquired a certain expertise and thus write with an understanding
of scholarly work in a voice of earned confidence and authority, rather than the posturing
that too often attends novice research papers.
In the first half of the semester, you were mainly asked to do simple synthesis--one book
or article or issue, and your position on it or explanation of it. You likely employed
inductive reasoning, moving from the particulars of your reading and thoughts to
generalizations: propositions and reasons. Much of this may have felt familiar to you as
a high school graduate. We did, however, add a few significant new challenges. For
example, we required you to be a disciplined thinker, adhering to the rules of reasoning
and evidence demanded of scholars, professionals, and others upon whose knowledge
real-world decisions are based. We required you to engage in original thinking, coming
up with your own propositions rather than having the teacher assign the topics for you,

66

and to adhere to standards of logical as well as semantic coherence. We asked you to

write for an audience of your peers, rather than only to your teacher. And for some the
most frustrating of all, we required you to engage in close, detailed analysis of your own
and others writing. These post outlines, we well know, are painstaking, tedious work, but
they lead you to internalize, at a very accelerated rate, a repertoire of knowledge about
writing and reasoning and with this an ability to identify your own and others strengths
and weaknesses, rather than be relegated to nitpicking their spelling and grammar. The
ability to assess writing (or any art form) typically takes years of study and practice. Most
of you have now mastered the fundamentals in a semester.
As is probably becoming clear, critical writing is that which sets out to explain, persuade,
or justify. Its the sort of writing one does as a scholar, businessperson, engineer, doctor,
lawyer, or intellectual and for the most part its quite unlike creative writing, though they
do share a bit of common ground. Critical writing values idea and reasoning above all.
The favored style is clarity, concision, precision and lucidity of expression. In science
writing, for example, the ideal is to be so precise that ones reader can actually enact what
the writer describes. In such a situation, any dissonance between the writers intention
and the readers interpretation is a problem. In contrast, creative writers celebrate such
dissonance; the ambiguity and instability of language are creative tools and critical
impediments. A creative writer hopes to unleash many meanings, to celebrate the beauty
and playfulness of language. A critical writer uses language to tease out, nail down and
communicate an idea. If you have a message, send a telegram, advise the creative
writing professors. Whats your point? is the refrain of scholarly readers.
However remarkable such differences in purpose and aesthetic, its useful to underscore
that no workshop or writing seminar can fully prepare you for the particulars of writing
for any class or job. Writing assignments are as individual as those who assign them,
even within a given field. No one can ready you for the boss who hates semicolons or the
professor who regards contractions as vulgar. Some assignments may be fewer than 50
words, others may extend to 150 pages. What you should be prepared to do, by
semesters end, is to know how to go about the business of writing in whatever setting
you find yourself. Just follow the steps you will now be taught. Take a book, article,
paper or report that your professor or employer considers a good example of writing, and
analyze what its saying and what its doing: what are its moves? Then consider it in
light of its community: how do others in the same field respond to it? If your writing is
based on one or more books, look up their reviews, trace a few of their footnotes. You
will be remarkably well-prepared to write for a professor or an employer, for you will do
what professional writers do when theyre on assignment: they study and emulate the
writing of that tribe.

A Word about Documentation Style

Unfortunately, there is not a uniform documentation style, so you will always need to
find out from your professors which style they prefer. Your writing instructor will advise
you about which documentation style to use for your portfolio. But do familiarize
yourself with the three major modes: MLA, APA, and Chicago. You can use your

67

grammar handbook for the basics on each of these styles of documentation. Equally
importantly, pay close attention to how scholars in the course, particularly the author of
your research text, introduce and handle quotations. There is an art to this, or rather, a set
of moves that should be emulated. Like grammar and mechanics, citation practices are
part of the etiquette as well as the ethics of writing. Make note of this as you write for
courses across the disciplines, or in your profession.

A Word about Documenting

I hope that by the time you finish this sequence, you will appreciate the work that goes
into a scholarly text. There are several reasons why scholars document their work, and
why we ask you to get into the habit as well. The first is so that we can build on the work
and wisdom of those who came before us. A scholar gives you her sources so that you
can read them as well, confident that these sources are related to the issue at hand: the
scholar has done some advance research work for us. A scholar also provides sources to
give credit to anothers hard work. Last, but hardly exhaustive, a scholar cites sources to
demonstrate the depth and breadth of the scholarly foundation supporting her own
scholarship: her research adds to the credibility of her work as well as honors the work
of those she relied upon to advance her understanding. Thus it is that scholars are always
a bit surprised when a student plagiarizes, for why wouldnt a student want to giveand
takecredit for consulting others work? Such labor is the lifeblood of scholarly
achievement.

68

Appendix: Logical Fallacies

!
!

Logical
Fallacy or
Propaganda
Technique

Explanation

Straw Man

Challenger attacks a weaker argument rather than the original statement or

position, which is harder to argue against.

Ad Hominem to the
man (stereotyping,
pinpointing the enemy)

Challenger attacks the person or organization making the argument rather than
the argument itself: Bush is a typical right-wing idiot who barely knows how
to read directing the audiences attention to the character of the opponent,
rather than the merit of his case

False Dilemma
(lesser of two evils)

Challenger offers two choices, one of them so weak or undesirable that it pushes
the audience to choose the challengers position, neglecting to consider other
choices that might have greater merit. Which would you rather do, expose
everyone to a potentially fatal disease, or exterminate all the pigs in the area?

Begging the Question

(circular reasoning)

Challengers proposition and reason for supporting it are essentially the same.
Often the first part of the statement is in Anglo-Saxon language (small words)
and the second is in Greco-Latinate words. For example, Alcohol makes you
throw up because its nauseating. He likes to argue because hes
quarrelsome. Another form of circular reasoning is to reinterpret evidence to
prevent refutation, thereby keeping the argument within a self-contained circle:
No true Scotsman puts sugar on his oatmeal, and Are you still beating your
husband?

Slippery Slope
(domino effect,
camels nose)

The idea that large consequences can be caused by a minor action. (Give
em an inch, theyll take a mile). A challenger may be able to arrive at this idea
through a reasoning process (transitory implication) but hasnt demonstrated this
through a process of reasoning and evidence. Instead, she just declares the
disastrous or great outcome of a small action or decision: Marijuana leads to
heroin addiction.

Bandwagon

Challenger uses the desire of the reader to "fit in" to win his argument.
Everyone else is doing it. Penn students agree that The most
intelligent people argue that. Nobody supports Dont be left
out

Loaded Words
(negative or positive
bias)

Instead of striving for objective language in an effort to engage in reasoned

discourse, challenger draws on loaded, emotionally biased words to manipulate
her audience: The sadistic writing instructors insane syllabus demands an
absurd and useless amount of work from already overburdened students.
Loaded words can be positively as well as negatively slanted.

69

Glittering
Generalities

Words or phrases that have strong positive value but that can mean
different things to different people: honor, glory, freedom. Glittering
generalities are often used in political propaganda, because they elicit
thoughtless approval rather than calls for definition and clarification.

Scare Tactics

Challenger causes the reader to be frightened into agreeing with his

position. Fear is used to evaluate the argument rather than logic and reason.
When a child molester is on the loose, our childrens safety must take precedent
over the finer points of due process.

Assertion

A proposition stated as fact rather than arrived at through a process of

reasoning. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Often the person
engaging in this fallacy will introduce it with such words as Clearly,
obviously, undeniably. Advertisers often use assertions: Americas
favorite ice cream!

Hasty Generalization

A generalization arrived at through careless analysis or insufficient data. I

know someone who died from X All the squirrels I have seen are
grey, therefore all squirrels are grey. The proposition may be true, but it is based
on faulty reasoning..

Plain Folks

Using simple language or ideas, even mispronunciations and misspellings, to

present oneself as one of the people. Propaganda technique.

Correlation as
Causation

Confusing or asserting a causal relationship between correlated items. For

example a recent study found that people with higher income enjoy better health.
One would infer perhaps that higher income leads to better health, as some
researchers diduntil another set of researchers studied big lottery winners and
found no happy health effects. Correlation may indicate causation, coincidence,
or possibly that both are effects of another cause in this example, perhaps
lifestyle rather than income.

Appeal to Authority

Endorsement by a celebrity or authority rather than reasoned position.

Card Stacking

Omitting information that might lead ones audience to reconsider or reject ones
position.

70

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Index
Analysis
Defined, 24
Examples of, 25, 29-30
Interdependence with synthesis
and reasoning, 26, 28
Rhetorical considerations for,
28-29

Discourse community
Advantages of practicing
participation in, 6, 13
And grammar, 13-14
And style, 9-13
Examples of, 11-12
As scholarly conversation, 6
In the writing seminar, 6

Arrangement of reasons, 48-52

Basic strategies for, 49

Discourse theory of learning, 2

Assessment of students, 2-4

Endings, 54-58
Basic strategies, 55
Ineffective devices for, 54
Techniques for, 55

Citation
Style used in writing seminar,
68

Evidence
Acceptability to audience, 33
Versus reasons, 41-42

Critical writing,
Purpose of, 20
Versus creative writing, 7

Explanatory reasoning
Defined, 17
Questions answered by, 17, 23
Uses of, 18
Versus justificatory reasoning,
18-19

Chunks, writing in, 8

Courageous drafts, 6
Concession
As rhetorical strategy, 43, 45
Example of, 44

Genre
As determining style, 9
As part of the writing seminar, 3
Cover letter as a professional
example of, 63
In discourse communities, 7, 10,
13
Poetry as an example of, 10-12

Counterargument, 43-45
And strengthening arguments,
43
Cover letter, 60-65
As evaluated in portfolio, 62-63
General tips for, 63-65
Job of, 60-61
Standard plots used in, 63
Steps to writing, 61-62

Grammar
And scholarly discourse
communities, 13-14

Curriculum of writing seminars, 3, 5-8

Grammar Detox
Basis for, 14

80

Example, 15-16
Process described, 14

Testing your own, 22-23

Prewriting, forms of, 46-47

Grading, basis for, 2

Reasoning
Explanatory versus
justificatory, 18-19
Types of, 17-18
Versus evidence/examples, 4142

Introductions, 34-40
And critical writing, 34
Introductions, (continued)
And differing audiences, 34-36
And premises, 37-39
Strategies for, 40
Tasks of, 34
When to write, 34

Refutation
As rhetorical strategy, 43

Justificatory reasoning
And assumptions about reader,
19
Defined, 18
Example of, 32
Questions answered by, 18, 19,
23
Versus explanatory reasoning,
18-19
When used, 19, 31

Self-assessment, 3
Self-directed placement, 3
Structure of writing seminar, 5-8
Style, 9-15
And discourse communities, 7, 910, 13
And grammar, 14-15
As part of presentation, 2
As part of writing curriculum, 2
As possible focus for analysis
and synthesis, 27
Components of, 9
In introductions, 34, 36
In critical writing, 67
In conclusions, 55
Individual, 6, 9-10
Influence of the seminar on, 6, 7
Of scholarly documentation, 6768
Poetic, 11-13

Logical fallacies, 20, A1

Narrative reasoning
Defined, 17
Uses of, 18
Nestorian order
Advantages of, 50, 52
Described, 49-50
Peer review,
As part of the curriculum, 3
Plagiarism
Versus documenting, 68

Synthesis
Defined, 24
Examples of, 25, 29-30
Interdependence with analysis
and reasoning, 26, 28
Of scholarly sources, 26-28
Rhetorical considerations for,
28-29

Plagiarism, patchwork
Defined, 26
Propositions 22-23
Contrast to thesis, 22

81

Time management, 5-6, 59

Timed essays
And the writing process, 5
As a college assignment, 5
Tips for taking, 59
Writing process, 5, 8, 59

82