How to Argue

Pointers for Structuring Written Arguments

A critical part of writing solid papers is to make an argument--indeed, all communication constitutes an argument of one sort of another, and compelling essays self-consciously make arguments. Even a dreadful laundry-list or `report' style of paper makes an argument, if often only by implicitly claiming that there is no argument--such is the approach of the evening news. Though it is possible to have a good argument in your head but a lousy one on paper, in general, coherent ideas imply coherent prose. For this reason, the writing process can be a key therapy for the ailment of abbreviated brainwork.

The following general techniques and considerations should serve you well for academic writing of the expository sort. For more scientific writing and reporting, this structure is probably too complex. The argumentive structure itself can help you enormously in framing your ideas and in focusing the scope of your discussion. For each fact or concept you consider possibly relevant to your argument, you can pose the question of its overall function and usefulness in what you are trying to argue. Through this general method, you can easily winnow out redundancies and superfluous statements. Moreover, you can also by this tack begin to consider how certain facts and ideas are linked into an overall conceptual framework.

Step 1.
Make sure that you know what you intend to argue before you start--assuming that you can figure out what you're going to say as you go along often leads to fruitless tangents and hopeless tangles. These are expensive in `white-out'. If you use a word processor, don't assume that you can rough it out first and cut and paste later. Badly cast ideas are dreadful regardless of their order, and many people with processors are too reluctant to hit the `delete' and start over.

Once you have a sense of what you wish to argue, develop an outline which structures you argument. An outline is not a list of topics or a basket to hold facts, but rather a logically coherent succession of major arguments, sub-arguments, and sub-sub-arguments, supported by factual evidence.

Step 2.
Within your essay, the first paragraph is the most important. In it, you should usually: 1) explain the significance of the topic, 2) present the basic issues which are a part of the topic, 3) (this is essential) present the nub of your argument in a `thesis sentence', and 4) summarize how you intend to prove your argument. In this régime, the thesis sentence is, of course, the most important, for it explicitly alerts the reader to what your purpose is (beyond completing an assignment).

Depending on the complexity of the issue and argument and on the sophistication of the topic itself, you may need to break this structure into two parts. Numbers (1) and (2) above would thus belong in the first paragraph, and numbers (3) and (4) in the second. In particularly sophisticated discussions, especially those in which you are addressing a developed body of research, a brief review of current scholarship and arguments on the issue would then follow the opening.

Step 3.
The successive paragraphs form the body of the discussion. The paragraph is the basic unit of your argument. Each paragraph should have a very clear functional role and position in the argument and should therefore not be merely a `basket' into which you dump facts. Each paragraph should also therefore contribute clearly to the development of your argument. In your paragraphs, you should always have a mini-thesis--the point the paragraph is intended to make, supported by evidence for that point.

The paragraphs of the body section of a paper should thus be coherent sub-units of the entire argument. Some students sub-title each paragraph in order to flag its significance. This is distracting and unnecessary, for the thesis sentence of the paragraph should be readily accessible to the reader and should make the subject or point of the paragraph fairly obvious.

Step 4.
The final paragraph (or two) is the conclusion. You should as a rule never present new information or argumentation in it. Use it simply to restate your thesis/argument and summarize your basic points and evidence, to broaden out the implications of your argument, and (if you think it useful) to suggest new avenues for research.

Step 5.
This is probably news to even the seasoned, veteran writers: retro-outline. That's right: after you've written your paper, don't just `proof' it--read and outline what you've done as if were someone else's work. Again, use an argument-outline, not a topical one. Put the paper aside and ask yourself: what and where is the thesis, and does it make sense; what, where, and in what order are the arguments supporting the thesis; is the evidence marshalled coherently to support the specific points you are making; what is superfluous to what you're trying to say? Indeed, this is a real acid test for any author--try it on one of our class readings, and you'll be surprised; it helps you judge an author as well as making a text more comprehensible. Again, the key is an argumentive, not a topical, outline.

To summarize:
The usual formula, "tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em," isn't a bad start, but it is best suited for report-writing and is usually insufficient for making arguments. It also fails to lend the necessary discipline to winnow out the superfluous. Therefore, use the argument in the beginning to define issues for yourself and the reader, then use it to determine what facts are relevant to the discussion and to focus the exposition, then close with a restatement. Your discussion should go from the general (paragraph one), to the specific (paragraphs in the body), and back to the general (last paragraph).

A couple of quick pointers.

1. A sentence must have both a subject and a verb; only expert writers are allowed to violate this rule, and even for them, it reeks of `pop' lingo.

2. On citations, no rule is possible. You must footnote direct quotations, others' ideas, and facts which are not generally-accepted. The latter two categories are vague (how much modification of another's ideas is neccessary before the new versions are your own--such is the stuff of patent and copyright litigation; what does `generally-accepted' mean?), yet you must rely on your own sense of honesty and intellectual integrity.

Citation and Bibliographic Practices All responsible academic papers must give credit to the authors whose ideas or research contributed to the material presented in an essay. While you might consider this to be a silly kow-towing to assumptions of intellectual private property, it is the standard practice in academic discourse and institutions. Always cite others' ideas and obscure facts, and use your own judgement and honesty to decide when a modification of someone else's ideas makes them your own. When in doubt, cite it.

If you prefer the more formal "Chicago" style, use the following formats, noting the punctuation carefully; underlining and italicization are interchangeable (for the more popular "APA" style, see below):

Footnotes

For a regular book:

¹ George W. Bush, Lip-Reading for the Blind, (Glencoe, IL: Freedumb House, 2005), 164.

For an article in an edited volume:

¹ Karl Rove, "Rubber Crutches for Moral Cripples," in Christopher Reeve, ed., Professional Prosthetics (Kissimmee, MO: Full Court Press, 1887), 51-82.

For a journal article:

¹ Michael E. Brown, "How Horse-Show Judging Can be Leveraged into a Mission-Critical Job," Currying Favor XIV:1 (Spring 2004), 117-118.

For a Web site:

¹Donald Rumsfeld, "Coddling Dictators: My Role in Supplying Saddam Hussein With Chemical Weapons," posted on Manuel Noriega's Web site: <www.cokedealers.com/friends/Rumsfeld/ilovedsaddam.html> last access January 21, 1993.

Bibliography
(in alphabetical order)

For a regular book:

Reagan, Ronald. When Movies Were in Black and White and So Was Everything Else. Appleton, WI: McCarthy Press, 1885.

For an article in an edited volume:

Norquist, Grover. "Projecting a Friendly Public Image While Drowning an Enemy in the Bathtub," in Rev. T.D. Jakes, ed. Paths to Evangelical and Political Power. Money, MS: Megabucks Press, 1999.

For a journal article:

Grant, Amy. "Blessed Sacchrine: Packaging the Savior for the Youth Market." Anti-Science Studies XIV:1 (Spring 2004), pp. 117-140.

For citation and biliographic formats of other works, see:

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

--this book is really a `must' for college students, and it should be one of the basic reference works on your shelf.

APA style. This is much simpler. Use an in-text parenthetical where a footnote would otherwise be located, and within it, give author name and page number--if you cite more than one work by the same author in the bibliography, note the date of the cited work to distinguish among them. At the end of the paper, provide a full bibliographic entry, using the form indicated above in the "Bibliography" section. Hence, a reference to the Amy Grant work might look like this: "…and studies have shown that presenting the Savior as forgiving rather than damning toward typical adolescent dalliances goes a long way toward attracting the mall-rat crowd (Grant, 122)." That's then followed by a full reference to the Grant work in the bibliography. A more arch version of the Grant bibliographic reference (and one you should feel free to use) would look like this:

Grant, A. (2004). Blessed Sacchrine: Packaging the Savior for the Youth Market, Anti-Science Studies 14:1, 117-140.

Personally, I'm not a fan of that form, as offering only the firt initial of fthe author can lead to confusion. It is an accepted practice in any case.