BUTTE COLLEGE ENGLISH TIP SHEET

Style, purpose and Strategy

 Writing a Summary
 Writing Paragraphs
 Writing an Analogy
 Writing a Descriptive Essay
 Writing a Persuasive Essay
 Writing a Compare/Contrast Paper
 Writing Cause and Effect Papers
 Writing a Process Paper
 Writing a Classification Paper
 Definitions of Writing Terms
 How to Write Clearly
 Active and Passive Voice
 Developing a Thesis and Supporting Arguments
 Writing Introductions & Conclusions
 How to Structure an Essay: Avoiding Six Weaknesses in Papers
 Writing Book Reports
 Writing about Literature
 Writing about Non-Fiction Books
 Poetry: Meter and Related Topics
 Revising and Editing
 Proofreading
HOW TO WRITE CLEARLY: USING PRECISE AND CONCISE LANGUAGE

A writer's job is to create meaning for readers. Expository writers in particular are responsible
for clearly spelling out the relationships between ideas and for leading readers convincingly to a
desired conclusion. In the business world that most students will enter, this reader-
oriented, presentational writing will be in high demand. Even in college, when an instructor asks
you to write 2,000 words, he means 2,000 good words. You must cut out wordiness and use
precise language.

This TIP sheet offers two ways to move beyond simple grammatical correctness. It teaches you
to streamline writing by using the following:

 Precise language: A vocabulary of precise nouns and vivid verbs helps you create
strong mental pictures and avoid wordiness.
 Concise language: Using the fewest possible words without sacrificing meaning
makes your writing more understandable. Especially avoid unnecessary use of the
verb "to be" when it contributes to nominalizations and expletives.

Precise language
Never sacrifice clarity to novelty. This sometimes occurs when student writers work with a
thesaurus in one hand, choosing substitutes from a list of approximately similar, though
unfamiliar, words. "Visage" replaces "face," "endeavors" replaces "tries," "cogitation" replaces
"thought," "subsequent to" replaces "after." Or, as a result of late-night brainstorming (or
having read too many bad financial aid packets, perhaps?), "at the present time" replaces
"now," "in the event of" replaces "if," and "in the majority of instances" replaces "usually."

For example, a speech writer for President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote the first sentence below;
FDR himself revised it:

We are endeavoring to construct a more inclusive society.

We're going to make a country in which no one is left out.

Never sacrifice meaning to novelty. That is, never search for a synonym just to dress up an
idea, and never use an unfamiliar word from the thesaurus to replace a perfectly good familiar
word. Thesaurus words may be similar or related, yet not be identical or even equivalent in
meaning. Unfamiliar words may carry the wrong connotation or be simply unsuitable for your
audience. Learn a word's meaning and usage before using it.

For example, the second sentence below is not identical in meaning with the first (or indeed
even comprehensible!), although the word substitutions come from a standard thesaurus:
In addition to studying Western culture, students should be required to study Asian, African, or
other cultures. This expanded cultural study would foster understanding of the modern global
community.

In addition to examination of Western enlightenment, a pupil ought to remain to apply one's

mind to Oriental, African, or choice cultures. Such an enlarged edifying trance would guest of
empathy of latter-day universal public.

Never sacrifice meaning to belonging. That is, avoid jargon, or words and expressions known
only to people with specialized knowledge or interests. Even if readers know the jargon, it is
more difficult to read than plain English and slows down comprehension. Check your writing
once expressly to locate jargon, and cut out as much as you can. If technical words or
expressions are unavoidable (and they sometimes are), define them the first time you use them
and try sometimes to substitute a plainer word. The trick is to cut the verbiage without
sacrificing meaning.

For example, contrast the two sentences below, the first written by a scientist using scientific
jargon, the second revised into plain English:

The biota exhibited a one hundred percent mortality response.

All the fish died.

Choosing precise nouns makes it unnecessary to add layers of descriptive adjectives that
lengthen sentences and comprehension time. (Your adjectives, anyway, will have greater
impact if they are not overused.) Compare the following generic nouns on the left with the
more connotative suggestions on the right:
youth juvenile, teenager, child, adolescent
woman lady, mistress, matron, femme fatale
house cabin, mansion, cottage, villa
group horde, clan, team, committee

Perhaps even more than nouns and adjectives, vivid verbs awaken strong images in readers'
minds. Strong verbs do more than almost anything else to improve prose. Compare the
following:
Lit up ignited
Leave behind abandon
Go back return
Get the audience involved involve the audience
Got to see that realized
Got better improved
Got there arrived
Put in installed, deposited
Put off postpone, delay
Put into action activate
Put in place arrange, place
 

Concise language
After college, when a job recruiter reads your resume, he or she may simply refuse to wade
through excess verbiage. A wordy resume may be tossed. And a future supervisor will want to
be able to comprehend your summary report rapidly and painlessly. Writing that is concise
packs maximum meaning into the fewest possible words–think of how you would pack your
suitcase for an extended tour of Europe. If you use precise language, you will probably find you
are already using fewer words. However, if you examine how you use "to be" verbs–am, is, are,
were, was, been–you may find even more that you can condense.

As much as possible, replace the verb "to be" with a stronger verb. "To be" is often part of a
construction called an expletive, a filler expression like "there were," "it is," or "here are." The
problem with expletives, besides their meaninglessness, is that they are wordy and their verbs
are lackluster. The subject follows the verb, resulting in an indirect, roundabout expression
(also see TIP Sheet "Active and Passive Voice"). To avoid expletives, lead with the subject or
even choose a different subject and, if possible, substitute a vivid verb to make the
sentence more straightforward and easier to understand:

There are  problems with the lease.

The lease has problems.

There are  several good reasons to delay making this decision.

We should delay making this decision for several reasons.

There is  a natural desire among adolescents to experience freedom from authority.
Adolescents naturally  crave  freedom from authority.

Expletives often occur with nominalizations. Nominalizations are nouns created by adding an

ending to a verb or an adjective: "specificity" from the verb "specify," for example, or "validity"
from the adjective "valid." Writing that is overloaded with nominalizations (think government
publications) is hard to understand, is almost always too wordy, and uses weaker verbs.
Change the nominalizations back into verbs or adjectives if possible:
Using nominalizations:
There is a  requirement that all students have an evaluation of their transcripts for
placement purposes or to meet a prerequisite.

Changing nominalizations back into verbs:

The college requires that the admissions office evaluate all student transcripts for placement
and prerequisites.

Even complex ideas–especially complex ideas–benefit from a careful effort to condense and to
eliminate unnecessary words. By streamlining your writing you help your readers
understand–and that is the point, after all.

ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE

Grammatically correct writing is good. But not all grammatically correct writing is equally good.
Better writers have learned that, most of the time, active verb constructions are better
than passive ones. If you learn to identify passive voice verbs and recast them into active
voice, your writing will improve.

Active voice is direct, strong, and easy to understand. Active voice verbs create movement,
clarity, and impact. Passive voice, on the other hand, seems roundabout, weak, and evasive.
Passive voice combines a "to be" verb (is, was, were, are) with a past-participle verb
form (written, given, expected): "was managed," "were approved," "is to be completed."

(Note: past and present progressive verbs, "are shopping" or "were discussing" for example,
are not passive voice. The -ing form requires the helper verb "to be." Similarly, verbs in the
present and past perfect tenses, "have eaten," "had attended," are not passive; these perfect
tenses use the participle form along with the helper verb "to have.")

Actor/Receiver
Most sentences have both an actor that performs the action, and something which is acted
upon, or receives the action. When the actor is the subject of the sentence, the active voice
results. In English, we expect to hear statements in that sequence: actor, verb, receiver of the
action:

Bob writes limericks in his spare time.

It is, however, possible to write this sentence another way, making the limerick the subject of
the sentence. In passive voice the actor, that is, the one who did it, is not the subject of the
sentence. The actor, in this case the limerick writer, is moved into a prepositional phrase:

The limerick was written by Bob in his spare time.

The expected actor-verb-receiver sequence is reversed; instead the pattern here is receiver-
verb-actor. Limerick becomes the subject of the sentence, yet it is still the receiver of the action
(that is, the limerick did not do the writing).

The problem with passive voice is that your brain has to take a moment to unravel this. There
are more words, for one thing, and the grammar is more complicated. A moment doesn't seem
like long, but when you are reading a document loaded with passive voice constructions, the
moments add up. That's why it seems to take so much time and effort to read some
government publications–or poorly written textbooks. Writing filled with passive voice
constructions are slow to read and difficult to understand.

Passive voice is not intrinsically evil, nor should you aim to eliminate it at every instance. If the
limerick itself is more important than who wrote it, for example, passive voice may be
appropriate. In general, place the most important word near the beginning of the sentence, as
mass media writers do; this may result in a passive construction, but more often it will not.

The missing actor

Sometimes the use of passive voice causes the actor to disappear entirely. Here, we are
interested primarily in when the limerick was written:

The limerick was written last week. (Who wrote it is not an issue.)

However, if you use passive voice out of habit rather than by choice, the disappearance of the
actor may have unintended consequences. In informative writing, for example, who said it is
often as important as what was said. If you construct sentences that bury the actor in a
prepositional phrase or omit the actor entirely, your argument may appear evasive and weak.
Compare the following:

Passive voice, actor omitted:

Reporters have been told that traffic, noise, and congestion would result from the proposed
development. (Who told them? And are the reporters the most important thing here?)

Active voice, actor as subject:

The development will bring traffic, noise, and congestion to nearby Spyglass Road, say
neighbors of the proposed site.
In fact, a writer may deliberately use passive voice to break bad news or to deny responsibility
for something unpleasant. Business writers know this.

Passive voice, actor omitted:

Your auto insurance policy, unfortunately, will not be renewed in October.

However, a vast number of passive constructions exist in college and business writing with no
good justification.

The spelling and grammar checker in some word processing programs (Microsoft Word, for
example) can be set to report to you how many passive constructions appear in your document.
Try recasting some of those sentences into active voice to achieve no more than 10 percent
passive voice constructions.

If you learn to prefer active voice whenever possible, your writing is almost certain to improve.

WRITING INTRODUCTIONS & CONCLUSIONS

Even when you know everything about your paper's topic, it's hard to know how to create a
"hook" that makes a reader want to read it. And how in the world do you end satisfactorily?
The fact is that many of us anguish over our intros and conclusions. The problem of
introductions and conclusions is really one problem. They are linked, not only in anguish but in
content; they are almost mirror images of each other.

First, however, there are two common misconceptions to dispel. Your thesis is
not an introduction. An introductory paragraph starts with a "hook," which leads into the thesis.
You do need an introduction as well as a thesis. Second, a simple restatement of your thesis
is not a conclusion. To create that satisfying sense of finality in your conclusion, you must
revisit the stuff of your introduction. If you start with a story, return to the story. If you start
with a definition, return to the definition, even if only to contradict it.

From the TIP Sheet "How to Start (and Complete) a Research Paper," you already know to start
writing your paper in the middle, with the thesis statement and body. When you are ready to
finish with the introduction and conclusion, choose from several strategies:

 Illustrate: Show instead of tell.

 Challenge: Raise reader expectations.
 Quote: Make use of the wordsmiths.
 Compare/contrast: Evoke familiarity by comparing or create tension and expectation by
contrasting.
 Define: Define-or redefine in a unique way.
 Make a provocative statement: Offer an amazing statistic or personal insight.
 

Illustrate
An illustration can be as simple as a personal story or anecdote. It's natural to think of a
personal anecdote as an introduction to a personal narrative, but stories and anecdotes can be
effective introductions to any kind of paper. The following anecdote introduces a research paper
on vegetarian and vegan diets. The conclusion returns briefly to the story:

Introduction:
We took our sons fishing in the spillway next to the dam one moonlit night. In the hush of the
night, one of them hooked a small trout. But when the landed fish screamed aloud, my son fled
the scene in horror and has never eaten flesh since.

Conclusion:
People adopt vegetarian and vegan diets for different reasons, not all of them out of horror, as
my son did. Whatever their reasons, they are finding more options in grocery stores,
restaurants, and cookbooks than ever before.

An example taken from local or world news events is another kind of illustration. This is the
introduction and conclusion to a paper on urban growth problems in California:

Introduction:
The Chico city council recently approved six hundred new homes to go in on the east side of
the city. The impacts this development will have are likely to be extreme, illustrating the
problems all California cities face in managing growth.

Conclusion:
How well Chico will cope with the increased traffic, pressure on schools, and impacts to the
watershed is yet to be seen. But Chico is not alone in having to find solutions soon.

A composite illustration is a fiction that you create in order to make a point. (Composite means
including a bit of this and a bit of that.) The advantage of a composite illustration is that it can
be perfectly crafted to fit your point. A composite can illustrate extreme examples that are
possible though not likely ("Suppose that..."), or distant consequences that are possible but not
yet observed.
An analogy is an extended comparison between one thing and another (the development of a
balanced state budget compared with a shopping list, perhaps). If you come up with an apt
analogy, it can be very effective; however, a so-so analogy is better abandoned sooner than
later. You are better off with a good story than with a mediocre analogy. For more on
analogies, see the TIP Sheet, "Writing an Analogy."

Challenge
A challenge raises reader expectations and creates tension. A challenging opening statement is
effective for a thesis that calls for changes to be made in public policies or personal actions,
such as in persuasive essays and argument or analysis papers:

Introduction
Chances are, if you live outside city limits in any of California's twenty-one rural counties, you
couldn't use public transportation if you wanted to. There isn't any.

Conclusion:
Sure, Californians need to get over their love affairs with their cars, but having a better system
of public transportation in place would help. Then, perhaps, I could get from rural Durham to
rural Oroville, where I live, without putting yet another car on the road.

A question is another type of challenge:

Introduction:
Does it make sense to prohibit minors from carrying calamine lotion with them at school
without two kinds of written permission, and yet allow them to leave campus without parental
knowledge or consent for invasive medical procedures?

Conclusion:
Even more than many of the zero-tolerance laws in place in our schools, this one should be
ditched. Does it make sense? Clearly it doesn't.

Note that a question is an introductory strategy, not a thesis statement. A thesis statement
should answer the question, and in some detail-not just "yes" or "no."

Quote
Make good use of the wordsmiths of history. Online quotation banks, usually searchable by
topic, are a great source for quotations on practically any subject. You have some latitude in
how you choose a quote for an introduction; it can be offbeat or unexpected. In the following
example, an unusual quote by Albert Einstein is used to introduce an essay on restricting cell
phone use while driving:
Introduction:
Albert Einstein once said, "Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not
giving the kiss the attention it deserves."

Conclusion:
It doesn't take an Einstein to realize that cell phones are not the first, nor will they be the last,
driving distraction. We don't need more restrictions on cell phones; we just need better drivers.

Song lyrics or familiar sayings sometimes make good introductions, but avoid clichés such as
"Haste makes waste." If a familiar saying draws on jargon or sayings familiar only to a
particular group, you have to provide the context for those who are unfamiliar with that group:

Introduction:
Computer programmers have a saying: "Garbage in, garbage out."

Conclusion:
The next time you read the results of the latest poll, consider the polling method, the sample,
and the source, and remember, "Garbage in, garbage out."

Compare or contrast
Comparison shows similarities and creates a sense of familiarity. Contrast shows differences and
creates tension and expectation. You do not have to be writing a compare/contrast paper to
use this as an introduction strategy. For example, this is a contrast intro to a personal narrative:

Introduction:
When I was seven, I thought my father was all-powerful and could do no wrong. When I was
seventeen, I thought he was a jerk.

Conclusion:
My father wasn't the god he seemed when I was seven, but he was sure a lot better and wiser
than I thought he was when I was seventeen.

Define
A definition can make a good introduction. You don't have to be writing a definition paper to
use definition as an introduction strategy. You can use a standard dictionary if you want, but
consider using books of quotations or online quotation banks for more interesting definitions:

Introduction:
Here is how Ambrose Bierce defines a conservative: "Conservative. noun. A statesman who is
enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with
others."

Conclusion:
In the matter of agricultural subsidies, we are better off sticking with existing evils than
replacing them with others that promise far worse results.

Another interesting use of definition is to use it as a starting point to re-define something in

your own terms:

Introduction:
Webster says friendship is mutual feelings of trust, affection, assistance, and approval between
people. However, I say friendship sometimes is knowing when to walk away.

Conclusion:
Walking away that day was the biggest favor Mai ever did for me.

Make a provocative or startling statement

If the provocative statement is someone else's, treat it as a quotation. If the provocative
statement is statistical, make sure you cite the source. If you have a way with words or an
insight all your own, by all means use that:

Introduction:
It is ridiculous and immoral to allow congressmen to give themselves pay raises.

Conclusion:
Restricting the ability of congressmen to vote themselves raises would go a long way to
restoring morality and a sense of public service to public servants.

As you can see, introductions and conclusions are closely linked. Once you decide on a strategy,
try simply over-writing the introduction (as one student we know regularly did) and then split
off part of it to use as the conclusion. When you begin to think of introductions and conclusions
as two pieces of a single puzzle, you will probably find them much easier to write.

WRITING A SUMMARY
When you tell your roommates what you remember of a particularly good talk in class, you
summarize. When you give a brief oral report on a current magazine article, you summarize.
And occasionally an instructor asks you to summarize in writing something you have read.

Summarizing is about extracting main ideas, main points, and major support, and omitting the
rest. When you summarize, you do not draw any original conclusions, but report facts as they
are presented by the author, so that a reader unacquainted with the original gets from your
summary the essential facts and point of view of the original selection.

The question is this: how much detail do you include, and what do you omit? Although a well-
written non-fiction work reads like a seamless whole, it is really a cascade of main points, major
and minor support for those points, and examples and illustrations. And summarizing fiction
presents its own challenges. That great scene at the lakeshore, the one that made you weep-is
it a major or really just a minor element in the story?

This TIP sheet offers a four-step plan of attack for summarizing fiction or non-fiction books. It
also offers tips for adapting this method for shorter selections.

1. Got math?
You've read the book. It had twenty-eight chapters and covered a thirty-year span in the life of
the main character on two continents. There was tragedy; there was triumph over tragedy. You
have to write a summary in six to eight pages. You know where to start, all right, but you are at
a loss where to go from there.

Start by doing the math. Here is the math for the example above:

28 (chapters) ÷ 7 (pages) = 4 (chapters per page)

This tells you roughly how much to write about each chapter: a fourth of a page.

For shorter selections the math is different. In general, a good summary of a chapter, poem, or
passage might be about a third to a fourth as long as the original; your instructor will probably
suggest a length.

2. Define "main"
The main idea of a non-fiction chapter may be stated for you in an overview, chapter summary,
or near the beginning of the chapter. When you look for the main ideas in fiction, you must look
for events that move the story forward, or that reveal or develop character. (Although some
fiction books include overviews of the events of a chapter as a kind of chapter subtitle, apply
judgment in using these, as the author may have had purposes other than mere summarization
in mind when he or she wrote them.)
Review the chapter briefly. Imagine yourself telling your roommate what the chapter was
about. Now write a single sentence containing this main idea. This will become the topic
sentence for a paragraph one-fourth of a page long.

As his friends watched Danny sink deeper into depression and apathy, they determined among
themselves that a surprise party would cheer him up and began making elaborate plans for
one.

Avoid wordy phrases like, "Chapter one was about..." or "In the first chapter..." Your topic
sentences must be lean and mean and contain no fillers. And even though your method is a
chapter-by-chapter attack, you do not want to give this away in your writing. Especially for
shorter works, avoid borrowing from the original selection a phrase here and half a sentence
there. The resulting patchwork will almost certainly be inadequate.

Continue reviewing each chapter the same way, constructing one sentence for each.

Finding the main idea of a short work might require a closer line-by-line reading. In a short
work, the meaning of individual words is magnified, so this is no time to depend on guessing
the meaning of unfamiliar words; look them up.

Some writing styles, especially archaic ones, lend themselves admirably to condensation:

If we would know what a University is, considered in its elementary ideas, we must betake
ourselves to the first and most celebrated home of European literature and source of European
civilization, to the bright and beautiful Athens-Athens whose schools drew to her bosom, and
then sent back again to the business of life, the youth of the Western World for a long
thousand years.
--John Cardinal Newman: "Site of a University"

Other styles are so abbreviated or full of information that it is more difficult to condense them.
The following excerpt from Scientific American magazine, for example, although of
approximately the same line length as the previous example, might be ore difficult to "boil
down" further:

The outward signs on which most definitions of race are based-such as skin color and hair
texture-are dictated by a handful of genes. But the other genes of two people of the same
"race" can by very different. Conversely, two people of different "races" can share more genetic
similarity than two individuals of the same race.
Michael J. Bamshad and Steve E. Olson: "Does Race Exist?"
3. Fill the framework
You now have a rough framework, in the form of a series of topic sentences, for your entire
paper. Now write a paragraph for each. Use what you know about paragraphs (that they are
only about one thing, for example) to determine what to include and what to omit. If that great
scene at the lakeside changed the course of events or unexpectedly revealed that one of the
characters was a deceiving cad, then you should probably include it. If it changed nothing and
told you nothing new or important about the characters, but only reminded you of your own
summer at Lake Tahoe, you should probably omit it. In general, also omit examples,
illustrations, and figures of speech. Mention examples briefly, if at all, and translate the figures
of speech into literal language.

If you find, at this point, that you have misunderstood or misstated the main idea of a chapter,
rewrite the topic sentence to reflect what you now understand to be the main idea.

Each paragraph should contain only enough pertinent detail to fill up (for this example) one-
fourth of a page. Some will be longer, and some will be shorter. This is okay; remember that
your finished paper needs to fall in a range of six to eight pages.

4. Put ‘em together

When you have finished writing a paragraph for each chapter, you will have-a bunch of
paragraphs. To make them hang together, you must add the transitional words, phrases, and
sentences that help readers make sense of the ideas and events. Words like even though,
meanwhile, besides, and because signal important relationships between ideas and events.

To do this, start by re-reading your paragraphs in pairs: Read paragraph one with paragraph
two. Then read paragraph two with paragraph three. Add whatever you think would help a
reader understand better. Remember that a topic sentence need not be the first sentence in a
paragraph; you may want to add a transitional sentence to prepare the reader for a shift in
ideas:

Until they arrived in California's Central Valley, Dust Bowl refugees clung to their expectations
of land ownership and high wages; however, they found the realities of migrant worker camps
to be very different.

For a summary of a shorter work, chose transitional words and phrases that accurately reflect
the meaning of the original. Finally, re-read to make sure that you have made no statements
not warranted by the original.
Frequently you will be asked to both summarize and evaluate, or summarize and compare  with
another work, or summarize and explain. Make sure you understand what length of summary
your instructor wants–three pages of summary and three of evaluation? One page of summary
and two of comparison? Regardless, the summary, at least, will no longer be an intimidating
task, for even the lengthiest summary can be made manageable by this method.

WRITING PARAGRAPHS

A paragraph is a cohesive bundle of specific ideas that are all clearly related to one general
idea. That is, one paragraph is about one thing.

Paragraphs are not particularly glamorous, but strong paragraphs are the backbones of strong
essays and research papers. Conversely, as much as sentence-level errors, paragraph-level
errors drag down the quality and clarity of writing. Take a critical look at your own paragraphs
using the following tips on unity, coherence, order, and length to determine how best to
improve your own work.

One thing: Unity & topic sentences

A paragraph has unity; that is, it makes one point about a single main idea. While the topic of a
paragraph may be expressed in a word or phrase, the main idea must be expressed in a
sentence. The sentence that states the main idea or central point is the topic sentence.
The topic sentence is a sort of summary of the contents of a paragraph:

Example 1:
My family's property in Guatemala was an active place, full of life.  We had a small vivid farm
where we grew all sorts of fruit trees and flowers and raised animals. Wild animals were
frequent visitors. As a family we were all active taking care of our responsibilities. My dad loved
taking care of the animals, especially when they were young. He liked being close to them,
helping and feeding them.

To identify the topic of the paragraph above, ask the question, "What is the paragraph about?"
The answer: "her family's farm in Guatemala." Then, to identify the topic sentence (or to
determine if one exists), ask, "What about the farm in Guatemala?" The answer: "The farm was
active and full of life."

The underlined topic sentence above occurs as the first sentence of the paragraph. However, it
might easily have been placed at the end:

 
Example 2:
In Guatemala we had a small vivid farm where we grew all sorts of fruit trees and flowers and
raised animals. Wild animals were frequent visitors. As a family we were all active taking care
of our responsibilities. My dad loved taking care of the animals, especially when they were
young. He liked being close to them, helping and feeding them.  My family's property was an
active place, full of life.

Or, the author could have placed the topic sentence somewhere in the middle:

Example 3:
In Guatemala we had a small vivid farm where we grew all sorts of fruit trees and flowers and
raised animals.  My family's property was an active place, full of life.  ...

In examples two and three above, the first sentence is not the topic sentence because it is not
broad enough to "cover" (think of the topic sentence as an umbrella) all the sentences that
follow–the visits of wild animals are not "covered" under the statement about growing fruits
and flowers and raising animals. On the other hand, every sentence in this
paragraph is "covered" under the statement that the farm was active and full of life, including
wildlife.

Check to see if your own paragraphs have topic sentences; most paragraphs should. (Implied
main ideas, or main ideas that are not found in any one sentence of a paragraph even though
the paragraph does, in fact, have unity, are not for beginners.) The test is whether all or most
of the other material in the paragraph supports the sentence intended to be the topic
sentence. If your paragraph lacks a topic sentence, examine the details of your paragraph and
construct a sentence to "cover" them.

Unity & major and minor supporting details

While you are examining your paragraphs, especially in an essay, you may discover sentences
with details that do not belong, or sentences that are not grouped logically. You may only
realize this when you find it difficult to construct a logical topic sentence broad enough to cover
everything in that paragraph. When you find these out-of-place sentences, remove them. Never
mind word count–more sentences will not help the paragraph if they are not clearly related to
the topic sentence. (In longer papers, remove unrelated sentences but save them; you may find
that this deleted material fits better somewhere else in your paper.) In any paragraph, every
sentence that is not the topic sentence should be a sentence containing either major or minor
supporting details.
Major support consists of the bigger ideas; minor support gives an example, illustration, or
explanation. In the example above, the major supporting details about the topic, "my family's
farm," are 1) it was an active place and 2) it was full of life. To round out this description and
more fully support these two points, we can add additional minor supporting details, underlined
below:

My family's property in Guatemala was an active place, full of life. Wild animals  such as
wildcats and coyotes  were frequent visitors. We had a small vivid farm where we grew all sorts
of fruit trees and flowers and raised animals. As a family we were all active taking care of our
responsibilities. We enjoyed taking care of the pigs, ducks, birds, horses, and chickens. My dad
built a coop especially for the chickens and ducks, which were the largest group of animals we
had. When it was time to eat, they all came out at the same moment and spread all around the
property. It was nice to see the animals scattered around singing their songs. My dad loved
taking care of the animals, especially when they were young. He liked being close to them,
helping and feeding them. I, however, preferred to pick fruits or water the plants.

Each added sentence provides support for and is related to the main idea as expressed in the
topic sentence.

Making sense: Coherence & transitions

Remember that it is not the reader's job to make your writing make sense; it is your
responsibility to make understanding effortless. Transitions are signals that help you do this.
These words and phrases signal the exact relationship between one sentence and another,
often in advance by their placement near the beginnings of sentences. The reader understands
before he ever reaches the end of the sentence whether you intend to show, for example,
contrast, illustration, additional points, or cause and effect. Transitions also clarify the purpose
(inform? persuade? entertain? explain?) and order (space? time? importance?) of a paragraph.

In the preceding example, "such as" tells the reader that examples follow. In this case, the
author gives two examples of the wild animals that visited the farm. "However" signals contrast
to the preceding idea (her preference for working with the plants against her father's
preference for taking care of animals).

The following examples are only a very small sample of the variety of transitions at your
disposal:

These transitions signal that you are adding These transitions signal space order:

information or points:
 Beyond

 Moreover  Nearby
 Furthermore  On the far side

 As well  Nearest

These transitions signal that you are comparing These transitions signal that you are giving a

like characteristics or points: specific example of a preceding point:

 Similarly  For instance

 Likewise  In particular

 Both  To illustrate

These transitions signal contrast, or differences, in These transitions signal importance:

characteristics or points:
 Above all

 Although  Surely

 On the other hand  Not least

 Yet  Especially

These transitions signal causes or effects: These transitions signal time order:

 Since  Recently

 Because  Briefly

 Consequently  Currently

Coherence & order

Since it is your responsibility as a writer to make your writing make sense, choose an
appropriate way to order the information in your paragraphs. It is fairly intuitive, even for
beginners, to use time, or chronological, order to explain how to do something (first, next,
finally) or to narrate a story (meanwhile, at last). It is not always as intuitive to
choose space order in description. When a writer uses space order, he constructs description as
if a camera were moving smoothly through a scene. Space order can move left to right, bottom
to top, near to far, or in any other orderly way, depending on the effect you wish to achieve. If
your purpose is to persuade, explain, or argue a point, order of importance (more to less
important or least to most important) is appropriate. For purposes of persuasion, it may be
effective to order your points from least to most important, creating a climactic effect; however,
for essay exams and most business writing, place your most important points first.
Coherence & keywords
Make it impossible (well, improbable, anyway) for a reader to misunderstand you or miss your
point, by repeating important keywords or synonyms for those keywords:

The land was fruitful, rich, and productive. It had a tropical climate and a generous amount of
rainfall. There was a lot of vegetation and everything was green and flowering. The rivers ran
abundantly with water and the mountains were thick with trees. The mornings were
immaculate, very sunny and clear, and the fields were richly cultivated and filled with
wildflowers. The fecundity of the land produced a diverse fauna that included all sorts of small
reptiles such as lizards and snakes, insects such as crickets and dragonflies, and wild animals
such as monkeys, wildcats, and coyotes.

The example above abounds in synonyms for fruitful, rich, and productive: generous, flowering,
abundant, thick, richly cultivated, fecund, diverse. Especially when you are writing about
complicated processes, make it your responsibility to repeat the key words that increase the
reader's sense of continuity.

Unity, coherence, order-and length

How long should a paragraph be? As Lewis Carroll said, "Begin at the beginning and go on till
you come to the end; then stop." That is, when you have fully developed your topic sentence
and its attendant major details, you are done. Five sentences or twelve sentences or twenty-a
paragraph should be as long as it needs to be. Instructors who assign a minimum paragraph
length want you to accustom yourself to fully developing your subject; if you know yourself to
be a beginning writer, you might assign yourself this minimum until you are more fluent.

Accept responsibility for crafting and sharpening meaning in your writing to achieve unity and
coherence. By testing your writing for topic sentences and related supporting sentences, and by
choosing an order and transitions appropriate to your subject, audience, and purpose, you
should see noticeable improvement in all your papers.

Essay

7 Steps to Writing an Essay

 For some, writing an essay is as simple as sitting down at their computer and beginning
to type. But, a lot more planning goes into writing an essay successfully. If you have
never written an essay before, or if you struggle with writing and want to improve your
skills, it is a good idea to follow a number of important steps in the essay writing
process.

For example, to write an essay, you should generally:

 Decide what kind of essay to write

 Brainstorm your topic
 Research the topic
 Develop a thesis
 Outline your essay
 Write your essay
 Edit your writing to check spelling and grammar

While this sounds like a lot of steps to write a simple essay, if you follow them you will
be able to write more successful, clear and cohesive essays.

1. Choose the Type of Essay

The first step to writing an essay is to define what type of essay you are writing. There
are four main categories into which essays can be grouped:

 Narrative Essay: Tell a story or impart information about your subject in a

straightforward, orderly manner, like in a story.
 Persuasive Essay: Convince the reader about some point of view.
 Expository Essay: Explain to the reader how to do a given process. You could,
for example, write an expository essay with step-by-step instructions on how to make a
peanut butter sandwich.
 Descriptive Essay: Focus on the details of what is going on. For example, if you
want to write a descriptive essay about your trip to the park, you would give great detail
about what you experienced: how the grass felt beneath your feet, what the park
benches looked like, and anything else the reader would need to feel as if he were
there.

Knowing what kind of essay you are trying to write can help you decide on a topic and
structure your essay in the best way possible. Here are a few other types of essays:
 Argumentative Essay: Take a position on a controversial issue and present
evidence in favor of your position.
 Compare and Contrast Essay: Identify similarities and differences between two
subjects that are, typically, under the same umbrella.
 Problem Solution Essay: Describe a problem, convince the reader to care about
the problem, propose a solution, and be prepared to dismantle objections.
If you've been assigned an argumentative essay, check out these Top 10
Argumentative Essay Topics.

2. Brainstorm

You cannot write an essay unless you have an idea of what to write about.
Brainstorming is the process in which you come up with the essay topic. You need to
simply sit and think of ideas during this phase.
 Write down everything that comes to mind as you can always narrow those
topics down later.
 Use clustering or mind mapping to brainstorm and come up with an essay idea.
This involves writing your topic or idea in the center of the paper and creating bubbles
(clouds or clusters) of related ideas around it.
 Brainstorming can be a great way to develop a topic more deeply and to
recognize connections between various facets of your topic.

Once you have a list of possible topics, it's time to choose the best one that will answer
the question posed for your essay. You want to choose a topic that is neither too broad
nor too narrow.

If you are given an assignment to write a one-page essay, it would be far too much to
write about "the history of the US," since that could fill entire volumes of books. Instead,
you could write about a specific event within the history of the United States: perhaps
signing the Declaration of Independence or when Columbus discovered the Americas.

Choose the best topic idea from among your list and begin moving forward on writing
your essay. But, before you move forward, take heed of these topics to avoid.

3. Research the Topic

Once you have done your brainstorming and chosen your topic, you may need to do
some research to write a good essay. Go to the library or search online for information
about your topic. Interview people who might be experts in the subject.

Keep your research organized so it will be easy for you to refer back to. This will also
make it easier to cite your sources when writing your final essay.

4. Develop a Thesis

Your thesis statement is the main point of your essay. It is essentially one sentence that
says what the essay is about. For example, your thesis statement might be "Dogs are
descended from wolves." You can then use this as the basic premise to write your entire
essay, remembering that all of the different points throughout need to lead back to this
one main thesis. You should usually state your thesis in your introductory paragraph.

The thesis statement should be broad enough that you have enough to say about it, but
not so broad that you can't be thorough.

To help you structure a perfectly clear thesis, check out these These Statement
Examples.

5. Outline Your Essay

The next step is to outline what you are going to write about. This means you want to
essentially draw the skeleton of your paper. Writing an outline can help to ensure your
paper is logical, well organized and flows properly.

If you've been tasked with an argumentative essay, here's the best formula for
an Argumentative Essay Outline.
Start by writing the thesis statement at the top, and then write a topic sentence for each
paragraph below that. This means you should know exactly what each of your
paragraphs is going to be about before you write them.
 Don't jumble too many ideas in each paragraph or the reader may become
confused.
 Ensure you have transitions between paragraphs so the reader understands how
the paper flows from one idea to the next.
 Fill in supporting facts from your research under each paragraph. Make sure
each paragraph ties back to your thesis and creates a cohesive, understandable essay.
Does your teacher follow the APA guidelines for writing papers? If so, these APA
Outline Format Examples should help you pull it all together. As you progress into the
meat of the essay (following our tips below), these APA Format Examples should prove
beneficial!
Of, if MLA is your teacher's preferred style, check out these MLA Format Examples.

6. Write the Essay

Once you have an outline, it's time to start writing. Write based on the outline itself,
fleshing out your basic skeleton to create a whole, cohesive and clear essay.

You'll want to edit and re-read your essay, checking to make sure it sounds exactly the
way you want it to. Here are some things to remember:

 Revise for clarity, consistency, and structure.

 Support your thesis adequately with the information in your paragraphs. Each
paragraph should have its own topic sentence. This is the most important sentence in
the paragraph that tells readers what the rest of the paragraph will be about.
 Make sure everything flows together. As you move through the essay, transition
words will be paramount. Transition words are the glue that connects every paragraph
together and prevents the essay from sounding disjointed.
 Reread your introduction and conclusion. Will the reader walk away knowing
exactly what your paper was about?
In your introduction, it's important to include a hook. This is the line or line that will lure a
reader in and encourage them to want to learn more. For more on this, check out How
to Write a Hook.
And, to help you formulate a killer conclusion, scan through these Conclusion
Examples.

7. Check Spelling and Grammar

 Now the essay is written, but you're not quite done. Reread what you've written, looking
out for mistakes and typos.

 Revise for technical errors.

 Check for grammar, punctuation and spelling errors. You cannot always count on
spell check to recognize every spelling error. Sometimes, you can spell a word
incorrectly but your misspelling will also be a word, such as spelling "from" as "form."
 Another common area of concern is quotation marks. It's important to cite your
sources with accuracy and clarity. Follow these guidelines on how to use quotes in
essays and speeches.
 You might also want to consider the difference between quoting, paraphrasing,
and summarizing. Quoting is reserved for lines of text that are identical to an original
piece of writing. Paraphrasing is reserved for large sections of someone else's writing
that you want to convey in your own words. Summarizing puts the main points from
someone else's text into your own words. Here's more on When to Quote, Paraphrase,
or Summarize.

Planning Pays Off

A lot goes into writing a successful essay. Fortunately, these tips for writing essays can
help you along the way and get you on the path to a well-written essay.

Out of all these "how-tos," the worst thing you could do is plagiarize someone else's
writing (intentionally or unintentionally). Take a look at these tips and techniques for
preventing plagiarism. Other than that, we wish you great success as you work your
way to a perfect A!

HOW TO STRUCTURE AN ESSAY: AVOIDING SIX MAJOR WEAKNESSES IN PAPERS

Writing a paper is a lot like painting your house: the bulk of the work is in the preparation–
scraping, sanding, cleaning, applying primer. If you fail in the prep work, the finished product
will be less than excellent. Similarly, it is the quality of prep work-the brainstorming, prewriting,
drafting, revising-that makes some papers stand out as excellent.

It is a common mistake for students to want to start editing their papers before they have
substantially revised them. Before you start to stress over individual words and punctuation
marks, give your paper a critical read. Does your claim hang together in such a way that an
educated reader can follow it? Elegant phrasing and multi-syllable words will not make up for
weakness in the development of your argument.

Identifying six major weaknesses

Six major weaknesses can doom your paper to mediocrity or worse:

1. A too-broad thesis statement

2. A poorly formulated thesis
3. Inadequate or unfocused topic sentences
4. Writing off-subject
5. Failing to anticipate objections
6. An inadequate conclusion

The checklist below can help you discover whether your paper suffers from any of these errors.
Ask yourself whether all of the following statements are true of your paper.

 My subject is limited enough for adequate treatment for this length of paper.
 My thesis statement is a discussable point and is in the form of a declarative
sentence.
 I have used specific, focused topic sentences to support my thesis statement.
 All my sentences directly or indirectly support my thesis statement-I have not
digressed or written "off the subject." I have not contradicted my thesis statement.
 I have anticipated the major objections to my thesis and have tried to address and
overcome them.
 My closing paragraph restates the thesis (if necessary) and draws conclusions based
on the points I have already discussed in my paper.

If any of these statements are not true, read ahead to find explanations and suggestions that
may help.

1. The too-broad thesis statement

Many papers fail largely because the writer attempts to write on a subject so broad that he
simply cannot adequately address it. Narrow down the topic to one that interests you, and for
which source information is available, and that you can discuss adequately in the length
assigned. The following sentence might have a legitimate place in a paper (as part of an
introduction, perhaps), but it would fail as a thesis statement because it is too broad for a
typical three- to four-page paper:

In American schools, there are many kinds of acceptable dress codes and classroom behaviors.

The phrase "American schools" includes pre-, elementary, intermediate, and high schools;
public and private colleges; technical schools; adult schools; schools with and without uniform
requirements; schools in conservative Midwestern towns and those in diverse urban areas;
religious schools; progressive schools–too many schools, too many populations of students to
discuss all at once.

Many urban-area public schools are weighing the advantages and disadvantages of requiring
students to wear uniforms, and quite a few are deciding that uniforms are the way to go for
several reasons.

2. The poorly formulated thesis

A thesis should treat a discussable point-that is, a topic that merits discussion because more
than one point of view is sane and plausible. While it is possible, for example, to support the
following statements, the resulting paper would likely not be very interesting because the points
are not discussable:

A dog is a four-legged domestic mammal.

A friend is someone who is always there for you.
Humans need oxygen to live.

Reformulated, these statements can become more discussable and interesting:

Dogs are smelly, dumb, destructive eating machines, and I couldn't live without mine.
My friend Brad uses humor to encourage me to set high standards for myself.
In the absence of free oxygen, very different life forms might have emerged on earth.

Even a discussable thesis can fail to make its point clear. This is frustrating to the reader, who
at the very least is entitled to a clear statement of your claim (unless it is obviously implied–a
technique not recommended for beginners!). Compare the following vague theses with the
stronger examples given above:

What do most people think about dogs? Are they man's best friend or worst enemy?
In my estimation, a sense of humor is a valuable thing.
Oxygen is especially vital for animal life forms.

Try the following to help sharpen a vague thesis statement:

 Avoid questions, which are useful as attention-getting devices, but are difficult to use as
a thesis statement. For example, avoid "Why should students be given more freedom to
choose elective subjects?" Instead use "Students should be given more freedom to choose
elective subjects," or even "Students should not be given more freedom to choose elective
subjects."
 Avoid "I think," "I believe," "In my opinion," or "To me." Such expressions are overly
subjective and unnecessary; remember that you are presenting evidence to support your
thesis statement, even if you are writing a narrative or descriptive paper. Besides, a simple
declarative statement is a much stronger way to say what you think.
 Contrary to what you might think, absolute statements do not strengthen a thesis. Avoid
them unless you are certain you can support them. Few statements (other than known
facts–like the nondiscussable points above) can be proven completely to everyone's
satisfaction. If you overstate your case with an absolute statement, and then fail to support
it, you lose credibility. Use words like "seems," "seldom," "maybe," "probably," "possibly,"
and "almost." Avoid "certainly," "absolutely," "always," or "never."
3. Inadequate or unfocused topic sentences
Do not, out of enthusiasm, haste, or laziness, abandon the basics of paragraph structure for
paragraphs subsequent to your thesis statement. From start to finish the paper should follow a
consistent progression leading coherently to a reasonable, well thought out conclusion.
Therefore, make sure every single paragraph in your paper contains its own clearly stated topic
sentence as well as the specific details to support each, though not necessarily in that order–
the following example, for instance, starts with an illustration and concludes with a topic
sentence:

At George Washington Junior High School, after students had been wearing uniforms only five
months, groups of students who formerly occupied separate areas of the lunch yard began
sitting closer to each other and talking to each other more. School administrators concluded
that the wearing of school uniforms had obscured the socioeconomic differences between
students and resulted in more social mixing between the groups.

Compare the above example with the following too-general claim:

Wearing school uniforms is socially good for junior high school students.

In short, fuzziness in topic sentences suggests fuzziness in thinking. If you settle for vagueness
in your topic sentences, you will be more likely to write off-topic or jump around from topic to
topic. Clarifying your topic sentence–clarifying your thinking–will go a long way toward
producing an organized and convincing paper.

4. Writing off-subject
Your thesis statement is a promise to your reader about what you will cover in your paper.
Don't write "off" this subject; don't include sentences that do not support or elaborate on this
main idea. For instance, if your thesis statement for an expository "process" paper is "Making a
set of bookshelves requires precise skills," don't include sentences describing your favorite
author or the kinds of books you plan to place in the bookshelves. If your thesis statement for a
descriptive paper is "My room is a place of refuge," don't include more than incidental
references to the other parts of the house or to your neighborhood.

A narrative sometimes seems particularly difficult to contain within the confines of a thesis
statement. Consider, for example, a narrative paper about the biggest fish you ever caught.
"The biggest fish I ever caught at Bass Lake hit on my spare house key at the very end of a
long day of fishing." A common mistake is to tell the story of the entire fishing trip: when you
left home, where you stopped for gas and bait, a description of the scenery, and so on.
Remember that what you have promised to tell your reader is about catching the biggest fish
ever; every sentence and paragraph should relate to this.

5. Failing to anticipate objections

Especially for an argumentative or persuasive paper, you must acknowledge and attempt to
overcome objections to your thesis. For example, consider the following thesis statement:
"Courses in Western Civilization should not be required of American college students. If they
prefer Asian, African, or Native American Studies, for example, these should be acceptable
alternatives to Western Studies." Here are two plausible objections to the preceding statement:

Western civilization represents the core culture of American students; to be successful in this
culture, they must understand it.

The study of Western culture should be required in addition to Asian, African, or other cultures,
in order to foster understanding of the modern global community.

Objections like these can be merely acknowledged-"Although some people insist that all
students in American should study Western culture..."–or broken down and discussed in detail,
point by point. Decide whether your topic–or the objection itself–is strong enough to warrant
detailed discussion of opposing viewpoints.

6. An inadequate conclusion
Usually, student writers should write a concluding paragraph that summarizes the topic
sentence (in words different from those used earlier) and restates the thesis (again, in different
words). The conclusion should include the most important idea from your paper, the one you
most want readers to remember. (Some papers may differ; the conclusion to a narrative essay,
for example, may not follow this pattern.)

My room is one of the quietest, most beautiful, and most spacious rooms I have seen. Within
the confines of my room, I can work, I can think, I can rest. It is, indeed, a place of refuge in a
noisy, crowded, and often ugly world.
An effective conclusion "returns" to the material in the introduction–the imagery, metaphor, or
analogy found there, for instance. A satisfying conclusion may also contain one last anecdote to
illustrate the thesis. Choose a technique that seems appropriate to your subject matter and the
tone of your paper.

Although beginners should stick to the techniques outlined above, experienced writers often do
one more thing-they draw a conclusion beyond the points already made.

I would not be where I am today if I had not been forced to view my life in an honest manner.
Alcohol almost killed me many times, and I am still only one drink away from a life of hell. I
have been sober for almost two years, and I have never felt happier or more serene. With
God's grace, I will stay sober today. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

While not introducing new material, this kind of conclusion both summarizes and points out
more far-reaching consequences, gives a warning, or offers an alternative suggested by or
based on the ideas already put forth.

Minor Weaknesses
In addition to the major weaknesses above, minor errors can diminish the apparent strength of
your argument and result in a paper that is merely adequate. After correcting major problems,
check for some of the errors below:

 Weak, vague or poorly developed introduction

 Sentence errors including

o Unintentional fragmentary sentences

o Run-on sentences, especially the "comma splice"–using a comma to separate
two sentences
o Short, choppy sentences or lack of sentence variety
o Poor or nonexistent transitions
o Awkward sentences due to lack of parallel structure or due to dangling or
misplaced modifiers
 Word errors such as

o Use of the wrong word or phrase, for example, its or it's

o Nonstandard English–"they was," "he don't,"-use of double negatives, and so on
o Trite expressions such as "hit the hay," "gave me a turn," "acid test"
o Monotonous or ineffective repetition
 o Wrong word choice for the style, tone, or content: formal language in an
informal paper, for example, or informal language in a formal paper.
 Verb tense disagreement
 Wrong use of subjunctive verb forms, such as in conditional statements
 Subject/verb non-agreement
 Errors in pronoun reference
 "Padding"–using words simply to fill space
 Plagiarizing, that is, failing to cite source material

Finally, proofread adequately to correct punctuation, spelling, and typing errors

WRITING A PERSUASIVE ESSAY

A persuasive essay tries to convince the reader to agree with the writer's opinion on a subject.
In your persuasive essay you do three things:

 Present your position on a discussable issue.

 Anticipate  possible objections and overcome them with logic and evidence to support
your claim.
 Convince readers that they have something to gain by adopting your viewpoint.
Choosing a discussable issue
A discussable issue is one that can be debated. Choose a topic about which there can be more
than one reasonable opinion. It may be possible to write a persuasive essay about the need to
feed all the hungry children in the world, but it would not be a particularly interesting essay
because no reasonable person would declare that all the hungry children deserve to starve. It
might be more interesting to try to persuade readers that half of all American tax dollars should
be earmarked to go first to all the hungry children of the world; you will probably uncover at
least one or two dissenting viewpoints. Conversely, you might suggest that it is wrong to spend
American tax dollars this way, and that the hungry children should be taken care of entirely by
rich private donors; again, in this you will find a difference of opinion among reasonable people.

It is sometimes easier to persuade someone when you are passionate about a subject. If
possible then, pick a subject about which you feel strongly. Make a list of your opinions and
feelings about the subject. Is this an urgent issue? Are the implications far-reaching and
serious? Does it impact you personally? Do you feel angry about it? Are you worried? Are you
excited that taking a particular action on this issue could do a great deal of good to many
people?
On the other hand, it isn't necessary to feel strongly about your topic. Sometimes you even may
be asked in an assignment to take a stance opposite your beliefs. If you are asked to argue for
a particular position, do some role-playing: imagine yourself as someone who feels strongly in
favor of this stance, and make a list of your (imaginary) opinions and feelings. This may be
challenging, but it is also rewarding. Learning to be persuasive on a subject you yourself do not
support wholeheartedly is a valuable life skill-think of marketing, legal, education, and human
resources professions, for example. When you practice looking at an issue from many sides,
you may find that you have learned something.

Anticipating and overcoming objections

Discussing your topic with others before you start to write may eliminate certain directions your
writing could take as well as suggest others. Ask other people how they feel about the issue;
test your opinions and reasons on them. Listen closely to their opinions, especially to those with
whom you disagree. This will give you a preview of responses you can expect from your
audience. Ask people why they feel the way they do. The initiative is yours–you must
acknowledge and genuinely understand opposing views and overcome them with the force of
your persuasion, for hostile or indifferent readers are not likely to go out of their way to
understand you. Take opposing viewpoints seriously and do not oversimplify them. It is not
effective or convincing to base your argument on easily refutable points.

Gather facts and evidence that support your position and refute opposing positions. Look
online, in newspapers, and in magazines for current articles on the subject. Take careful notes
on what you read and use these notes to build a strong argument. Discuss your list of
arguments and evidence with someone else to make sure you have covered all the important
related points. Draw up a thesis statement–sometimes called a proposition, a statement of what
you propose to prove in your writing–and list your reasons underneath it. Beneath each reason,
list the facts, figures, examples, or quotations that help support it.

Always state the proposition in positive terms: "Teachers

should be prohibited from secretly searching student lockers," rather than, "Teachers should
not be allowed to secretly search student lockers." State your thesis as a fact that you intend to
prove beyond a doubt, rather than as an opinion: "Teachers should be prohibited..." is much
more persuasive than, "I think teachers should be prohibited...." In a persuasive essay,
conviction and strong direct word use is everything.

Convincing readers
Give your reader–even an unsympathetic reader–the respect due him. Be diplomatic. It is not
persuasive to suggest that your opponents are morons who simply do not understand the
matter, or that they are vicious sociopaths with a destructive hidden agenda. Rely on logic
rather than emotion, using words that will elicit a positive reaction from your audience. Give
credit to your opponents; then clearly point out the weakness in their position.

As you write, define any key terms that you feel your audience will not understand, and use
examples to illustrate your main points. Statistics can be good attention grabbers, particularly in
the introduction, but use them sparingly and round off numbers. Use visual images such as
metaphors and analogies to compare one thing to another as much as possible. Use your
strongest arguments first and last–people are more likely to remember those points placed at
the beginning and end of your paper.

The conclusion, while summarizing (not simply re-stating) your position, should say something
beyond those points. Appeal to the needs of your audience. Prove to your readers why this
issue is important and show what they can gain by changing their viewpoint. Asking rhetorical
questions can also be effective in leaving your audience with something to think about. Write
with conviction!

WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE ESSAY

The aim of description is to make sensory details vividly present to the reader. Although it may
be only in school that you are asked to write a specifically descriptive essay, description is an
important element in many kinds of writing. Description embedded in an argument paper, for
example, may be intended to make a position more persuasive. However, in this TIP Sheet we
will discuss the descriptive essay as it is commonly assigned by instructors as an exercise in
organizing sensory information and choosing vivid details.

Showing vs. telling

Sensory details are details of smell, taste, texture, and sound as well as sight. If you choose
"showing" words, those that supply vivid sensory details appropriate to your subject and
purpose, you will succeed in showing rather than telling. "Telling" words are usually vague or
ambiguous; they can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The following first example mostly
makes statements about what is lacking in the room, whereas the second example describes
the sights, textures, smells, and sounds of the empty room:

Telling:
The empty room smelled stale and was devoid of furniture or floor covering; the single window
lacked curtains or blinds of any kind.
Showing:
The apartment smelled of old cooking odors, cabbage, and mildew; our sneakers squeaked
sharply against the scuffed wood floors, which reflected a haze of dusty sunlight from the one
cobwebbed, gritty window.

"Showing" uses very specific details: cabbage and mildew, scuffed and dusty floors, unwashed
windows. Though the writer of the second example does not actually use the word "empty,"
she nevertheless suggests emptiness and disuse. The suggestion of emptiness in the second
example is more vivid than the statement of emptiness in the first. If you don't think the first
example is vague, look at another possible interpretation of that empty room:

Showing:
The sharp odor of fresh paint cut through the smell of newsprint. Four stacked cartons of inkjet
printer paper sat squarely in the middle of a concrete floor, illuminated by a shaft of morning
light from a sparkling chrome-framed window on the opposite wall.

Do not mistake explanation for description. Explanation is a kind of telling that interjects
background material that does not contain sensory details or contribute to the overall effect–a
character's motives or history, for example:

Explanation:
The tenants had moved out a week earlier because the house was being sold to a developer.
No one had bothered to dust or clean because they assumed the apartment was going to be
knocked down and replaced with single-family homes like those built just a block away.

When description devolves into explanation (telling rather than showing), it becomes boring.

Observing details
Once you are ready to abandon the attempt to explain or to tell about, evaluate your subject in
terms of visual, auditory, and other sensory details. Think in concrete terms. The more you are
interested in and connected to the subject, the easier it will be to interest your reader, so if you
describe a person, choose a person whose characteristics stand out to you. If you describe a
place or a thing, choose one that is meaningful to you.

You are painting a picture that must be as clear and real as possible, so observe carefully and,
preferably, in person. Note what sets this subject apart from others like it. If the subject is a
person, include physical characteristics and mannerisms. Describe abstractions such as
personality traits only insofar as you can observe them. For example, do not tell the reader your
biology instructor is a neat, meticulous person; show your reader the instructor's "dust-free
computer monitor and stacks of papers with corners precisely aligned, each stack sitting exactly
three thumb-widths from the edge of the desk." How a subject interacts with others is fair
game for description if you can observe the interaction. On the other hand, a subject's life
history and world perspective may not be, unless you can infer them, for example, from the
photos on his walls or the books on his bookshelf.

Similarly, if the subject of your description is an object or a place, you may include not only its
physical appearance but also its geographic, historical, or emotional relevance-as long as you
show or suggest it using sensory details, and avoid explaining.

Deciding on a purpose
Even description for description's sake should have a purpose. Is there an important overall
impression you wish to convey? A central theme or general point? This is your thesis; organize
your essay around it. For example, you might describe your car as your home away from home,
full of snack foods, changes of clothing, old issues of the Chico News & Review, textbooks, and
your favorite music. Or, you might describe your car as an immaculate, beautiful, pampered
woman on whom you lavish attention and money. Just don't describe your car in cold, clinical
detail, front to back (or bottom to top, or inside to outside) without having in mind the purpose,
the overall impression you want to create. To achieve this impression, you should not
necessarily include all details; use only those that suit your purpose.

Avoid telling a story unless it is of central importance to the description or an understanding of

it. Keep background information to an absolute minimum or avoid it altogether.

Organizing
Extended description that lacks organization has a confusing, surreal quality and easily loses
readers' interest, so choose an organizational plan. Use whatever progression seems logical–left
to right, inside to outside, top to bottom-and stick to it. For example, it does not make sense to
describe a person's facial features and hair, then his sonorous voice and impressive vocabulary,
and then return to details about his eyebrows and glasses.

A quote from your subject or a brief anecdote about him or her may provide an interesting
introduction (or conclusion); dialogue can be a great way to add interest to a descriptive essay.
In your introduction, you might be permitted to make general, abstract statements (tell about)
your subject or supply background information, as long as you demonstrate these points
concretely later in the body of your essay.
Use vivid nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and appropriate metaphors, similes, comparisons, and
contrasts. Avoid clichés.

Like the introduction, the conclusion is another place you can get away with
reflecting about your subject: Why did you write this description? What is its significance to
you? To your reader? If you have achieved your purpose, your conclusion should only confirm
in the reader's mind what you have already shown him by your use of selected sensory details.