The Essay: ENG 110 College Writing II: Spring 2010

Every essay has thee parts, an introduction, body, and conclusion. If it is going to be an essay, it is going to develop a topic at enough length to need more than one paragraph. Thus, it will be hard to have an "essay" without at least three paragraphs.

In practice, an effective essay will be complex enough and long enough that it will probably make sense to divide it into at least five paragraphs:

When do you start a new paragraph? We'll talk about that later, but you can see how some of those body paragraphs might get too long and naturally chunk up into sections, which may have several paragraphs. That gets us to this version of our table:

Even though this is a neat table, it implies that each section is the same size, and that doesn't have to be true at all.

We have three kinds of paragraphs that serve different purposes and thus have different structures:

introductory paragraphs

The first paragraph or two of any essay needs to accomplish several things. It must contain a sentence or several sentences that are the main assertion, the statement of what the essay is organized to support. After I get done reading your thesis statement, I should be able to answer these questions:

What situation does this writer find problematic?

What does he/she think the situation should be?

How does he/she characterize the gap that has to be overcome to improve the situation?

In addition to this thesis statement, the introduction should do several other things. It should make a conscious attempt to provoke or capture the reader's interest, what I'm calling a hook. The introduction should show that the writer has a sense of the larger context that the situation exists in. And finally, the introduction should preview the organization of the essay's body sections.

body paragraphs

Where the essay has a thesis statement, the paragraph has a topic sentence that functions in the same way.

Where the essay has body paragraphs to support the thesis, the body paragraphs have evidence to support the topic sentence.

What is special about topic sentences?

What is special about supporting sentences?

They relate observable, empirical evidence -- events, facts, and statistics -- as well as expert opinion about that evidence.

They relate relevant, plausible examples - stories about people, things, and events.

What is special about explanation sentences?

They tell the reader about the implications, meanings, and inferences to be drawn from the supporting evidence.

What is special about transitional sentences?

They glue the previous part to the next part of the essay. Two other metaphors: transitional sentences are like swinging doors. Transitional sentences have a foot in what came before and what will come after.

At their best, transitional sentences do more than alert the reader that the next part of the essay is beginning. They also tell the reader about the rhetorical mode. They provide the essay's flow.

concluding paragraphs

postview - Tell them what you told them. Add it up. Summarize the effects of all your trigger-pulling.

What is the difference between an essay and a report?

A lot of the writing that you do professionally will be reports. On the one end, the information is so standard and is generated to frequently that you will use a form. Fill in the blanks with words and numbers, verifiable facts, things that you, the writer, observed or counted.

Moving along that dimension, a report would still contain only verifiable facts, but instead of just filling in the blanks of a form, you will write complete sentences. For these kind of reports, the organization that employs you will often provide a strict format or template for the report to follow.

Continuing along that dimension, a report can have the facts (research) assembled by the writer in service of a main idea, what we'll call a thesis in this course. For example, you might explain why your plan for next year is the best use of the company's resources. Or you might explain to the granting agency why your proposal should be funded.

An essay does all that, and in addition it has a personality and a voice and assumes that the reader is willing to listen to a persuasive line of thought. It does more than just dump the facts. It helps the reader think about the facts and it does it in an engaging manner. In organizations, this kind of writing is often the domain of the marketing or resources development department. However, this kind of thinking is behind a huge amount of oral commuication in organizations, one-on-one and in meetings. It may not ever get formalized in writing, and given the politics of organizations, it may be better for everyone that such communication is not in writing.

But the communication, based on clear thinking, the persuading based on facts about reality (as opposed to wishful thinking or jumping to conclusions and other common rhetorical deceptions), that is the kind of communicating that is exhibited by leaders and leads to promotions and raises.

In this course, we are encouraging that kind of rational thinking and persuasive communication in formal essays.

essay structures within structures

Let's look at the big picture, how all this writing fits together. Report structures are modular, parts within parts, many of which can be moved around, selected, and rearranged to fit various writing purposes and audiences.

body section 1
topic statement	an assertion relevant to the thesis statement
support	evidence - facts, statistics, experts examples - stories about people, things, and events illustrations - images, tables, charts
explanation	what it means, what reader is supposed to get out of it, how it contributes to thesis
transitions	how this section relates to other body sections and thesis

Basic unit of discourse

An assertion is like a gun. Anyone can pull one out and start waving it around. By itself, an assertion is an opinion, all talk, lots of fervent belief, but nothing else. To make it more persuasive, all you can do it raise your voice, wag the gun more wildly.

The support is the bullets. It's what you load your gun with. A loaded gun is a lot more threatening. It can, potentially, do a lot more damage than the gun by itself.

However, to effectively communicate, you need to pull the trigger. No matter how good your gun and your bullets, you're never going to hit your target unless you pull the trigger. You need to explain what you want your reader to get out of the evidence. Then it's not just your opinion against someone else's. It's your substantiated, explained opinion, which is more persuasive and carries more weight than the opinions of those wagging their guns at each other.

The body section or paragraph is like a mini-essay in itself. Where the whole essay has a thesis statement, the individual sections or paragraphs have topic statements. Then at the end of the course, after you have written a lot of paragraphs, you will add a level of complexity by combining some of them into an essay. It will have many paragraphs, many topic sentences, and lots of examples, and you will pull the trigger over and over again by continually explaining what those examples show.

"The paragraph development model we're using for this course is going to cramp my style."

Yes, it will, if you have only one style. Then, like a singer who can sing only one song in only one key, you can't contribute much to other songs in other keys. So I wouldn't say the basic unit of discourse will cramp your style as much as it will add another style to the one you already have. This one will fit your thinking into a structure that will be familiar to your readers.

I can't find the pop song that's from, but I was reminded of it watching the downhill skiers at the Olympics on TV one evening last winter.

When I stand at the top of a slope, I have to work with the terrain and the vegetation and other skiers, but I basically make my own way downhill. That's how many people want to write essays, sort of meandering along, enjoying the trip and not so concerned about the destination.

Unfortunately, you won't get paid for that at work. Writing for work is more like the task facing the competitive Olympians at the top of a downhill course. There are gates they must go through. As you can see, they are often red, so there's no mistaking them.

If you're a fan, you know that those gates don't restrict the skier's style, they free it. In the same way, the structural model, the problem-solving model, that I am showing you for this course can free you to write well, not hamper you.

The nature of writing

One kind of sculptor adds lumps of clay and then pushes, pulls, and smoothes them. Less experienced writers are additive, looking for more words or pages to fill an assignment. They don't want to write anything they won't use. They think before they write.

Another kind of sculptor chips at a block of stone, taking away what doesn't belong. More experienced writers are subtractive, always looking for what to delete and compress. They throw away lots of perfectly good sentences. They write in order to learn what they think.

As you grow as a writer, you will progress from additive to subtractive, from looking for more words to write to looking for more words to delete.

In many organizations, people speak of "crafting" a document or "putting together" a document rather than "writing" it. These terms emphasize the cutting and shaping and de-emphasize the composition.

The key factor is that block of stone. It's your research. If you are looking to fill pages, then you haven't done enough research. If you do enough research, that is, if you collect enough information, data, experts' statements, and illustrations, then you'll have more than enough to write, and you'll be on your way to looking for things to delete.

Don't think of research as a couple of facts and quotes you put onto your essay like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Think of the research as the block of marble that gets chipped and drilled into shape. Your sources aren't some nuisance to prove you did your homework. Your sources make up most of your essay. Your contribution is to organize them (put them in order; topic sentences; transitions) and to explain what they mean.

Your research is what gives substance and weight to your claims (thesis statement and topic sentences). You aren't going to be paid for what you have to say. You're going to be paid for selecting and shaping what others have said and written and then for explaining it to your audience according to their needs.

opinions

The word has several meanings, two of which are relevant here. One meaning is unsubstantiated claim. The idea here is that everyone has opinions, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and one opinion is as good as another. These opinions are usually an expression of feeling and emotion, whether explicit ("People on welfare are lazy bums, so Congress should abolish welfare,") or implicit ("Welfare saps human motivation.").

Even though you have the right to your opinion, it is not true that all opinions are equal. About four hundred years ago in what we now call Western society, thoughtful, curious people developed a way to tell which opinions were true and which were not. The movement to do that is call the Enlightenment in the sense of a light going on.

The Age of Enlightenment (or simply the Enlightenment) is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority.

Before that, might made right. If the king or priest or rich man said something, it was right because they said it. After that, reason made right.

That gets us to the other meaning of opinion: substantiated claim. "After thoroughly researching and carefully analyzing the unequal distribution of resources in our society, it is my position that Senator XYZ's proposal to raise the income threshold for food stamps will motivate the marginally employed members of our society." When supported by a lot of research and careful explanation, this claim has so much authority that it's more than an opinion. It's a position. In an essay, it could function as the thesis statement.

Part of what going to college is all about is learning how people and organizations make better decisions by grounding claims in evidence and reasoning. While it may be true in the bar on Saturday night that all opinions are equally good (wanna go outside and fight about it?), it is not true in the office on Monday morning.

At work, all opinions are not equal. When you go to work, you are entitled to your opinion, it's your right to have it. But you will soon learn to keep it to yourself if you can't support it with good evidence and sound reasoning.

So yes, your opinions are important and worth listening to, but only after you have earned the right to be taken seriously by researching and analyzing the situation. Then your opinion becomes your position and it is worth much more.

textual references

quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing

Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and must be attributed to the original author.

Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from source material into your own words. A paraphrase must also be attributed to the original source. Paraphrased material is usually shorter than the original passage, taking a somewhat broader segment of the source and condensing it slightly.

Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) into your own words, including only the main point(s). Once again, it is necessary to attribute summarized ideas to the original source. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the source material.

attribution

Whether you quote, paraphrase, or summarize, you must tell the reader where it came from. That obligation is not a threat that if you have one comma out of place, you're going to get whacked. Instead, attribution is an opportunity for you to gain the credibility of your sources. Don't hide your sources. Reveal them to the reader openly.

Let's distinguish between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. The letter of the law is a meticulous set of rules codified in some kind of style manual.

The two most common in college classes and in academic research are those published by:

The letter of the law is simple. These guides tell you exactly where every space, comma, and capital letter goes. Follow it slavishly.

The spirit of the law is twofold: accountability and consistency. It involves judgment calls and gray areas. As long as you acknowledge your sources and account for them in the text in a consistent manner, you will be ok. If your works is to be printed by a publisher, the in-house copy editors and fact-checkers will keep you out of trouble.

Large organizations often have their own style manual. If you work for one of them, use theirs and follow it as closely as you do the MLA for this course.

What to do for ENG 110

In the body of your essay, when you use information from one of your sources, introduce it in the normal flow of your paragraph. Try to include enough for the reader to be able to find the source in your Works Cited section. For example:

FIV is found all over. “In the U.S., about 1.5% to 3% of all healthy cats become infected with the virus. If a cat is ill or has some type of immunodeficiency, the rate rises to nearly 20%.” Up to one in every twelve cats tested for FIV are positive, according to the American Association of Feline Practitioners. “Recent research suggests the likelihood of cats passing on FIV to others in the same household is as low as 1-2%.” This is likely because there is not a competition for food, territory or females.

If the Works Cited section has only one entry for the American Association of Feline Practitioners, then it will be clear from that above passage alone where the information came from. Nothing else would be needed. For another example:

Studies have shown that FIV positive cats can live as long as negative cats. At the Glasgow Veterinary School, a FIV long term monitoring project indicated that “a higher percentage of FIV negative cats died than FIV positive cats.” “FIV cats are more likely to die from a road accident than from FIV,” according to Maureen Hurtchison in her fourteen-year study. Another study was completed by Dr. Diane D. Addie where a household of 26 cats were monitored for ten years. Of those 26 cats fifteen of them were positive for FIV. “The FIV infected cats lived on average of 51 months after diagnosis, compared with 17.5 months for the negative cats.” These studies lead to the conclusion that FIV does not shorten a cat’s life expectancy.

Does the Works Cited section have entries that account for all of these three quotations? They may come from the same source or from two or three different sources. I can't tell from the above paragraph, but it doesn't matter as long as it is clear in the Works Cited section.

Works Cited section

At the end of your essay or report, the Works Cited section gives the details that wouldn't fit neatly into the text. The trick here is to carefully and meticulously follow the directions. You will find many sources for the MLA works cited format online.

If you have a source that doesn't fit any of the standard patterns, let me take a look at it and help you decide what to do.

annotated bibliography

An annotation is a note accompanying a bibliography entry. For assignment 9, I would like you to compose each of your project's major bibliographic entries along with an annotation, a sentence or two explaining the nature of the resource and what you got out of it. Use the MLA style for your citations.

You will probably quote from all of your sources, so they will all be accounted for in the Works Cited section, which is not annotated. However, it is very easy to consult a reference that you don't end up citing in the actual essay and that therefore doesn't need an entry in the Works Cited section.

An annotated bibliography is a list of citations to books, articles, and documents. Each citation is followed by a brief (usually about 150 words) descriptive and evaluative paragraph, the annotation. The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited.

Keefe, F. J., (1996) Pain in arthritis and musculoskeletal disorders. Journal of Orthopedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 2, :279-290.

I got all the facts about exercising with arthritis and the different types of exercise from this source. This is an academic journal, so the prose is sometimes hard to read, but it includes a detailed bibliography that turned out to be my best source for recent research.

Problems cannot be solved by the same paradigms that created them.
-- Albert Einstein

What are the standards for evaluating information?

Content

insufficient, irrelevant, invalid, unreliable, incredible <----> sufficient, relevant, valid, reliable, credible

Instead of thinking clearly and reasoning logically from good evidence, here's what happens too frequently in organizations:

not using any data/evidence

not having access to data

using bad data

overlooking some data

jumping to conclusions

making faulty inferences from data

being opinionated

planning poorly

saying that it's not my problem

excluding key people

not clearly defining the problem

reworking - doing it over; reinventing the wheel

six tests of evidence
acceptability	do I buy the assumptions underlying it?
credibility	of sources and sources' sources - who says so?
validity	is it what is says it is? is it real?
reliability	is it true? if you repeated the research (primary or secondary), would you end up with the same thing?
sufficiency	is there enough of it, especially in proportion to the whole?
relevance	does it make any difference in this context?

What do you do with contradictory information?

A startling fact that also has come into play is the fact that “less than three percent of the beef consumed in the U.S. comes from animals raised on the public lands” which the horses roam on and is being battled over.

I wondered what was so startling about it. Is three percent a lot? Or hardly any? At Google, I searched for the exact phrase and found three relevant web pages. I then tried to follow the sources' sources to the next level. Only one source let me do that.

evidence	"Only 3% of the beef raised from public land west of the Mississippi feeds US citizens."	"Less than three percent of the beef consumed in the U.S. comes from animals raised on the public lands."	"public lands west of the Mississippi, which is where most of the country's remaining wild horses live, supply just 3 percent of our beef."
source	First Wild Horses Sold Under New Law ENS, March 2, 2005	Mustangs’ Last Stand by Herman Spencer III, Theresa Fassett and Keresan, the Wild Mustang The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign, n.d.	Mustang Sallies: Can America's wild horses survive another four years of Bush? by Deanne Stillman Slate, Feb. 16, 2005
about the source	about: The Environment News Service is the original daily international wire service of the environment. Established in 1990 by Editor-in-Chief Sunny Lewis and Managing Editor Jim Crabtree, it is independently owned and operated. The Environment News Service (ENS) exists to present late-breaking environmental news in a fair and balanced manner.	about: The American Wild Horse Preservation Campaign is supported by a broad-based coalition of public interest groups, environmentalists, humane organizations and historical societies representing over 10 million supporters. Launched in the summer of 2004 after a preliminary investigation into some of Nevada's Herd Management Areas, it was conceived as a campaign, as opposed to a new organization, specifically to allow its participants to present a united front for the horses' sake; it is not a fundraising operation, but a unifying tool with a firm grassroots base. The AWHPC Coalition includes: [ three dozen organizations ]	about: Slate is a daily magazine on the Web. Founded in 1996, we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, and culture. Slate's strong editorial voice and witty take on current events have been recognized with numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for General Excellence Online. The site, which is owned by The Washington Post Company, does not charge for access and is supported by advertising revenues.
the source's source	The Wild Horse and Burros Freedom Alliance says the BLM fails to mention that "these horses were unnecessarily removed from their rightful range due to pressure from special interest groups who run private commercial operations on our public lands (cattle, oil)." "Less than three percent of the beef consumed in the U.S. comes from animals raised on public lands," the group says, pointing out that, "Ranchers are charged only $1.81 per month to graze a cow and calf on our public lands. That's less than it costs to feed a hamster." -------------- Wild Horse and Burro Freedom Alliance: www.savewildhorses.org	none stated or implied	BLM implied: see below for context

The statements in First Wild Horses says that 97% of the beef raised on those lands goes to other than US consumption. It says nothing about where our consumed beef comes from. That 3% could be all of what we eat. It could be far less than 3% of what we eat.

The statement in Mustangs’ Last Stand says that more than 97% of the beef we eat is grown elsewhere than those lands. It says nothing about how much of the beef raised on public lands goes to US consumption, only that some of it does. All of it?

The writer from Slate decided to take a distanced, impartial view of some numbers. But she states as fact what appears in Mustang's Last Stand:

In 1971, when the act was passed and signed by Richard Nixon, perhaps 50,000 horses remained, according to the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Interior agency in charge of them. It's hard to count horses, but today, according to the BLM, there are 36,000 on public lands. Wild horse advocates dispute that number and say there are no more than 20,000 still roaming the range. Everyone agrees that the numbers are dwindling and most of the horses are in Nevada, which is where the wild mustang is making its last stand. ...

Today's fight over wild horses is a strange battle, in which cattlemen and ranchers—the traditional enemies of the wild horse—have inadvertently teamed up with environmental groups, which generally regard wild horses as an invasive, non-native species. Along with the oil and gas lobbies, the ranching industry largely determines BLM policy toward public lands, which is where wild horses and burros roam. Many ranchers who lease grazing land from the BLM for meager fees—a situation opponents call "welfare ranching"—see wild horses as pests that destroy the land and take food from cattle, although study after study indicates that cattle do more damage to the range than horses. Moreover, public lands west of the Mississippi, which is where most of the country's remaining wild horses live, supply just 3 percent of our beef.

Another problem arises. Are all public lands west of the Mississippi shared by both cows and horses? The implication seems to be that because only three percent comes from those lands -- whether or not they are contested by the horses and cows -- then the cows' interests must be less important than the horses'.

Turning opinions into persuasive arguments

The best or most persuasive argument will explain evidence that passes all six of the tests of evidence above. This process turns opinions into facts.

whether your opinions are any good?

whether someone's opinion is worth paying attention to?

whether "facts" are true or false?

When you have an important decision to make, how do you think it through?

What does it take to convince you?

What Is An Argument?

One kind of argument, we hear every day. Often spoken rather than written, it is seldom rational or logical. It leads to frustration and shouting or worse.

The other kind of argument occurs when people want to change each other’s minds or actions. We often try to persuade others to buy an idea or to behave in a certain way. Salespeople, politicians, customers, teachers, and bosses try to sell us ideas or influence our behavior.

Whether spoken or written, wise or unwise, true or false, that kind of argument is a group of statements. Many of those statements blow smoke, sprinkle fairy dust, and spread ignorance. They may entertain or distract and are often quite effective at that.

To think clearly, we must separate those statements from statements that matter. Statements that matter function three ways, as assertion, as evidence, and as explanation.

statements that matter

Others explain how the evidence proves the truth or falsity of the assertions.

All the sentences in the body of your essay should be functioning in one (or more) of these three ways.

If you make a statement and you offer no other statements to back it up or support it, then it is not an argument–it’s just a statement or an assertion. Here's an example we should all be familiar with yet happened long enough ago that perhaps we can start to think clearly about it.

Is that a fact? How can I tell? As an assertion, it may or may not be true, but it is not an argument. To persuade me, you would add more statements that you intend to demonstrate the truth or falsity of the assertion.

Can you offer me a videotape of O.J.'s confession? A videotape of the murder? That would be the best support. A couple of eyewitnesses or survivors willing to testify would help. The murder weapon would cap it off nicely.

Without these, O.J. had room to plead not guilty and I have room to believe him. If you want to convince me of his guilt, that is, if you want to convince me of the truth of something I don't know, you will have to rely on circumstances and our common-sense tradition of reasoning. Let's flesh it out into a thesis statement.

thesis: O.J. killed Nicole and Ron because only he had the means, the opportunity, and a compelling motive. The blood drops prove that he was at the crime scene.

Some of the supporting facts, both prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed on. But enough of the facts were in dispute to make your job difficult. For starters, you need assertions in support of your thesis. Let's focus on the blood.

The blood in O.J.’s car, in his house, and on his socks and gloves came from Nicole and Ron while they were murdered.

To be convincing, your argument must go on to prove these supporting statements, these "facts." You must offer compelling evidence of their truth and you must explain that evidence. If both of these assertions are true, to what extent does that convince you of O.J.'s guilt?

final report, pt 2

document design

There is no one correct way. Large organizations use style manuals. While the MLA and APA are most common in higher education and its related research and journals, in the non-academic world, the most popular in the Chicago Manual.

Even at nearly 1,000 pages, The Chicago Manual of Style can't cover every detail. In this forum we interpret the Manual's recommendations and uncoil its intricacies.

Any style manual basically makes choices for you, recognizing the trade-offs, for the sake of consistency. For the purposes of ENG 110, consistency is more important. If you make a decision involving various trade-offs, then be consistent. For example, if you indent the first line of paragraphs, always indent the first line of paragraphs. If you don't indent paragraphs, never indent paragraphs.

In terms of document design, the major difference between essays and reports is spacing. Essays are continuous paragraphs. Reports break up the flow of paragraphs to make the information more understandable, accessible, and usable. I try to make the pages of this course web an example of breaking up the flow of paragraphs with bulleted lists, boxes, tables, photos, etc.

integration of visuals: lists, tables (compared lists), graphs and charts, and illustrations

modified: February 10, 2010
by Douglas Anderson
http://toLearn.net/eng110/essay.htm

essay 1
intro	hook, thesis statement, context, preview
body section 1 (see below)	topic statement, support, explanation, transitions
body section 2
body section 3, etc.
conclusion	postview, restatement of thesis, sense of closure

Essays

ENG 110 College Writing II - Spring 2010

Essay Structures