A. K. M. Adam
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Make the Structure of Your Paper Help the Reader Believe You

When we think about persuading people, we often think first (or "only") of the specific arguments we deploy. We call particular claims "persuasive," others "unconvincing," as though our ideas themselves did all the work of persuading people. This habit conceals the extent to which we influence our audiences by the way we put forward our arguments.

Some ways of setting out an argument tend to confuse or distract their audience; others tend to satisfy and impress their audience. Which do you want to try?

Microwave Summary of Structure

Or, think of a paper; think of a paragraph as that paper condensed into a compact form; think of a sentence as that paragraph, condensed even further. That ultra-condensed sentence should be pretty close to your thesis.

Any time you're stuck for more to say, look at each sentence of your paper. Have you established that sentence adequately? Is there an objection to which you should respond? Is there a comparison that would make your point more vivid? Has someone commented on the point you're proposing in a particularly noteworthy quotation? Have you neglected some good reason for our accepting your point?

Any time your argument is running longer than the time or space allotted, check to see whether there are any points in the paper you might make more economically. Can you trim a sentence from each paragraph without hobbling your argument?

An illustrative lesson: a very eminent scholar once asked me to edit a paper of his from seventy-five pages down to twenty pages. I was overwhelmed by this job; I had to cut more than two-thirds of what these brilliant man had written! In the end, I did the job by choosing one sentence from each paragraph, seeing how these sentences worked together, and choosing other sentences to give flesh to the now-skeletal essay. (I still only got it down to twenty-five pages.)

Helpful Sentence Structure

Sentences comes in all sorts of structures--thank heaven, since reading would be unutterably boring if every sentence had the same structure. At the same time, some sentences are easier to read than are others. If we want to cultivate the sympathy and approval of our audience, we ought to keep our audience's response in mind when we write.

An audience keeps track of a sentence most comfortably when we writers put the subject at the beginning of a sentence, the verb shortly thereafter, and any complement to the senence after the verb. Sometimes people call this "SVC structure."

Subject - Verb - Complement

Alonzo shouted his intemperate conclusion at Hermione.

Hermione responded with vituperative invective.

If you wrote only sentences with a simple SVC structure, you would drive your audience to distraction. If--contrariwise--you disregard the benefits of SVC structure and say, "If they can't understand what I'm saying, let them learn to pay closer attention!" then you may not blame me for the consequences. Deviate from SVC structure by all means, but get in the habit of checking your sentences to make sure that when you deviated from SVC structure, you didn't deviate from intelligible structure altogether!

Move from old & familiar to new & different

Another way to help your audience follow your argument along entails structuring your sentence with a point that you have already introduced to the audience, then move toward the unfamiliar dimension that you want to introduce. Sentences that begin with familiar material keep the audience on board when they come to the unanticipated arguments that your sentences propose. Think of it this way--if you throw the unfamiliar stuff at your audience right away, they may not stick with you to see how you suppose that the familiar information supports your conclusion.

We'll have more to say about sentence structure on the page about Keeping Things Moving.

Helpful Paragraph Structure

You can test your paragraph by asking yourself, "If I could only use one sentence of this paragraph, what would it be?" The sentence you choose articulates the work you want the paragraph to do; check to make sure that every sentence in the paragraph contributes to your arugment on behalf of the paragraph's thesis.

Many students hand in papers that seem as though they were divided into paragraphs by a process of typographical random distribution. Don't follow this wild-card process! Instead, start from the paragraph's thesis and compose your paragraph by collecting the points relevant to that thesis into an orderly argument.

The order for a paragraph should usually move from a problem, or an issue, to some resolution of that problem. The first sentence may pick up familiar information from the preceding paragraph and call your audience's attention to a way in which it might need further consideration. The middle sentences can develop that further-consideration. The last sentence can close the discussion of this particular problem by stating the point to which you've been steering the paragraph.

The next paragraph can then pick up a problem or issue from the ending-point of the last paragraph, and repeat the process until you're satisfied that you've made your point. Bingo--you're done.

Notice, by the way, that the paragraph develops from familiar to unfamiliar, from old information to new conclusion, in the same way that I suggested that a sentence should develop? This is not a coincidence.

Helpful Paper Structure

State your thesis clearly and explicitly early in the paper. If there were a single correct position for a thesis (and there isn't), that position would fall at the end of the first paragraph.

If you don't make your thesis clear early in the paper, you risk running into two sorts of difficulty. In the first instance, you may permit your audience to think that you're arguing Thesis A, whereas you thought you were arguing Thesis B. Under the circumstances, you'll understand if they think your argument is a dismal flop--after all, you didn't expect them to reach Thesis A at all. You don't even want them to reach Thesis A. But in this purely hypothetical example, you've lost the audience at the outset by not making your thesis unmistakably clear.

(This has happened to me, garnering me a low grade for a rather clever paper. The paper wasn't clever enough to make its thesis clear, though. My professor marked me down for making claims I didn't back up--but those weren't the claims I thought I was making, and I wouldn't have wanted to back them up. I shoulda just said straight out, "This is where the paper is going.")

The other way that your paper may go awry arises in connection with what film scholars call the "primacy effect." This refers to a tendency that audiences show; audiences tend to allow their first impression of a character or place (or argument) to cast all the later appearances of that character (or place or argument, or whatever) in the light of that first impression. If Violetta first appears as a playground bully, the audience will tend to view Violetta's later good deeds as hypocritical, or superficial--they already know that she's a bully. If, on the other hand, we first see Violetta as a generous, thoughtful figure, then find out that she was aplayground bully, we're liable to admire the way she's turned her life around; after all, we know that she's good.

If your audience's first impression of your paper suggests that thepaper is confusing, perhaps even confused, the audience will tend to interpret the rest of your paper on the basis of the initial confusion. If, on the other hand, you offer a clear, explicit thesis, you're liable to enjoy the benefit of the audience's appreciation.

For the same reason, you probably ought to put your strongest points up front. If you follow the common pattern that saves the best reason for last, you may succeed in convincing your audience that, on the whole, you have only a flimsy case for your argument.

When you get to the end of the paper, make sure that your essay doesn't just peter out, but ends with a genuine conclusion. We recognize a genuine conclusion when the paper's tone shifts from the particular arguments which make up the body of the paper to a general overview of the argument the paper has just made, and perhaps adds some implications of the thesis whichãwe assumeãthe author thinks she has just proved.

Wheew! That's a lot. Sorry to go on so long; I hope some of this is helpful.

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A K M Adam
E-Mail: akm-adam@nwu.edu