Trivialize or Transfer

For a year after earning my Master's degree, I taught dual enrollment at a high school. I taught introduction to Composition and Introduction to Literature, and because this was a small school and I was the dual enrollment English teacher, I had several students who took composition one trimester and literature the next. In my composition course, I taught citation and documentation. So, when I saw several of the same students in my literature class and I told them they needed to cite the stories, poems, and plays from the textbook when writing their essays, I assumed all would be well. After all, they had demonstrated to me they knew how to do so.

However...

On the first assignment, there was absolutely nothing to differentiate between my new students and old ones. Citations were routinely absent or incorrect, and even bizarrely formatted. I hoped this would be an issue quickly resolved with a brief lesson and reminder after the first essay, but this persisted the entire semester among all of my students, and I didn’t have time to divert from literature to teach citations. And it wasn't limited to citations. I saw students who in one class had improved and excelled, written excellent essays, fall into the doldrums in the next. Near the end of the school year, I asked one of the other English teachers (who retired that year – give you an idea how long he'd been around) if they taught citation. He rolled his eyes and his head and answered: “every year!”

In short, there should have been noticeable differences between the students I had had in composition and those who had not taken composition in my literature course. But there was none. Everything they had learned and practiced was gone.

I've even seen this phenomenon happen in class. I'll teach a topic or how to do something for an essay or assignment, see it implemented in one assignment, but when students should be reapplying these practices in later assignments, it's ignored. It was as if previous lessons and concepts were locked to a respective assignment without any application beyond the task for which they were taught.

Imagine teaching someone to drive. You teach them how best to brake at a traffic light. How much pressure to apply, when to start braking, how close to the light they need to come to a complete stop, so they make a safe, controlled stop. And then, when you tell them to park, they fly right through the parking stall, as if parking and stopping at a light somehow required two completely different operations.

This is the danger of trivializing our education, of seeing each bit of information as isolated and only useful within the context it was first taught and assuming each new context carries with it brand new rules and expectations. It's like saying, “I was tested on it, so what do I need it for?” when that same information will hold value in another context. It's like an architect ignoring every geometry lesson he's ever had, and a surgeon ignoring all of his biology.

Let me give an example both personal and professional. I have taught at five different universities and colleges. Each school has different standards and expectations. On my end, I have my education, training, and experience that prepared me to teach and adapt to new circumstances. Give me a set of expectations and requirements and I'll produce a curriculum to match it. However, if I took everything I already knew and set it aside and acted as if I needed a brand new set of information, I'd be an absolute pest to the rest of the faculty as I ask them things I should already know. They'd kick me to the curb as soon as they could find a replacement. Or just cancel the classes and get rid of me.

So don't confine your education. Don't leave what you learn in the classroom. Value it by practicing it, by looking for new ways to employ it, by experimenting with what you've learned. Transfer your knowledge from one area to another. And Don't trivialize it.

Dictionary Abuse

I'm going to be blunt here. Very rarely is it appropriate to open an essay with a definition.

I'm talking about essays where the author says something like, “Merriam-Webster defines (insert term here) as...”. These statements almost never provide relevant context for the issue at hand, and frankly do more harm than good to your own argument. A lot of the reasons we write or argue something is to better understand it, but much of the time when this strategy is employed, it oversimplifies the term being used and broadens the essay's content in the process, while also suggesting the author is not familiar enough with the term itself, and the extent of their research capabilities is looking up a word in a dictionary. Or it suggests you don’t trust your audience’s knowledge and capabilities.

I believe there are a few reasons why students do this:

• First, and most frighteningly, they're taught to do it.
• Second, it's an easy way to do “research” and add another source to a bibliography.
• Third establishes how a specific term is going to be used.
• Fourth, they've seen it done elsewhere, especially in published works, suggesting this is an established and acceptable practice. However, in these published cases, rarely is it as simple as just quoting a definition.

The first two reasons need little explaining. The third and fourth, however, do warrant some explanation.

Sometimes, an author is using a common term in an uncommon way that may not be the first thing their readers will think of. In these situations the essay's thesis relies on a very specific, potentially specialized, unconventional definition. The thing here is your standard dictionaries tend to give the more general, conventional answers, those most people will already be familiar with. This is where using specialized definitions and resources can, however, come in handy. Different disciplines will use the same and similar words in different ways, and if a piece is aimed at an audience who may not share that specialization, defining the term is appropriate. However, these cases are rarely just definitions: they warrant more explanation and examples to help the nonspecialized audience.

The fourth one is a special case, especially because these sometimes pull definitions from several dictionaries. The point of these essays is to point out the problems these definitions have. In these situations, the purpose in bringing definitions into the essay is not to simply define the term but to show how the definitions disagree or leave holes. This then centers the entire essay on the issue of defining the term. It brings definitions together not to say “here’s what this term means,” but to say, “this term isn’t that simple.” In such a case, once you reach the end of the essay, you should be able to look back at the definitions quoted and see how and why they are incomplete or inadequate.

If your use of dictionary or encyclopedia entries doesn't fall into one of these two situations, then it's very likely you're doing more harm than good. Unless you need to define a term in a specialized or unfamiliar way or you’re finding issues with definitions, it’s better to trust your reader to already be familiar with whatever term you’re using. This can be particularly true in student essays where terms and concepts students should be exploring in detail, deconstructing, or should be applying, are merely defined. It’s kind of like summarizing a story or an article rather than analyzing it.

When providing a definition, it better be needed: the definition needs to be unconventional or one worth calling into question. If you find a definition you agree with and expect your reader will also, and if, by the end of the essay, you still agree with the definition and your reader should as well, then you're just wasting time and space.

Why call it a “requirement”?

The university I attended had very specific requirements for completing a Bachelor's degree in English: I had to take so many credits and certain classes as prerequisites to others. Among them was to take three literary history courses, each addressing a different historical period. For the sake of discussion, let's call one of these time periods Medieval Literature, and let's say I didn't take a Medieval Literature course. It doesn't matter if I didn't want to take it or couldn’t fit it into my schedule: I just never took it. And so, graduation time comes along. I've met every other requirement designated by the English Department for a Bachelor's degree except this one. I have the other historical periods, the theory courses, the research methods courses, the seminars, my general education courses, and all of it totaling the required number of credit hours needed for graduation.

So I go to fill out my forms for graduation, and this missing course comes up. What's the degree-granting department going to do? In a complex system, I've missed only one requirement among many. Will they then ignore this discrepancy and give me the degree?

Nope.

Why not? It's just one class.

Simple. I didn't do what I needed to do to earn it.*

Let's move closer to home then: the classroom assignments.

Most every assignment description has a list of requirements and many classes have a clause in the course syllabus stating all requirements must be met for an assignment to be accepted (and, depending on the class, an option to revise and resubmit). 

In composition courses, like those I teach, these requirements usually include:

• Length (word or page count)
• Research (number of type of sources) 
• Genre (the type of writing)
• Documentation (MLA, typeface, formatting). 

Depending on the assignment, there will be other requirements, like regarding thesis or organization. These aren’t sphinx like riddles to be deciphered to understand the true nature of the assignment: they’re clear statements of what the minimum expectations are.

Most students meet these requirements without too much trouble. So I'm flabbergasted when I receive essays that clearly miss these important requirements, and yes, sometimes a student has a hard time with a prompt or a genre, but when the assignment description says “3 page minimum” and 2 pages are turned in, or “MLA Format” and submissions are in Calibri 11 with inch and a quarter margins, or “Parenthetic Citations” and there are no citations whatsoever, the only assumption is the student has not paid attention to the requirements.

Requirement means it has to be done. Having so many pages or to have the essay written in a certain genre aren't just recommendations: they're requirements. They therefore, by definition, must be completed in order for the piece to be accepted. So, when assignments submissions don't meet the requirements, especially in college, they get 0’s.

That may sound heartless, but in a class with as few as a dozen or as many as a few hundred other students who did meet the assignment requirements, accepting something that didn't meet the requirements when everyone else did cheapens the effort of those that followed instructions. To accept two pages when three were required is to say the work and effort of those who turned in three pages was wasted. For me to do this would be to make me a hypocrite, and I'm not about to compromise my morals on behalf of someone who didn't take the class as seriously as the rest.

In short: If you want a degree, take the required classes. If you want to pass those classes, then finish the assignments as required.

*If anyone's interested, I did take courses that covered medieval literature for my Bachelor's and Master's degrees.

Graduated Organization

Here are two lists of movies produced by director Alfred Hitchcock.

1. Psycho
2. North By Northwest
3. Rebecca
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. The Man Who Knew Too Much

1. North By Northwest
2. The Man Who Knew Too Much
3. Rebecca
4. Shadow of a Doubt
5. Psycho

Both lists have the same five movies on them, but are organized differently. It might be easy to assume one organizes them by release date (which is not the case), but what about the other? Either list could be entirely arbitrary, but that would leave them isolated when the goal of organization is to create unity and cohesion from one topic to another. It's even difficult to determine what relationship there is between the lists because some movies change position and others don't, while Psycho drops from the first to last.

Both lists are organized gradually, or by gradations: The first list is organized based on the aggregate user rating found on the Internet Movie Database (8.5, 8.4, 8.2, 8.0, 7.5), while the second list ranks them according to the AFI ranking of the lead actor appearing in the film (Cary Grant, 2; James Stewart 3; Laurence Olivier, 14; William Holden, 25; and Anthony Perkins who was not ranked).

Graduated Organization takes the elements in question and applies a criteria to them to create a relationship between the elements depending on the method applied. The methods are:

• General to Specific: Begins with basic, simple information easily understood and accepted by the audience, before moving to more complex information. Of course, the information addressed should be related to one another. In essence, this is developing ideas and making them more complex.
• Familiar to Unfamiliar: Even more reliant on audience, this focuses on how familiar, well known, or accepted the information is, and does not necessarily have anything to do with its complexity (a simple idea will likely be more familiar, but this will vary from case to case).
• Climactic: Considers the importance of the topics and addresses them accordingly: whatever is least important for your audience is addressed first, and each transition leads to a more significant topic until the most important is reached. By the time this climax is reached, its relationship to all other topics should be clear, as well as its importance.

While these seem simple enough, they can actually be complex because they tend to deal heavily with your audience's perception. While you should always consider your audience when writing, graduated methods, because they essentially rank your topics, need to take the audience into consideration: you want your audience to agree with your rankings, so you need to either frame your list in a way to be readily accepted by your audience, or adopt a perspective they will agree with. This is especially true because graduated methods are sometimes best used for introducing unfavorable or controversial issues gradually and by showing your audience what you're getting at isn't all that complex, nor difficult to believe or accept. Therefore, the theses in essays that employ graduated methods are more likely to be delayed.

What about placing the thesis early on? Doing so would invert the organization, changing them into Specific to General, Unfamiliar to Familiar, and Reverse Climactic. Technically, this is possible, and there may even be situations where a more direct, even shocking, approach might be useful. While there are instances where it is appropriate, and these methods can be inverted, doing so should be used with caution. It may be appealing to take this approach, but it should be handled with care because the most interesting parts of the essay are addressed early on.

The opposite problem is also a possibility: going too broad or vague. Each method ultimately points to a specific point, but gets there from some much less specific place. Because of this, it can be tempting to go too broad and general, in particular to fill space. The solution to this is audience: how far back does your audience need to be taken? The more familiar your audience is with your topic, the less distance you'll have to cover.

As for transitioning, it should identify the shift depending on the method. Climactic should indicate the move from less important to more important; General to Specific should indicate the information is becoming more specific; and familiar to unfamiliar, of course, will start with the more acceptable information. Without such transitions, the essay will appear disorganized because the relationship between the elements won't be clear, forcing the reader to wonder what the relationship is rather than focusing on the content of the essay, and all we really want to do in our writing is make sure our readers understand what we’re trying to say.

Sequential Organization

Consider the following sentence:

You woke up this morning, checked a message on your phone, and then went to the hospital for an appointment.

It's a basic narrative of largely unrelated events; now consider it slightly altered:

You were awakened by a message on your phone this morning informing you the time of your appointment had been moved up.

It's the same chain of events – wake up, message, hospital – but they are no longer unrelated. Each one depends on and impacts the other. Both of these represent different methods of Sequential organization (Chronological and Cause & Effect, respectively). Sequential methods of organization develop different relationships between the events in question and changes the way the narrative in question develops. The individual methods are:

• Chronological: The simplest method, and by extension, the weakest. All Chronological organization does is identify things happened in a certain order but does not identify any relationships outside of their sequence in time. The statement “I had cereal for breakfast and salad for lunch” is Chronological, but so is saying you ate green beans the day before an earthquake. Just because the event occur in sequence does not mean there is a relationship between them, or, in other words, correlation does not imply causation. While Chronological is a method of organization, there's almost always a better approach out there.
• Cause & Effect: Cause & Effect identifies the causal relationship between events. It fills in the gaps in Chronological by identifying and describing the relationship between the events. The events in question do not have to occur naturally, but can reflect the decisions we make based on our situations. Returning to the meals example, the statement “I had eggs for breakfast, and decided to have salad because it would have fewer carbs and calories,” now identifies a relationship between the two events, namely, nutritional content.
• Procedural: Rather than discuss what has happened or what will happen, Procedural gives direction and instruction: it says certain things have to be done in a specific order to reach a desired end. It therefore is not appropriate for events that naturally occur: Cause and Effect can occur naturally, regardless of our interaction. No matter what, your Ikea bed is not going to assemble itself.
• Problem to Solution: Problem to Solution seems straight forward: take time identifying and discussing a problem, and then follow it by discussing a possible solution. This simplicity, however, can be deceptive because it is easy to just divide an essay into two halves and call it good. When organizing with Problem to Solution, it is a good idea to consider what methods can be used in tandem to complement the broader Problem to Solution. A common approach is to use Cause & Effect in the Problem half, and Procedural in the Solution half.

As for Transitions, they need to reflect the fact the events are related in the way specified by the method. Merely saying “next”, “after”, or “and then” with nothing else only indicates two events occurred at different times and can suggest Cum Hoc or Post Hoc fallacies (i.e. suggesting a causal relationship where none exists). This is why Chronological alone can be weak: it doesn't naturally make these connections or relationships.

However, “and then” and “next” and “after” are not taboo: they just need to be used carefully, ideally in tandem with other words and phrases that complicate the meaning and identify the relationships in question. This means Sequential Organization is not just found in the order and transitions, but in the discussions of how the events are related: stepping outside of the events themselves to explain and explore just why the connections are logical and reasonable. A Cause & Effect piece should not just discuss the events, but should focus on the relationship, and you need more than a transition to do that. Similarly, a Procedural piece will need to not only specify the order, but make it clear why that order is important and what could happen in one were to deviate from it.

Comparative Organization

Comparative methods of organization will take an apple and an orange and will discuss how both of them are fruit, belonging to the same category, but they still have their distinct differences. In this regard, Comparative methods don't necessarily deal with superiority or inferiority, claims of judgment: merely that things share differences and similarities. This makes Comparative organization good for Definition level arguments and genres that aim for objectivity, like Literature Reviews.

The specific methods are as follows:

• Thematic: A thematic approach to organization can be harder than it appears. It involves developing or identifying a theme or concept related to your topic and using that theme to govern the organization. It isn't a matter of designating a unique theme for every paragraph, but having a strong theme to carry the reader from the beginning to the end. If you're writing something personal or open ended, it might be a good idea to experiment with Thematic. The more rigid the form, though, the less helpful it'll be.
• Classification: Classification can be considered Thematic on steroids. It involves identifying a common element and then grouping a lot of related things together based on this element. Classification is good to use in longer pieces because a longer piece will allow time to identify each point and explore it in detail before moving on to the next. A shorter piece attempting Classification will likely feature short, clipped paragraphs, introducing a lot of related ideas without much depth.
• Spatial: Spatial organization deals with where things lie in physical space. For example, if describing a classroom, you may see the desks, tables, chairs, walls, windows, etc., all at once, but you can't describe it all simultaneously: you have to pick one thing first and then move on to another. Because of this, Spatial organization rarely appears outside of creative writing (fiction and non-fiction) and discussions of visual arts: the shape and design of a sculpture, the composition of a painting or photograph, etc.
• Compare & Contrast: Compare & Contrast, whether Block or Point by Point, is similar to Classification as it groups related topics together, but it goes a step further than Classification by emphasizing more of the differences and why the similarities and differences are important. By emphasizing the differences and similarities and bringing together what Classification separates, we compare and contrast.

Transitions in Comparative methods can appear abrupt, even forced at times as you move from one point of discussion to another. On the other hand, trying to make every transition invisible can make the different point blur together to the point it gets hard to distinguish when you've switched from one to another.

The important thing to remember when transitioning with Comparative is forced transitions say is there's something else: words like “and” “another” “in addition” and “also” only signal there's something else for discussion. These words don't develop any deeper meaning between whatever it is they're combining. It is much better to rely on words that convey comparison, that indicate there is some kind of similarity or difference you want to emphasize.

For example, when you say, “on the other hand,” you indicate not just a change in topic, but a strong shift to a very different aspect of the same issue, whereas “and” or “also” suggest you could be moving to an entirely different topic: “I had popcorn and loved the movie” makes sense (however bland it is) by linking two virtually unrelated things. On the other hand, “I had popcorn; on the other hand, I loved the movie” makes no sense because there's nothing in this statement to link the topics of popcorn and the movie.

At its core, Comparative relies on the presence of similarities and differences. When we organize comparatively, we look for what is related just as much as where there are differences and we look for significance in these relations. Comparative, perhaps more than Sequential and Graduated, reminds us we use organization to create and govern meaning.

Thinking Thematically: A Method of Organization

When I addressed the different methods of organization, I defined “Thematic” as “organized by distinct topics or ideas” and I said little else on the matter.

At first, this makes it seem an easily manageable approach: an assortment of different topics and ideas, brought together in an essay. It seems easy, and this ease makes it appealing. However, it isn’t this simple. Every method of organization relies on having distinct topics or ideas because every paragraph and even groups of paragraphs should be distinct: a paragraph is a shift in topic or idea. Methods of Organization give us ways to structure and order the topics.

What, then, is Thematic organization?

Every other method organization gives you a way to distinguish each section or paragraph of an essay and a logical way to move from paragraph to paragraph. Graduated methods create hierarchies based on specificity, familiarity, or importance, while Sequential methods establish chronologies and trace ideas and concepts through time, and Comparative methods set the different topics in contrast to one another.

Thematic, however, gives a way to distinguish, but doesn’t give that logical progression.

Organizing Thematically involves using a theme appropriate for the essay as the governing mechanic to determine how everything is structured. The theme becomes the principle that logically brings the distinct topics together. This will then impact the topics themselves, with the theme running through the entire piece, impacting every decision you make. In other words, you need to find your own logic because the method itself doesn't supply it: it just reminds you that you need something to hang everything on, unlike the other methods of organization which give you the logic themselves.

It is possible for an essay to have multiple themes, just as fiction does, but to equate a theme with a paragraph is where the danger comes in. Too often disjointed, tangential essays are excused as being “thematic”, making Thematic Organization the refuge of the poorly organized: clusters of paragraphs placed together because they have to go somewhere, but without much attention given to why they are there. Most times a student proposes a Thematically organized essay or outline, they present either a disorganized mess or they haven't looked close enough to find a better way. Instead, themes should run across paragraphs, the length of broader sections and the essay as a whole, whether there’s only one theme or several. If you have a new organizational theme for every paragraph, then you don’t have an organized essay.

How then do we organize Thematically? Where are the examples? Because every use of Thematic organization will have a different theme, each will require a different approach and execution. The closest thing to such a general prescription for Thematic is to say every one will be different. Every combination of essay topic and organizational theme will yield a new situation, requiring its own organization.

Drafting Theses with the Six Journalistic Questions

In other posts, I've discussed the relationship between the 6JQ and theses. Basically, once you've identified your criteria with the 6JQ, you can use them to put together a thesis statement. Rather than go into detail about this concept here, I want to give a few examples, pulling from different posts, altered slightly. I'll be using different colors to distinguish between each criteria in the list and in its corresponding thesis.

From “Genre and Purposeful Theses”:

• Who: High school students, American authors with different cultural backgrounds
• What: Multi-cultural, American literature, The English Literary Canon
• When: High School years
• Where: American high school literature courses
• How: Studying multi-cultural literature
• Why: To gain a better understanding of other cultures

Thesis:

High school students who study literature by American authors from different cultures in their literature courses gain a better understanding and appreciation of the complexities.

Notice there can be overlap: “High school” applies to both Who and When. The same for “from different cultures,” just with the Who and How.

From the same post:

The local school district should use high school literature classes to improve young people’s understanding of different cultures by having students read books written by authors of different backgrounds, in addition to the English canon.

Here, the local school district is not colored, because, in this situation, it is not a “Who” or a “What”, but an audience.

And, another from the same post:

From my high school literature classes, I gained a greater understanding of different cultures  than I would have just by reading from the English canon.

From “Specificity and the 6 Journalistic Questions”:

• Who: The Irish
• What: Potatoes, Immigration, the Potato Blight
• When: 1840's & 50's
• Where: Ireland
• How: Potato Blight’s Spread
• Why: Monoculture

A potential thesis:

Reliance on monoculture in 1840's and 50's Ireland made it easy for the Potato Blight to wipe out crops, driving many Irish to immigrate.

A different thesis:

The Potato Blight in 1840's and 50's Ireland stemmed from monocultured crops, which made it easy for the Blight to spread.

In this situation, the ideas of the Blight spreading would be a “How” because it's dealing not just with the Blight itself, but how the Blight worked, and so would need to be added to the 6JQ criteria.

From “Quantity and Specificity: Getting a lot, and the most, out of the Six Journalistic questions”:

• Who: Bullied students
• What: Specific uniforms, business casual uniforms, bullying
• When: Last 15 years.
• Where: High schools in California
• How: Relationship of bullying to types of uniforms
• Why: Impact of uniforms on bullying

Thesis:

By looking at reports of bullying at high schools in California over the last 15 years, this essay will explore the impact different types of uniforms, such as specific uniforms traditionally worn by private and religious affiliated institutions; and more casual, open styles of uniforms, have had on bullying and bullied students.

Note some parts of this are not in the 6JQ, but rather explain how this potential essay would work. Remember how you're doing your project and the “How” in the 6JQ are different.

And, here at the end, a few pointers:

• If you need to expand your criteria based on the form the thesis takes, do so. Just keep track of both and make sure they line up so your thesis, and by extension the essay, don't get broad, vague, or tangential. In short, be flexible, but consistent.
• It is okay if one term or phrase covers multiple criteria.
• You do not need something in every criteria. If you find yourself forcing criteria into a thesis, it might be better to drop the criteria.
• Don't forget about Genre. While you can take most any set of criteria and use them for different genres, you can't force a genre to work with your criteria, only alter the criteria and thesis to fit the genre.
• The same can be said for Stasis: a Policy level Thesis will combine the criteria in a different way than a Value or Definition level thesis.

To wrap this up, I want to say that drafting theses is hard, but it doesn't have to be. All it is is summarizing your entire essay in a sentence or two, and with the Six Journalistic Questions, you can take this seemingly insurmountable task, and make it quite simple.

And there

Reasons and Processes: Identify How and Why in the Six Journalistic Questions

Four of the Six Journalistic Questions are straightforward. We identify people, places, times, concepts, objects, etc., but How and Why are more abstract. Sometimes students erroneously assume How and Why ask how they're going to research or write their essays, and why it's something worth writing about, but that gets away from the topic and into the writing of the essay. The Six Journalistic Questions are to help you focus on your topic, not the ins and outs of your process, and asking How and Why are integral to that.

At their core, How and Why ask about processes and reasons: How does something work, what goes into it to make it function, and Why does something work or happen, what's the causes of the issue, or even why is it an issue? So looking for the How and Why when drafting criteria asks about the underlying processes and reasons behind your topic. In this regard, they can be considered the most important of the six.

Here are some tips and recommendations for figuring out the How and Why.

What's the underlying issue? We tend to approach and deal with topics because there's some kind of issue with them, and asking How or Why requires digging deeper to think about it. It's what's at the core of your topic.

• Example: School bullying
• Why: Bullying causes physical and emotional trauma to children during important developmental years.
• How: Students who are bullied develop worse self esteem and trust issues, and perform worse in school and socially.

What do your criteria have to do with one another? Sometimes, answering How and Why means asking what everything else you've identified has to do with one another. This means there may be repetition, but you're not just reiterating the same thing: you're juxtaposing your criteria to figure out why it's significant to bring these criteria together.

• Example: Exercise for weight loss
• What: Weight loss; cardio vs. weight lifting
• When: Morning vs. afternoon
• How: The impacts different types of exercise have at different times of the day.
• While it doesn't explicitly state them, when the How says “different types of exercise” the What is implied, and the same for “morning vs. afternoon” and “different times of the day.

What's your perspective? The way you address the How and Why can shape your perspective on the topic and the rest of your criteria. The Who, What, When, and Where are just a collection of nouns you're bringing together, whereas the How and the Why help make them significant and related.

• Example: State Lotteries
• Why: (1) Helps fund education. (2) Winners usually end up worse off than they were before. (3) Promotes dangerous, wasteful gambling addictions.
• 1: This highlights a beneficial side of state run lotteries: their proceeds go to fund state schools.
• 2: This one takes a more negative approach to the lottery, targeting an unfortunate consequence associated with it. This doesn't condemn the lottery, but doesn't aggrandize it either.
• 3: This one takes a much more negative approach and outright condemns state lotteries.

It is possible to have more than one “Why” or “How.” In this situation, any combination of these could be used to consider different sides of the issue or try to find a reconciliation, rather than being one-sided on the issue.

Each of these examples can seem either straightforward, too simple, or obvious based on the topic. The thing is, there's nothing wrong with that. The 6JQ are supposed to help you get to the point. If you can articulate aspects of your topic in fewer words and as succinctly as possible, the better off you'll be, and just because something is obvious to you doesn't mean it'll be obvious to everyone else. The 6JQ aren't just a brainstorming and drafting tool; they can be a useful tool to help you stay on track, but if you're vague or broad, or off base entirely, then they're not going to help.

Quantity and Specificity: Getting a lot, and the most, out of the Six Journalistic Questions

The Six Journalistic Questions are a useful tool to identify the criteria of an essay: the topics and ideas you're focusing on. However, it's easy to just plod through these six questions and throw down the first responses that come to mind. This approach can only go so far, and actually undermines its usefulness. It makes the 6JQ more of an annoyance, busy work, than a useful tool.

How do you get more out of them? Simple: identify more criteria. Don't just write something down. Write everything down.

For example, for an essay about school uniforms. It would be easy to simply shoot out something like this:

• Who: Students
• What: Uniforms
• Where: America
• When: Now
• Why: Uniforms don't do any good.
• How: Requiring students to wear uniforms

There's an essay in there, but it's not a good one. The problem is every term here is vague, which defeats the purpose of using the 6JQ: this doesn't get any more specific or narrow down the topic. For example, when I was in middle school, we had “uniforms”, but it was basically a dress code mandating business casual attire: slacks, dress and a polo shirts, and girls could wear skirts. I have a friend who went to catholic school and described her uniforms as black tartan skirts and jumpers, with navy blue trousers and sweaters over white polo shirts. If we thought our business casual was bad, my friend's uniforms would have been torturous. Both of these are “uniforms”, but very different uniforms.

The solution to vague criteria is to move beyond the first responses and put down every possible response. This means taking those quick responses and breaking them down into as many variations as possible.

So let's break this down. First, Who: what types of students are you concerned about? Are there other people involved in this issue? What: What types of uniforms? What: other issues can uniforms impact? When: Specific grades or ages? Or are you looking at the history of school uniforms in the 1960's and 70's? And then there's Where: saying “America” is almost as bad as saying “Everyone,” and should either be dropped or made more specific: is this an issue to be addressed on a state level, city, district, or school? Or is this an issue for private schools?

Just by asking more direct questions and breaking down the 6JQ, you can turn the broad and vague criteria into a series of specific criteria:

• Who: Students – Elementary, middle, high school, private school, problem students, bullied students, bullies, bystanders of bullying, student-athletes, non-athletes. Parents – of any of the aforementioned. Administrators – teachers, principals, district administrators.
• What: Uniforms: business casual uniforms vs. specific uniforms; team uniforms; cost and availability. Student performance and behavior: bullying, grades, classroom disruptions, fights, cliques. School programs: athletics, clubs. Student performance, grades; classroom disruptions.
• Where: America – State level, city level, school district, individual schools, private schools, religious schools.
• When: Last 10 years; last 20 years; the 1990's, 1970-1990, etc.
• Why: Bad: Uniforms are uncomfortable; limit individuality and creativity; increase expenses for students; doesn't eliminate social issues like bullying. Still highlights class differences. Good: cut down on bad behavior, improved grades and student performance.
• How: Requiring students wear uniforms; allowing exceptions; allowing “casual/uniform-free days”.

These are just some criteria that stem from the issue of school uniforms. Given enough time and space, this could just go on and on. The important thing is everything on this list and everything that could be put on it can relate back to school uniforms. This means to simply say “I'm writing about school uniforms” it implies all of that and more.

The next step is to cut back to just a few criteria. Rather than finding broad terms to encompass a few terms at once (this would be undoing everything you just did), stick with the specific criteria and omit everything else. For example:

• Who: Bullied students
• What: Specific uniforms, business casual uniforms
• Where: High schools in California
• When: Last 15 years.
• Why: Impact of uniforms on bullying
• How: Relationship of bullying to types of uniforms

This then makes the 6JQ not just a matter of what you're going to write about but what you aren't. Once you've identified a few dozen potential criteria, you can focus on just a few, resulting in something like this, which looks at the relationship between bullying and types of uniforms in high school over the last 15 years across the state of California. The result is a streamlined set of criteria that is specific, which, when well handled, will result in an essay that is clear and direct. There's a lot of information it won't cover, but greater detail is preferable to broad information. This is much better than writing a treatise on everything related to school uniforms.

Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 5: Pathos

Several years ago, I attended a conference where a friend of mine, an aerospace engineer, was presenting. I attended his presentation, only to be completely lost after two minutes.

Does this mean my friend gave a bad presentation? Hardly. He tailored his presentation for people with similar backgrounds and interests, namely, other aerospace engineers. Not English majors. He could have changed his presentation – the delivery – so someone with a background in literature would be able to follow along, but English majors wouldn't care as much as his fellow engineers would.

This is Pathos: audience awareness, or how a message is tailored for an audience. It isn't enough to just produce information: it's necessary to consider where it's going and to fit it for that audience. For example, you'd probably describe Breaking Bad to your immediate friends differently than you would to your grandmother. Good Pathos requires you consider the interests, expertise, and backgrounds of your audience, no matter how broad or specific your audience is. If they're experts, then you'll be safe using specialized terminology and referencing other experts. If your audience are not experts, you'd need to simplify or approach it from whatever discipline they are knowledgeable in.

That having been said, Pathos is not the same as your audience, and it's dangerous to think of pathos as appealing to your audience's emotions (even though this is how it's frequently taught). First, Pathos is not your audience any more than Ethos is synonymous with author: rhetoric is not concerned with authors and audiences, but how authors and audiences are addressed and presented.

Second, emotions. Emotion is part of Pathos, but there are problems with equating the two. Identifying Pathos with emotions blurs the line between carefully writing for your audience and making Appeals to Emotion or Pity fallacies. Claiming Pathos is the audience's emotions or focusing exclusively on their emotions oversimplifies people to whatever they love, pity, or hate; and in turn either praising, bemoaning, or demonizing the issue so they agree with you, regardless of your message or its validity.

Meanwhile, many arguments and pieces of writing are carefully tailored for distinct audiences without relying on strong emotions. For example, textbooks. Textbooks for high school and introductory college courses tend to be more colorful, broken up into brief sections, provide definitions in margins and glossaries, and offer questions for discussions or assignments. However, a textbook for a more advanced class, like one used in a graduate course will feature fewer colors or images, if any, and may or may not feature a glossary. And that's just the design: the graduate level textbook will likely have fewer sections, no built-in assignments, and longer chapters, even longer paragraphs and sentences.

The reason for the difference is simple: an introductory textbook is written for students new to the field or taking a general education course. Rather than bog students down with thick, dense information, the authors instead aim for a design that's more appeasing to the eye and easier to understand. The graduate level textbook, however, is intended for students and scholars, people deeply committed to the field: they don't need to be wooed by bright colors and designs. These are the readers who voluntarily go to these books for the information, not out of obligation, so there's no need to soften it with colors, pictures, and designs, nor to simplify the concepts.

Pathos, therefore, is a matter of emotions, but not what topics or issues the audience likes or loathes, it’s presenting the information in a way they will like, to garner their attention and help them retain knowledge. Pathos is more than compelling anecdotes or expressing outrage at a situation: it is the consideration of the language used throughout and how it is the best language for the intended audience.

Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 4: Logos

When dealing with Logos, you're dealing with the message in whatever is articulated. In short, you're asking whether or not an argument makes sense. But, what does it mean when something “makes sense”?

Looking for Logos requires looking at the main arguments of a piece and the information it presents to back it up: what should “make sense” is the rational connection between the premise and the conclusions. On another blog post, I used the example, if A and B, then C to explain Logos. Rewritten, it would be:

• Premise A:
• Premise B:
• Conclusion: 

And if your premises or conclusions can be challenged, then your logic fails, usually because you've made a logical fallacy. To explore this, I want to use the case of Spontaneous Generation, a now obsolete philosophy that held that organisms arose spontaneously from unrelated organisms, and not from similar organisms. The classic example is the theory maggots spawned from rotting meat. Let's break this down logically:

• Premise: After time, meat will rot.
• Premise: As meat rots, maggots will appear on it.
• Conclusion: Maggots are generated by the process of meat rotting.

To a modern reader, this will seem illogical, but this was the prevailing theory from ancient Greece until Francesco Redi tested it. In his experiment, Redi placed meat in jars, some of which were sealed with gauze. After some time, the exposed meat had maggots on it, but the sealed meat had none. From this experiment, Redi didn't disprove the first premise, but he did show the second premise is not as simple as it seems, causing him to doubt the conclusion and to theorize that something else must cause the maggots to appear.

For a biologist like Redi, “something else” isn't a good place to end, especially when challenging a premise that dates back to Aristotle. His theory then became the premise for the next phase of his experiment:

• Premise: Something must have access to and be attracted to the meat that generates the maggots.
• Premise: Flies can be observed around the rotting meat.
• Premise: Flies cannot access the meat in the sealed containers.
• Conclusion: Maggots appear after flies have access to rotting meat.

This then raises the question of what flies have to do with the meat and with the maggots. It could have been that maggots generated spontaneously from rotting meat when flies were nearby, or the flies bring the maggots, potentially disproving spontaneous generation. To test this, Redi placed some dead flies and maggots in one sealed jar with meat, and some living flies in another. After time, there were maggots on the meat in the jar with the flies, but none in the other:

• Premise: Maggots appear to generate after flies have access to rotting meat.
• Premise: The combination of dead flies and meat does not generate maggots.
• Premise: The combination of living flies and meat does generate maggots.
• Conclusion: It is not enough for flies and rotting meat, as base matter, to be in proximity to generate maggots.
• Conclusion: Maggots come from living flies.

Redi continued his experiments, catching some maggots and discovered they metamorphosed into flies, so maggots were just young flies left behind by flies eating the rotten meat, as opposed to generating from the raw meat or some other combination. This prompted Redi to conclude “omne vivum ex vivio” or, “all life comes from life.”

All of this is long example of how logic, Logos is a matter of presenting your conclusions alongside the process through which you came to them. Redi's example is one of scientific experimentation, but the same concept applies in any discourse: look for the evidence, combine it, and see what happens. The important thing to bear in mind is being logical requires critical thinking and analysis: such as not stopping with the first experiment, but modifying it as you look for an answer.

Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 3: Ethos

I want to tell you about a movie called North. You may not have heard of this movie, but it is famous for two reasons: it's the first film appearance of Scarlett Johansson, and Roger Ebert condemned it as “one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences I've had at the movies. ...I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it.” On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 15% rotten rating, and an audience score of 27% of users liking it.

Now let me tell you of another movie, one you're much more likely to have heard of: The Princess Bride. Released in 1987, it has enjoyed a long, popular existence, becoming something between a classic and a cult classic. People seem to either enjoy it or love it. It's funny, warm, and at the same time, a romantic fantasy with an enjoyable cast. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a critic's rating of 97% Fresh, and an audience score of 95% of users liking it. What's not to love?

So, here we have two films: one doomed to obscurity and mediocrity, the other, one almost universally enjoyed, if not adored. And guess what? They both had the same director.

That's right, Rob Reiner directed these two movies.

I bring up this example to address a common misconception with rhetorical appeal Ethos, or Authority. Often times people think Ethos refers to the authority of the author, but it's not as simple: Ethos refers to how a text presents itself, and its author in an authoritative manner. In other words, it's how the author, in their writing shows they are an authority.

Reiner's North and The Princess Bride show us that good people do bad work. Ebert said North was “not [made] by a bad filmmaker, and must represent some sort of lapse from which Reiner will recover”. Be that as it may, Reiner’s other successes don’t excuse a bad film just as a bad film does not ruin his reputation or ability.

However, we still look for and care about authority. Ethos doesn’t mean we refuse to acknowledge author, or ourselves as authors, but rather look at how the authors appear through their work. Ethos is not the author: it is the author presenting themselves. Verifying or applying any rhetorical appeal means taking a close look at how a piece is written or constructed. This means Ethos is demonstrated primarily by how an author executes their craft, from their own use of and familiarity with available research on the topic, how expertly they develop their argument, to their use of proper grammar and style, to name a few.

Basically, anything in a text that makes you say “whoever made this really knows what they're doing” is Ethos. If someone really does know what they’re doing, then odds are, they’ll do a good job of it. Everyone makes mistakes, but you don’t want your work or your research to end up being the sub-par accidents of experts just as much as you don’t want to flaunt your own inexperience.

Using and implementing Ethos in our own writing is therefore a tricky, even precarious, matter, but ultimately asks: is this the best I can produce? Does this represent me and my abilities in the best way possible? A text, whether film, article, or book, should be able to stand on its own and if it stands on its own, we will be able to see the good decisions the author (or filmmaker) made in putting everything together. However, something lazily or haphazardly produced, filled with mistakes and errors in any way, no matter the author's reputation or past work, will have poor Ethos.

Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 2: Telos

Fair warning: this post mentions cannibalism and infanticide.

But first, I concluded the last post alluding to purpose and the topmost part the Rhetorical Arch, Telos.
Whenever we write, we fill it with purpose, whether it’s to earn a grade, to get something changed, or present information to the world: everything we do and write has a purpose and everything included in the writing should support that purpose. Anything that doesn’t help that purpose weakens it.

So back to cannibalism. Many have erroneously believed that Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay A Modest Proposal, or, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, does advocate cannibalism, and while it does discuss it, it's actually a satire: Swift uses cannibalism to discuss something else.

It would be fair to summarize the essay's thesis as “Commodify and cannibalize young Irish and we'll be better off” but that is NOT Swift's goal or purpose. Swift, who was Irish himself, wrote it as a scathing critique of the heartless way the British Empire was treating the poor in Ireland, and the numerous other illogical proposals to remedy problems the empire faced in dealing with the poor. He was tired of seeing people so callously dealt with and put it into drastic terms to shock people into a better understanding of just what they were doing: treating the Irish as subhuman; an issue to resolve, not people to help.

To break this issue down rhetorically would be to consider the Telos of Swift's essay, namely, his purpose or goal in writing it.

Writing for Telos requires keeping track of what you want to accomplish by producing whatever it is you're writing. For example, the writer of a love letter tries to win the recipient's affection, whereas a resume and cover letter display one's qualifications in the hope of gaining a job. When writing different forms, the writer should keep their purposes in mind; straying from them will cause awkward moments. Just imagine confusing the two: reminding your emotional crush of your career history, and including poetic displays of affection in a job application will jeopardize your chances in either situation, and therefore represents a failure in Telos.

Returning to the image of the Rhetorical Arch, Telos goes at the top of the arch: the keystone. In architecture, the keystone is a large stone designed to fit in the apex of the arch, making the arch self-supporting. Without the keystone, an arch must be propped up by other means, making the arch, well, useless. With an appropriately placed keystone in a well made arch any scaffolding needed to prop it up can be removed. 

Rhetoric works the same way: without a clear purpose or Telos, there's nothing to hold everything up and you'll have to hope everything just balances out and stays up.

Failure anywhere in the rhetoric can cause everything else to fall:

• Insufficient research and a poor display of authority on the topic? Failure in Ethos, making the entire argument and your premises questionable.
• The word choice and general style are too complicated (or too simple) for the audience? Failure in Pathos suggesting the argument itself is inappropriate for the audience, and therefore, poorly aimed.
• Logical fallacies and mistakes in reasoning? Failure in Logos, making the argument itself hard to follow and understand, regardless of your credentials or style.
• Addressing issues that aren't pertinent or resolve in a realistic time frame? Failure in Kairos, making the argument itself, no matter how well structured it is, unimportant.

Telos is your essay's purpose and therefore gives purpose to everything else in the essay. Swift’s A Modest Proposal shows us, through its use of satire and shocking subject matter, just one of many unique ways people can achieve their purpose, but no matter how you do it, remember: Telos keeps everything together just as everything else keeps it propped up.

Prop up that triangle with The Rhetorical Arch, Part 1: Kairos

The Rhetorical Triangle is a common representation of three rhetorical aspects identified by the Greek philosopher Aristotle: Ethos (Authority), Pathos (Audience Awareness), and Logos (Logic). These are universal: you always need authority for someone to listen, to tailor your words for your audience, and to make sure what you say makes sense. By paying attention to these you make sure your essays and arguments are well structured and make appropriate appeals. However, these appeals alone are limited: there are important things Rhetoric can do that aren't addressed by Ethos, Pathos, and Logos alone.

This is where the rhetorical appeals Kairos and Telos come in. Added to the original Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, we have 5 rhetorical appeals, and rather than going from Triangle to Pentagon, I prefer the image of an arch: Telos supported by Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and Kairos. 

Before explaining that and why Telos gets to sit on top, we need to discuss Kairos.

Kairos literally translates from Greek as “the opportune moment” and I like to think of it in terms of timeliness. Kairos asks us to consider the best time-frame for the argument. Not the timing within the argument, (the best place for a given paragraph or statement or quote), but the timing of the argument: the broader context asking what is the best time for the argument: why does an argument need to be made now, or at what time should it be made?

For example, let's say you're arguing over which sport team is better. When this argument happens will matter and will change the argument. If it's pre-season, the argument will involve speculation about the prospects of the other teams in the league, but if it's on the eve of a championship match, the argument will be more pertinent because of the pending match and won't involve the entire league, only relevant matches. But what if it's not during the season? At best, it would be poorly timed and awkward.

Here's another example. A fifteen year old is going to have much more luck arguing for driving lessons than an eleven year old because of the timing. The fifteen year old is much closer to legally driving, making it a more relevant issue, whereas the eleven year old is still a few years away, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the younger one to win this argument.

Kairos contextualizes. It reminds us we make our arguments at specific times and in tandem with outside influences, and to consider what makes this argument relevant for today. An argument, for example, about the use of crossbows would be out of place today, but in 1139 CE when Pope Innocent II reportedly banned the use of crossbows on Christians, it would have been much more pertinent. And looking to the future, Kairos shows that things need to be changed or done in a given time frame, at certain times for certain reasons, and not just “now” or “soon”. An argument could focus on how changes need to be made to a program, but that the changes need to be implemented over a series of weeks or months, or even that certain steps need to be fulfilled before others can be.

While Kairos does help round out our arguments, it isn't what tops the arch and gives it purpose: that's where Telos comes in.

More than Quaint Quotes: Source Assessment

Once, a student asked me how to cite a webpage for a research essay. The page in question was a collection of quotes, each one removed from its broader context. Quaint little quotes may seem useful, but they’re like buzzing flies in your house. Obnoxious and out of place. The student just wanted something fancy from someone important so they could meet the required number of sources. I've addressed this issue elsewhere, but I want to explore a different facet of it now: Source Assessment.

Source Assessment deals with how a source is useful in a larger project. It requires a researcher to go beyond “this is relevant” to “I will use this source to do this or for this purpose.” However, not all sources can be treated the same way. Just as you need to evaluate a source to determine its reliability, you need to consider the part each source will play in your research project. There are at least four different jobs each source can do for you.

Background

You have to start somewhere, and researching basic background information ultimately fulfills two purposes: it’s a way for you to make sure you know your field, and to show your reader that you do. Depending on your topic or your audience, you may need to take some time to address some of the basics in your field or a sub field if you are bringing several topics together. 

Grounds

It is one thing to understand the basics in the field, but it is another thing to demonstrate and suggest ways to apply specific information. Sources that work as Grounds meet this need: more specific information that ties closely to and supports your thesis. Grounds are therefore the closest information you can find to your own thesis. These will involve studies of closely related information or research you’ve used, the key concepts, theories, and studies that are the foundations to your study.

Backings

Backings exist in a weird place, and can sometimes be sources that don't at first seem too relevant to your own topic. Backings, however, serve the important role of supporting your logic. In the same way Grounds relate to and support your thesis, Backings support the internal logic of your argument, and are therefore usually broader in their scope than your Grounds. In choosing sources as Backings, you need to think about the decisions you’re making as part of your argument and what research you can find to support them. In that regard, Backings are sources we sometimes find later, whereas the others are some of the first sources we should find.

Rebuttals

Also known as counterarguments, rebuttals offer opposing viewpoints to your own. While simply ignoring or dismissing rebuttals is an attractive idea, it's better to acknowledge, address, and, most importantly, resolve conflicts. Researching potential rebuttals is therefore a good way to strengthen your argument. By extension, additional sources can be used to either counter rebuttals or adjust your own argument to accommodate them.

In summary:

• Background Information gives information about your field.
• Grounds gives your individual argument a foundation (no pun intended, at least on my part).
• Backings basically say “It worked for them: it should therefore work for me.”
• Rebuttals offer opposing viewpoints to your own.

Overall, Source Assessment is vital because it helps you get past the quaint quotes problem: simply digging through a source for something that sounds good. It’s important to really think about the information a source has and consider how you can use it. When you're researching, don't just ask if you understand the information or if the piece is reliable, but ask how it contributes to your argument?

To see how these different types of source uses fit in a broader schematic, check out the Toulmin Method.

Note: The blog post is an updated version of the post “How will you use it? Evaluating Research Sources” posted February 10, 2015.

Audience Research

One purpose of research is to replace our assumptions with reliable facts. Sometimes, the research confirms our assumptions: other times, research proves us wrong. Regardless, properly done research leaves people with better information than when they started.

So once you have your information, what’s the best way to present it? That depends on your audience, and sometimes, researching your audience is just as important as researching your topic.

Unfortunately, we rarely take the time to understand just who it is we're writing to; we're much more concerned with our topics and arguments – what we're writing about – to stop and take a good look at whom we're writing to. This leads to making important decisions about how we write – our use of Pathos – based on unfounded assumptions. Therefore, just as we research our topics, we should research our audiences.

Researching an audience requires different methods and sources, frequently ones we’re unfamiliar with: article databases, reference books, and scholarly publications are about things not people or groups. The important thing is our research tells us worthwhile information about our audience. To do so, it is helpful to look for the following types of sources:

• Biographies and profiles: This is the first place to go. Profiles of your audience will give basic information about them, and more importantly some of their duties and responsibilities as well. It can be easy to dismiss these because they can be simple, but they are often invaluable in knowing where to go for more research.
• Publications by the audience: Publications by your audience can give an in-depth look at their stance on specific issues. It gives an opportunity to see how they view a situation: a glimpse at how they think and operate. There can be some risk here, as people normally want to present themselves, their ideas and conclusions in the best light.
• Publications about the audience: Important people and groups are often talked about by others, for good and bad. By investigating these conversations, you can get a better perspective of your audience. However, just as a person may try to put themselves in the best light, others may do the same, or even try to tear them down, so these sources should be carefully evaluated.
• Affiliated organizations: This is an interesting one. Most research involves going more specific, but this involves going broader and looking at what duties or responsibilities your audience has based on what organizations they belong to. It's worthwhile to consider this information because your audience may have to operate according to the regulations of these groups, or just being part of a group can influence their decisions.
• Demographic information: Researching information about the demographics your audience belongs to. For example, if they’re a teacher, what does your research tell you about teachers in general? While this kind of information can be useful, it is the broadest and can be the least helpful. This is not to say demographic information isn't reliable, but it's possible your audience doesn't fit the mold and can lead to oversimplifying a complex individual or group based on information describing entire sections of people. If you’re using demographic information, be sure to include other types of sources, ensuring you recognize your audience as an individual, rather than running the risk of stereotyping.

This is ultimately an issue of Pathos. In order to be aware of how your audience thinks and acts, you need to look at how they have acted and presented their thoughts. With this research in hand, you can make reasonably sound judgments about how best to write. Your audience ceases to be a name or an address, and becomes an active, living person or group, capable of making decisions and influencing others. Once you realize this, you're not just producing words, but producing them with the purpose of influencing someone else. In short, if you want your words to be powerful, you have to understand where they're going.

The Stasis Model, Part 1: Different Types of Claims

Consider these statements:

• It is snowing outside.
• Snow is white, cold, and falls from clouds under the right conditions.
• It is snowing really bad.
• We should dig the car out of the snow.

Each of these statements says something about snow, but each one says something different about it, and in doing so, makes different types of claims. When doing more serious writing or research, types of claims convey different information and refer to the stances we take on issues and topics. The Stasis Model is a way to help us know what kinds of claims we’re making and their relationship to one another by identifying four different types of claims. They are:

• Fact: Claims about the existence of something.
• Definition: Claims about the traits, characteristics, and attributes of something.
• Value: Claims about the superiority or inferiority of something.
• Policy: Claims about the action to be taken about something.

You can identify the type of claim something is by asking the following questions:

• Does it exist? Is it a thing?
• What's it like?
• How good/bad/important/unimportant/useful/useless/etc. is it?
• What should be done about/because of it?

So let’s apply these questions to the above claims:

Fact Claim: It is snowing outside.

• Does snow exist? Yes, and for the sake of discussion, let's say there is in fact snow outside, so still yes. Fact claims almost always boil down to either “yes it is” or “no it isn't”. If there was no snow outside, the claim would be false, because there's no snow outside. If the claim was “snow doesn’t exist”, it would still be a Fact claim, and false.
• This does not deal with what snow is like (Definition) or the severity of the snow (Value).

Definition Claim: Snow is white, cold, and falls from clouds under the right conditions.

• What is snow like? Even though the description is vague, it's accurate because these are some of snow’s attributes. Just because it doesn't describe the geometric patterns snow forms, the chemical composition, etc., does not make it an inaccurate description or any other type of claim.
• Fact claims just say whether or not something is. Definition goes into more detail to describe whatever it is. This doesn’t deal with the quality of the snow, just what snow is like.

Value Claim: It is snowing really bad.

• How good is the snow? Apparently, it's bad. This implies degrees of quality: good or bad, better or worse, etc. In our example, the snow is bad (snow that decreases visibility, takes out power, etc) as opposed to snow that is good (creates a snow pack for farmers, good skiing and snowboarding conditions, etc).
• Value claims require Definition and Fact claims; you can't claim snow is good or bad if you don't know what snow is, and you'd have to define just what constitutes good or bad snow.

Policy Claim: We should dig the car out of the snow.

• What should be done about the snow? This goes beyond describing something or judging its quality. Policy addresses the action that should be taken. In this situation, it's digging the car out of the snow.
• We can arrive at this claim because of the corresponding Value claim the snow is “really bad”. Once we determine the Value of something we can act based on the Value we claim it to have. If it's a good or important thing, we should promote, protect, and enable it. If it's a bad thing, we should deter and prevent it.

The Stasis Model gives us tools to better understand and break down our arguments by helping trace our ideas and make sure we understand them. We like to argue Policy and Value all the time, but we can't properly make these claims without understanding the Definition or even the Fact levels of the issue we’re making claims about.

Forced Transitions

Ever been talking with someone and halfway through whatever you’re saying, you remember something else that’s important to the discussion? In conversation, it’s better to interject this point and explain its relevance than to fumble around it, So we stop abruptly and add whatever important detail we need to. It’s awkward and slows the discussion, but we can’t go back and change the conversation to make it fit better.

However, we can go back and make changes in writing. We work to make the final version appear organic, and we’re responsible for fine tuning, revising, and editing to clarify our arguments and eliminate awkward moments. As writers we take the time to develop and maintain a consistent, logical flow, eliminating inelegant breaks to get everything in. One way to do this is through the careful use of transitions.

A transition is a logical move from one topic to another, usually showing up at the beginning or end of a paragraph (where the big shifts in topic happen). Best case scenario, each paragraph will sit side by side in a logical progression, each developing ideas and concepts explored previously. With a strong logical progression, the transitions should occur naturally, resolving whatever issues were presented while moving others along to be addressed in more detail in the next paragraph.

And then there are forced transitions.

This is when paragraphs begin with words like “and”, “another”, and “also” instead of relying on the logical formation of ideas to make the shift. By themselves these are not bad words: they are useful for joining items in lists or signaling additional information, but they do not work for starting paragraphs. They bring the transition to the reader’s attention. It stands and shouts, “I’m going to talk about something else now!”

It can be easy to see how these might be considered good transitions: they indicate a change in topic after all. However, essay format has its own tools to do this, namely, new lines ( with the next line starting with indentations or a blank line between the two). These are to paragraphs what periods are to sentences: periods signal the end of an idea expressed and developed inside its sentence. 

Paragraphs end with a period and with the line, creating a stronger break and a stronger shift in format. It’s smooth and natural, and we’re trained to understand this is how paragraphs work; it is a simple, unobtrusive way to shift ideas. With paragraph structure as a guide, we can easily read from one paragraph to another, the message of “new topic” coming easily without any distracting words getting in the way or unnecessarily complicating it.

Placing a period and hitting enter isn’t enough though: that makes a new paragraph, but it doesn’t preserve the logical flow of ideas. Instead, it’s best to consider the purpose or function of the paragraph in relationship to those around it. In short, there should be a reason for each paragraph to be wherever it is.

Sometimes, I’ll be looking at a draft with a student and I’ll ask why a given paragraph is wherever it is, and there’s no answer because there isn’t a reason for it to be there. If there was a good reason, it would reflect in how the alignment of paragraphs clarifies the ideas and develops one into the other. These problem paragraphs tend to have forced transitions: paragraphs that start with with statements like “Also, it is important to…” or “Another related issue is…” which just derail the argument.

All in all, forced transitions are a symptom of a much larger problem. As I said above, there’s nothing wrong with these words: it’s just they can be used at inappropriate times to compensate for insufficiencies elsewhere in the essay. So, if you catch yourself using forced transitions, take a good look at the paragraph in question and ask yourself what it’s contributing to the essay as a whole. You may write a few new sentences to better show the transition. You may find a better place for it. You may find the essay is better off without it. Either way, the essay will be improved and logic maintained.

Move on to Policy

Imagine looking at what’s playing at a movie theater with some friends. You have a friendly discussion about which movie is worth seeing, discussing the different styles of different directors and actors, maybe even deriding some of the movies and questioning whether or not some of the worst ones can really be called “movies”. Within this discussion, you and your friends will have hit on the first 3 levels of Stasis:

• Fact: Whether or not what’s playing at the theaters can really be called “movies.”
• Definition: Discussing actor and director style.
• Value: Which movie is the best or worth seeing.

And then none of you go see the movie.

This would mean the discussion never rose to Policy because no action was taken: the discussion ended at Value, merely deciding which is best. While there’s nothing wrong with having Fact, Definition, or Value level arguments, there’s only so much these arguments can do. Because they’re not Policy arguments, by definition, very little or nothing at all directly happens because of them.

Policy deals with what to do. Fact, Definition, and Value deal with what or how something is. It's fairly easy to argue these points because we can easily pick them up and leave them behind. Think about an art exhibition:

• Fact: Do I consider what is being exhibited art?
• Definition: What makes it art or not art? Just what is art?
• Value: Is it good art? Which pieces are better or more important?

And these are arguments you could easily have with anyone: friends, family, curators, artists, and even complete strangers. Some discussions may become heated or deeply philosophical, but if they never go beyond Value, it is very easy to just go on as if nothing has happened.

This is where Policy comes in. A Policy level argument focuses on action and change, which requires more attention to audience, implementation, and even considering the repercussions of your actions.

For example, at the art gallery, you have a friendly argument with someone you met and you convince them of the transcendence of a certain piece. Congratulations on your Value level argument. This person then turns to you and asks you to sell them the artwork. But you're in the same position they're in: an observer who came to see the exhibit. If you collect this person's money for this artwork, you'll be guilty of fraud. Instead, you'd have to find out who can sell the artwork (studio or artist) and then purchase it. There could even be a competition for it: a museum could be vying for it, but you want it for your private collection: you have to convince the owner, who may be the studio or the artist but likely not both, that their work is better suited in your collection than in a museum (a Value level argument) so they should sell it to you (Policy level).

Ultimately, this is about recognizing that our decisions, even if they are purely abstract or philosophical, like what constitutes “art” or what art is superior, will reflect itself in our actions and we need to consider the implementation and consequences of those actions. You may decide Artwork A is better than Artwork B, but how could you buy Artwork A? And from there, what happens when you buy Artwork A? Or if you buy Artwork B? How will it impact your life, your home, your social standing? What will happen because other places, like the museum and by extension the general public, won't have access to it?

Policy level arguments require more attention to audience, implementation and repercussions and, whether implicitly or explicitly, involve Fact, Definition and Value level arguments. This is all because Policy focuses on bringing about action. Fact, Definition, and Value level arguments are merely Policy Level arguments waiting to be acted on.

Make more than noise and smoke: Audience Specificity

“Specific Audience” is a term I throw around. This terminology came after I asked students about their audiences and they answered with things like “parents”,“doctors, “teachers”, and “the government.”

I've addressed this elsewhere (in “Write for a specific, powerful audience”), which I will quote here:

Picking an audience varies from genre to genre and purpose to purpose. Unfortunately, students frequently default to “parents,” “teachers,” and (this one makes me want to break things) anything that starts with “people who...” The problem with these audiences is it’s difficult, if not impossible, to address them as a whole because there will be so many different groups within the larger body. Writing for them can mean relying on logical fallacies and broad assumptions that reflect your own bias more than your understanding of the demographic you're trying to write to.

So broad, vague, audiences while trying to write argumentatively, is just spinning your wheels: you'll make some noise and some smoke, but in the end, it'll dissipate and you won't go anywhere.

I think the issue stems from two sources. The first is how arbitrary the concept is in a lot of English education and the second is popular media. As much as teachers pound it in, audience rarely ascends beyond something to mention, especially when it is closely tied to genre in literature studies, with genres written to appeal to broad audiences for the sake of market appeal and sales. This leads me to popular media, which acts the same way. Basically, it's easy to say “people who've watched Star Wars” because, in American culture, if not worldwide, this demographic will be large.

Authors and directors thrive off of this appeal to a wider audience, but, in education, there's the underlying, frequently unstated, fact the teacher is the audience and whatever a student writes, they need to tailor it to their teacher.

As it turns out, paying careful attention to and even seriously researching your audience can help shape what you're writing and helps you to better understand your topic and its implications, which is why audience is especially important in argumentation and persuasion. In the same post as the above quoted paragraph, I also said:

[A] specific audience (one that has a formal name, whether it's an individual or an organizational body) is a far better option.

Sometimes I elaborate on this by asking whether or not the audience has a physical mailing address. If, for example, you were to write to “parents,” what address would you put on the envelope? It's one thing to write for parents saying they should do something, but it's another thing to write to, for example, a major publication that has a large audience consisting of parents who share your concerns and interests.

Allow me to elaborate:

Vague Audience	Specific Audience
Parents	Parenting magazines, websites, and blogs
Teachers	A specific school, a school district, a parent-teacher association, a state's board of education.
Doctors	A hospital or clinic, a medical association
Government	State legislature, a senator or congressperson, a state managed organization
Employers	The Better Business Burearu, a manager, supervisor, or owner of a business.

Note that saying something like “a school district” is still indistinct because every school district has different priorities and standards: your essay that may be gladly accepted by one would be vehemently rejected by another.

Basically, if your audience is vague, adjust it to a more specific audience that has direct influence over the issue you are concerned with. This may seem redundant but it is significantly more realistic because, outside of the classroom, this is how you would do it and because it forces you to evaluate your audience and tailor your writing to them.

So, in short, specify your audience.

Balanced Essays: Quantity, Quality, and Attention to Detail, Part 2

In my last post, I addressed the issue of Balance, how it is difficult to teach, but it is important to know because it promotes looking for the purpose. How then should you keep an eye out for it?

It’s ultimately a matter of purpose. Don’t ask yourself how long a paragraph needs to be and gauge that by an arbitrary standard; rather ask yourself how long the paragraph should be based on the kind of information it’s addressing and its purpose in the rest of the essay. For the Annotated Bibliography, the paragraphs summarize (or evaluate or assess). For the Five Paragraph Essay, each paragraph represents a different topic that needs just as much attention as the other ones. So it isn’t just balance in terms of words, but in terms of content and purpose.

There are no hard and fast rules for the purposes paragraphs have, so rather than providing guidelines, here are a few questions to ask yourself if you’re worried about balance:

What is this paragraph’s purpose in the essay? Take some time to understand the purpose the paragraph has in the essay as a whole, what information is says, and why it is important. If you can’t explain to yourself why you have a paragraph in your essay, then you need to do something about it. 

How much detail do I need here? The simple answer is however much you need to prove your point (the one in the topic sentence). However, because each paragraph will have a different purpose, the amount of detail and words can vary. There may be brief paragraphs amid longer ones so the author has time to stop and collect their ideas, summarize those complex ideas, or signal a shift in the essay.

Do I have other paragraphs with similar purposes? This is where the problem in Part 1 really comes up. You should be able to look at your essay and recognize when the different paragraphs have similar purposes (even if the material is different). If two paragraphs both address related and equally important topics, it doesn’t make sense for one to be significantly longer than others.

How do I approach each paragraph? This deals with style more than information. We adapt our writing styles to different purposes, so when reading for purpose, make sure you’re consistent in the style you use. There may be times to change styles in a piece of writing, but it, like the information it conveys, should reflect the purpose of the essay.

Balance is a matter of detail, information, style, and reading purposefully. Not length. And I’ll be honest: I like it that way. It may make it more difficult to teach it, but it requires closer attention to detail and critical thinking on the part of students.

Balanced Essays: Quantity, Quality, and Attention to Detail, Part 1

I want to start this post by saying that balance is an important thing, and yet I never see it addressed. Not in a composition classroom, textbook, conference, or meeting, and if I have, it's been ensconced with other topics as something incidental rather than essential. It's a concept I've stumbled across and, the more I think about it, the more I realize it's an important part of learning how to write.

So what is balance?

Simply, it's the attention a writer gives their material. And yes, I'm being intentionally vague when I say “their material”.

Let's consider it in the context of a 5 Paragraph Essay, about 1000 words long, no tangents, and each paragraph addresses its own specific, related topic. The expectation is each paragraph averages about 200 words. But let's say this essay's paragraphs are, respectively, 200, 400, 150, 100, and 150 words. The enormity of the second paragraph in comparison to those that follow makes it stand out. If it's a decent paragraph, it will identify its topic and then explore it in detail. This is all good, but the other paragraphs being a about a third or fourth in length will pale in comparison. They may be well written paragraphs, but their brevity suggests a few things. The author cared much more about one topic than the others, and these other topics were not addressed to the same extent. This can weaken the overall essay, no matter how good the longer paragraph was.

The solution may or may not be to simply make the other paragraphs three or four times as long: the issue would be if the author can or needs to make these paragraphs as detailed as the first one. If they find the first topic much more interesting than the rest, and the others are there to fill space, then they may be able to produce more words, but the writing won't be as strong. The solution may be scrap the other paragraphs and break the long one into more specific topics.

A great example of this is on annotated bibliographies. I will see a long, almost lyrical summary of a source followed by a few haphazard sentences of evaluation. This is not a reflection on the source but on the author's attention to the sources: the better summary shows the author paid careful attention to one source, but not to the rest of their research. 

Issues of Balance are more prevalent in heavily structured forms, like annotated bibliographies and rogerian arguments (for example: a few sentences are spent on the opposition and a few paragraphs on the author's stance), so I try to emphasize it more when teaching these forms. It's easier to point to the length or number of paragraphs and show how and why the longer and shorter ones, generally, have more detail and show the author was more careful and attentive to one more than another.

However, length is only a superficial indication. Some paragraphs need more detail and attention and will therefore be longer. Others may just need a few sentences to get their job done. The real issue is how the paragraph is written, which is why I used the 5 paragraph essay in my earlier example: each body paragraph has basically the same purpose, so each should have about the same amount of detail and attention, which will likely reflect in their all being close enough in length that none appears significantly longer or shorter than another. You need to read your own writing purposefully: what purpose does each section and paragraph have does it have the detail needed to meet that purpose?

Looking beyond the word count and thinking about purpose and function is important, and I think that focusing on Balance is a good way to teach and emphasize this kind of reading. It may be hard to quantify, require a fair amount of specification, and vary from situation to situation, making it hard to teach, but that’s no reason not to. The overall lesson is to ask yourself what the purpose of the paragraph is and if it is getting the attention and detail it deserves.