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.

Why in that order? Methods of Organization

Let’s say you have bad news to pass on to someone. What approach do you take? Do you blurt out the bad news and then run? Do you give a letter and then run? Or do you scuttle up whatever good news you have in order to cushion the blow? Do you consider your timing, delivery, and what other information you have to mitigate the damage?

Welcome to Organization, the simple art of determining what information goes where.

Unfortunately, it sometimes seems like organizing an essay is little more than Paragraphs go here! In all honesty, I blame the 5 Paragraph Essay and the teaching of Transitions. The 5 paragraph essay because it can promote the idea that order doesn't matter: so long as there are three paragraphs addressing the overall topic of the essay, all is well. And Transitions because it takes organization from a significant part of essay writing and turns it into sentences that begin and end paragraphs forced to resemble one another.

Reducing organization to having transitions is kind of like saying there's no difference between a Main Coon, a Sphynx cat, and a Chartreux cat because each one was put in the same funny hat (thank you internet). Each has distinct traits and for accuracy should be recognized individually, as opposed to being just cats in funny hats.

Organization is quite complex. It can be as instrumental in conveying information than any other aspect in a piece of writing because it determines the order the information is presented. It is not enough for information to be there, but knowing where and how to present information influences how later information will be received. Once information is presented, it influences the way other information will be received: how a piece is organized sends messages.

The next step is to make sure your organization sends the right message. For this, I turn to a number of different Methods of Organization. Each method has its own purpose and in turn, conveys a specific message about the information. Not only is it helpful in using these to figure out the order of the paragraphs, but it helps make those pesky transitions easier to write and more fluid because it gives the order purpose.

The methods themselves can be divided into three groups: Sequential, Graduated, and Comparative.

The first, Sequential, deals with the relationship of topics in time:

• Chronological: Organizing events in the order they occurred without considering connections between them.
• Cause and effect: Identifies how one event or situation leads to another.
• Procedural: Identifies specific action to be taken in a specific order.
• Problem to Solution: Explores an issue in detail before exploring ways to resolve it.

The next group is Graduated and deals with information presented in scales from more important to less important, more detailed to less detailed, etc:

• General to Specific: Begins with basic ideas and then explores them in greater detail.
• Familiar to Unfamiliar: Introduces basic, acceptable information before introducing new or controversial topics.
• Climactic: Starts out with simple topics and leads to the most important or exciting detail or information.

Each form of Graduated organization can be reversed. For example, a piece can start out specific and then become more general, etc.

The last group is Comparative and deals with identifying similarities and differences across and between topics:

• Thematic: Organized by distinct topics or ideas.
• Classification: Groups related topics based on similarities.
• Spatial: Identifies the relationship between physical properties.
• Block Compare & Contrast: Explain all of the aspects of one topic before another.
• Point by Point Compare & Contrast: Alternate between specific aspects of two or more topics.

Picking a method of organization can depend on the form and genre of the essay, and its audience, usually dictates what methods are appropriate. There are even situations where an essay will need multiple forms of organization at different times. When considering what methods to use, think of the kind of information you're dealing with. From there, it becomes easier to structure an essay and move from paragraph to paragraph because the form of the essay has a purpose, and transitions become easier to write. 

I like to say that every paragraph has two purposes. The first is to prepare the reader for the next paragraph. The second is to prepare the reader for the rest of the essay. Determining and using methods of organization just helps you figure where and why each paragraph goes where it does.

Introduction...or exposition?

I think some writers feel a need to introduce their subject matter when introducing their essay, to give exposition, which is basically providing background information. This issue shows itself in two major forms: in the introduction, and as the body of an essay.

Essays with expository introductions are when an author, rather than using their Six Journalistic Question criteria to guide them, insists on giving a broad background on the topic, referencing important figures, events, and developments, few, if any, of which will be explored later in the essay. A sentence here or there is bad enough, but the entire introduction being commandeered for the sake of exposition makes it an introduction to the subject and not an introduction to the essay. I think this issue stems from a misunderstanding about what an introduction is for. Introductions don't introduce the whole subject matter to the reader, just the specific topics the essay is focusing on.

You resolve this by taking audience into consideration. First, does your audience need the exposition? An expert in the field wouldn't. A teacher might ask for some exposition, though. If there has not been a request (or requirement) for exposition and if you can reasonably assume your audience will be familiar with the topic, then no exposition. If the situation does call for exposition, keep it out of the introduction. This can create a false sense of the essay being about the broad history of the subject itself.

Expository essays are worse. This is when the exposition is the body of an essay. Note that I didn't say in the body of the essay, I said is the body of the essay. I have read essays that have an interesting and engaging introduction and thesis, only to be met with stifling exposition that ends in time for the conclusion, usually addressing topics new to the essay. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page of it. I'm reading a different essay than I was led to believe I'd be reading. Than the introduction promised me I'd be reading.

I can't be as generous with this one when guessing at a cause. These essays always seem to me like the author has something to say, but isn't even trying to give it in any detail. It's as if the construction of the thesis and its introduction ought to be enough, so the rest of the essay is just fluff: something needs to go there, so how about background information?

These essays almost exclusively outline the chronological events behind the subject itself and suggest that rather than doing analytical work, the author has simply regurgitated details about dates and events. The major culprits behind this are essays about historical events or breakthroughs, anything from pirates to computers, where, rather than offering new insights or interpretations on a historical situation, the author simply traces the events leading up to the situation they should be analyzing. The introductions and conclusions of such essays usually suggest an insight or interpretation, but the essay isn't interested in developing any. Sometimes, the conclusions address topics quite alien to what was in the introduction.

In both these situations, whether an expository introduction or essay, the result is an essay with mismatched introductions, conclusions, and bodies. A hodgepodge of related but unnecessary information where critical thinking should be.

However, there will be times when you need exposition. If so, you should keep it down to a paragraph or two. If the situation calls for exposition, wait until the introduction is done (so never the first paragraph), and then take some time to give only the absolutely essential details. If you discover your first paragraph is more exposition than introduction, then bump it from Slot 1 to Slot 2 and write a new introduction. If the body of the essay is the problem, take those pages of exposition and get them down to a paragraph or two so you free up the rest of the essay for more important information: presenting and defending your own thesis. I would say even if your audience is an expert on your subject and even if exposition wasn't required, a little can help show your expertise and familiarity with the subject. But no matter what, keep it brief and keep it relevant to the essay topic.

There is certainly merit in being able to summarize and paraphrase; it demonstrates familiarity with the research and the topic. However, the ability to develop one's own ideas and conclusions from that information and present and defend your ideas coherently, is of a much greater value.

Reverse Outlining with Topic Sentences

An outline is an essay condensed into a list of its topics in the order they appear in the paper. On the other hand, a reverse outline is when an author reads over a draft and identifies just what it is they are saying. Reverse Outlining helps you see just what it is that you wrote.

Putting together a reverse outline can be an interesting experience. We can see how our ideas actually came out, how they changed, and even how our perception on our topic changed as we wrote. Or, we can miss the point and end up just seeing what we want to see in our drafts, as opposed to what’s really there.

Let me elaborate. You did your outline and it went well. You wrote a draft and it went well. But when you go to do your reverse outline, you know what you wanted to say in each paragraph, and so rather than writing what your essay says, you write down what you want it to say. This is only going to cause problems. Instead, I recommend trying the following when reverse outlining:

1. Identify the topic sentence in a paragraph. Look for the sentence in the paragraph that best explains what the paragraph is doing: which could work as a paraphrase of the paragraph. You may be surprised to find that this is not always the first sentence; it may come in the middle or the end, and you may find the paragraph ended up addressing a different topic than you had anticipated. No matter where it is, copy this sentence into your outline as is.
2. Reread the paragraph for tangential sentences. I'm not talking about tangents from the essay thesis: I mean tangents from the paragraph's topic sentence. It is when a paragraph does things or addresses issues we didn't originally expect, but these things still may be relevant to the essay as a whole. Take the sentences that best represents the shift or tangent and make it a subtopic of the paragraph's topic on the outline.
3. Repeat until the essay is done. Do this process for each and every paragraph. Don't fret too much over the essay thesis, but focus on identifying the sentences that mark changes in topic throughout the essay and within paragraphs.
4. Revise. If you've done it right, you've just identified topic consistency issues in your essay, which will help you go back and make the necessary changes. This may be as simple as revising the topic sentence to accommodate a concept introduced in the paragraph, or it could require hefty revisions.

I recently did this with an essay of mine, and while most of my paragraphs were fine, a few introduced tangents. I had to use a variety of strategies to fix these issues. Almost all of them required some revision to the topic sentence, and while a couple didn't need anything else (to resolve the tangent), most needed more attention. I had rewritten sentences, and deleted some unnecessary words.

Thankfully, though, no paragraphs had more than one tangent. With one exception.

After I identified the topic sentence of one paragraph, I identified four tangents.

Four. An essay as a whole shouldn't have any. I had a paragraph with four. I identified the issues, so that as I moved to the next draft, I could outline properly and make the necessary changes. But had I never taken these measures, I probably never would have found and fixed these tangents, and would have only made the matter worse when doing normal revisions. I probably would have encountered this paragraph and would have known there were problems, but without identifying the topic sentence and tangents, the issue would have remained muddled and my attempts to mend it would have just made it more confusing.

The main lesson to be learned from this is outlining is more than just summarizing what a paragraph says or what you want it to say. Readers don't have the luxury of knowing what you're thinking. They have to go off of what you have written. So, make sure what you give readers is clear and coherent, from sentences, to topics and paragraphs, to the thesis.

For clarity's sake: Topic Sentences

Imagine going to a different city for the first time. You could be moving, meeting friends, starting a new job, whatever. You have a goal in mind, but when you get to the city, you're confronted by a lack of street signs. No matter how neat and orderly the streets are, there's little more than the unique features along the streets to help you find your way. Stuff like, brick houses with blue roofs, or black wrought iron fences, or the house with a stone lion occupying the porch. You have a vague idea where you want to go, but even if you stop and ask directions, they're vague and indirect, relying on specific landmarks you've seen a dozen times.

The thesis is the destination. It gives you an idea of where you're going and how to get there when reading or writing an essay. But topic sentences are the distinct, more specific directions letting you know the precise path to take. The thesis may be the address, but the topic sentences are the finer indicators of when to turn and which way to go. Just as the thesis tells you what the essay is about, topic sentences tell you what the paragraph is about.

This means an essay can be subdivided from the thesis into more specific subtopics, each one explained in its own paragraph. The same principle even applies to sentence structures: a sentence has a single, specific idea it’s trying to convey. Any less and it’s an incomplete sentence; more than one and it’s a run on sentence. The same applies to paragraphs and essays; an essay with a split thesis is basically a run on sentence.

Topic sentences generally appear at the beginning of a paragraph. Not necessarily the first sentence, but odds are it will be close. By placing a distinct topic sentence at the start of a paragraph, it gives readers a lens through which to interpret the paragraph. Like I said above: it gives direction and creates expectations. When those expectations aren’t met, we run into breakdowns in organization, essays and paragraphs that say more than they should, and that means tangents. Topic sentences that do not directly support the thesis are defined as tangents. Keeping track of one's thesis and topic sentences is a good way to make sure an essay is not diverting and the sentences stay on topic.

Lining up theses, topic sentences, and paragraphs makes composing an essay manageable because, with them, you can worry about an essay in sections and paragraphs rather than as a whole. Once you can identify the purpose of a paragraph in the bigger scheme of the essay (with, of course, a topic sentence), it makes it easier to focus on the individual sentences. Each sentence plays an integral role in developing the thesis of the essay, but tying one sentence to dozens or hundreds to the thesis is intimidating, especially when they need to fit in the flow of the rest of the essay. Instead, line up the topic sentences with the thesis, and the individual sentences with the topic sentences of their respective paragraphs.

Clear topic sentences are an important way to make the otherwise daunting task of writing an essay manageable: it makes it easier to keep track of what goes where, which helps with organization and revision. With topic sentences, you can create better outlines, manage organization, and eliminate tangents. Most of all, though, it helps you go from writing long essays to writing manageable paragraphs, each with a distinct topic.

Rogerian Argumentation

Rogerian Argumentation addresses some of the main misconceptions about arguments: that they are confrontational, oppressive, and center around at least two competitive, incompatible perspectives.

On the contrary. Rogerian Argumentation is centered around principles of mutual understanding, sympathy, and corroboration. Its purpose is to find a common ground between the two parties: a balance where both sides of the issue can come to an agreement. It is a much more amicable way to discuss differences.

Rogerian Arguments follow a four-step process designed to both ingratiate yourself to opposition and to help you better understand and sympathize with them:

• Address the issue. It's important to identify that there is an issue – not that you have an issue or someone else has an issue but that an issue exists. While being careful not to take sides, you should address the issue by taking a serious look at the situation from a neutral perspective and address what both sides can agree on.
• Identify positives and negatives of the opposition. You aren’t trying to bring down your opposition: you are trying to show your understanding. This way, you present yourself as concerned about the issue and sympathetic to their concerns without tearing down their entire argument. Sometimes, we can feel inclined to point out every fallacy and short-coming, but rarely are things so simple and convenient. Instead of tearing down, build them up, and show you are sympathetic to your opposition.
• Identify positives and negatives of your own stance. Rather than lift your own stance on the issue as a paradigm, you should own up to its shortcomings: making your own stance seem ideal can be just as off-putting as tearing down an opposing side. Instead of championing your own stance, approach your stance as if you were a third-party. Be objective and be honest.
• Compromise. Having established that you understand and are sympathetic to both sides of the issue, it is time to work out a compromise: propose a plan that employs the strengths and positive aspects of both sides, while simultaneously minimizing the weaknesses and negative aspects. By suggesting a compromise, you recognize your opposition has a voice in the matter, and you disagree with but still respect, as opposed to disregarding all different opinions.

Analyzing both sides of an issue can help us understand the complexities of a problem and others' perspectives. It’s all too easy to limit our own perspectives, rather than consider the opinions or concerns of others, or even take a serious look at the problem itself, but we can mire ourselves with our preoccupations and prejudices. Rogerian Argumentation gives us a way to reevaluate just how we see and deal with problems or topics.

By way of disclaimer, I want to add, while the principles behind Rogerian Argumentation can be be applied to any situation, compromise is not always an option. One side may not be willing to concede to a compromise, or a mutually beneficial option simply is not feasible. 

However, no matter what the situation, take time to explore, understand, and in particular, articulate the positions of your opposition.

Get a new doorman: Transitions and Transition Statements

On the Organization Overview page, when I listed transitions I stated it is “an issue with which I have mixed feelings.” This is because I understand and hope to teach that transitions are an essential part of writing. However, in my experience, transitions aren't what gets taught; it's transition statements. These are two very different concepts.

I tutored a student once who claimed to have a problem with those quaint little statements that sit at the end of paragraphs like doormen prepared to mark the move from one locale to another. The student recognized the need for cohesion in his writing, for that elusive “flow.” After a few minutes looking at his essay, it became clear that he understood his topic, was articulate, and had a firm grasp on the issue he was writing about. It’s just the doormen closing each paragraph were locking the door rather than opening it. Each transition was painfully abrupt, stalled the writing, and made every paragraph feel like an introduction rather than a continuation. It was bizarre that a good writer like this would have such a unique and individualized problem.

I proposed an experiment: we read through the second to last sentence of every paragraph and the first sentence of the next paragraph. We skipped the transitions. it worked beautifully. The essay was improved ten times at least.

The problem wasn't that he had bad transitions, it was that he had forced transition statements. He explained he had been taught to use token transition statements, and while that's fine for beginning writers, it ends up doing more harm than good for mature writers.

The red line is a tangent.

I see transition statements as a device to force otherwise tangential pieces into an essay. Pardon the geometry, but a tangent is a line that intersects with a circle at only one point. So, in writing, a tangent is when the essay suddenly starts talking about something that is related but irrelevant to the piece as a whole. It's a portion that just doesn't fit with the rest of the piece. “Transition statements” make it easy to go into a tangent and then force it back on track. It's a bad practice.

Therefore, forced transition statements (or weak transitions) are a symptom of two interrelated issues: the first is poor organization. The second is a weak thesis.

The thesis is the main point or argument and organization is how that point is delivered and presented. A well organized essay will flow from paragraph to paragraph, i.e. from topic to topic. A well organized essay will designate each paragraph with a specific topic directly related to the thesis. Anything related to a different topic goes in a different paragraph. Paragraphs that deal with similar information go before or after one another. And, here's where transitions come in: paragraphs with related topics will transition easier into one another. Strong transitions should be a natural by-product of adhering to the thesis and careful organization.

Transitions bring topics together much more than they bring paragraphs together, and a statement alone isn't enough to do it. It's more a matter of how the essay as a whole develops ideas as it progresses from introduction to conclusion: each paragraph should prepare the reader for the paragraph that follows it.

Unfortunately for me, this makes transitions a much harder topic to briefly address. There isn’t a set list of acceptable sentence structures and forms that can be interchangeably used to solve a problem. Good transitions show strong writing, strong organization, and a strong understanding of the subject matter: you haven’t put an arbitrary doorman down who may or may not do his job properly. You want a doorman who knows the building, the people, the clientele, and the situation. Someone who will let people know that all is well and you are welcome in the building.

Organization: An Overview

Organization is ubiquitous and yet invisible. It’s an issue identified with words like “flow,” and transition,” terms that are neither technical nor specific. An essay should flow, but what does a flowing essay look or sound like? Should an essay flow like a river?...What does that even mean?

Maybe a different comparison. 

In filmmaking, editing is the process of piecing together the different shots of film into a coherent whole. It involves sifting through the filmed footage and finding the best parts to include and putting them together seamlessly: so that you don’t even realize it’s going on. Poor editing stands out. Good editing goes unnoticed.

A well organized essay will do the same thing. You’ll be able to move from word to word, sentence to sentence, and paragraph to paragraph without stopping to notice the fact the subject matter has changed or shifted. Organization is supposed to make the transition from topic to topic smooth and understandable: to tame the beast that composing an essay.

There are many topics that address the finer nuances of organization, none of which I have time to adequately discuss here; I’ll have to devote a specific post to each one later. For now, a simple overview will have to suffice.

• Outlining: Listing the topics you are going to write about in the order you are going to write about them.
• Methods of Organization: Using a specific form or model to give your essay a way to disseminate the information. There are a lot of different methods, and sometimes an essay will employ several.
• Transitions: Statements at the start and ending of paragraphs designed to signal the subject matter is changing. And an issue with which I have mixed feelings.
• Balance: Making sure each topic receives a fair amount of attention, and the essay is not spending undue time and attention where it should not.
• Thesis Consistency: Tracking the development of the essay’s thesis from the very start to the very end of the essay.
• Paragraph Structure: Not just the essay but the information in paragraphs need to be carefully structured and developed.
• Topic Sentences: Sub-theses for your paragraphs.
• Sentence Structure: Determining how best to place information in specific sentences so that their form and structure emphasizes your point.
• Tangents: Oddities that arise and appear out of place. They do not support the thesis and introduce topics not discussed elsewhere.

This is, at best, only some of the issues dealing with organizing. It is, as I said, made up of many topics and finer nuances. I hope that this list gives at least an understanding of how nuanced and ubiquitous it can be.

You may also notice that I left out “flow.” This was a deliberate choice. I use it to describe essays, but only for lack of a better word. I don’t feel like it’s a great teaching tool because all it really says is the information throughout the essay made sense. It doesn’t give me a model to present to a class or write about here, and it may not even mean the student has fully grasped the concept of organization. Maybe they got lucky. Maybe they wrote a way that made sense to their professor. I can teach a lot of things about organization, but I can’t teach “flow.”

My purpose in this introductory post is to emphasize the complexity of an otherwise undervalued topic. There are so many things more apparent when it comes to writing and composition, like thesis, editing, research, citations, etc, that organization can be relegated to a day or two in any curriculum on the rush towards more apparent topics. Therefore, I don’t want to take it lightly or undervalue it. I want to give it the time and attention it deserves.

Writing Exercise: The Annotated Bibliography

I will not mince words. Annotated Bibliographies are weird. They almost always precede larger research projects, are rarely published, and have a set of rules far apart from most every other form of writing.

Rather than the steady flow from paragraph to paragraph, each one building on ideas and concepts, Annotated Bibliographies list citations of research sources, accompanied by annotations of the important aspects of the research. Hence the name Annotated Bibliography.

They’re like archipelagos: scattered, separated, independent, but interrelated.

People who encounter them for the first time sometimes have a hard time figuring out just what exactly it is they’re dealing with and why they’re dealing with it. A lot of the major rules about writing - transitions, organization, and in some instances the valued thesis, introduction, and conclusion are tossed to the wind. But annotated bibliographies can be invaluable in a research project.

Part of the problem is that the requirements vary from situation to situation. I’ve assigned annotated bibliographies for five different courses at three different schools, and was assigned them as an undergraduate and graduate student. Each time the parameters have been different, but there are a few constants.

The main constant is the form. At its core, an annotated bibliography is a list of citations with annotations, i.e., a few paragraphs describing the citation. What these annotations contain varies.

The first, and most common, annotation is the summary, an explanation of the source itself. This represents the content of the source without any interpretation, criticism, or other analysis. If you can’t reiterate the main points of a source, then you can’t summarize it. If you can’t understand it well enough to put it into your words, you should sit down with your research and get to know it better so you can.

The second annotation focuses on the rhetoric, and is sometimes called the evaluation. Rather than determine whether or not a source is useful, this determines whether or not it’s credible and reliable, generally through a rhetorical analysis. This considers the quality of the source’s arguments, if the piece is properly written, whether or not the author is credible.

The third annotation is an evaluation of the sources’ usefulness and can sometimes be called an assessment or reflection. Here, the writer gauges how helpful and relevant the research is. This is an opportunity for the writer to move from the research alone and consider their project in the long run. Sometimes determining a source’s usefulness calls for references to other pieces of research, but the main thing here is you can identify what you expect to do with the source.

There are certainly more out there, but these seem to show up the most.

Different circumstances will call for different approaches. Sometimes you may only need a summary. If it’s for a class, some teachers may be more interested in their students deciphering rhetoric than applying the source to a larger project. The purpose though is largely the same regardless of the situation. Annotated bibliographies exist so we can put aside a lot of the issues that come with writing a research essay and just focus on the research.

Outlines Make Everything Better

Usually when I discuss an essay draft with a student, I ask if they’ve written an outline.

This isn't because it’s a routine question.

It almost always comes after some discussion about the status of the essay and the student's concerns.
Many of the problems I have encountered in writing – that of my students and students I have worked with as a tutor – stems back to issues of organization, which can be resolved or improved with an outline.

Outlines seem simple. They're lists of information and subjects to be discussed in an essay. A lot of people ignore this step though, because they already have a collection of paragraphs or they have an idea of what they are going to write and so don't worry about making a list.

But an outline makes everything clearer.

A piece of writing is a mass of words running left to right, and hundreds of them can fill a page without much to say where one point ends and another begins. Writing an outline is a way to take that mass of information and express it clearly, simply, and succinctly.

Seems easy enough. The first benefit is a list takes the task of writing an essay and turns it into a series of topics: one daunting task is now a list of manageable tasks. Second, because you have a series of specified points, it is unlikely you’ll be blurring topics in a single paragraph. Third,  because you have sorted the ideas, it is easier to understand why you’ve put topics where you have and what they have to do with the whole. Each paragraph should have something to do with the paragraphs before and after it, and having an outline makes it easier to recognize those points. From there, it makes it easier to find, remove, or repurpose tangential sections or paragraph. Fourth, once each paragraph is in a logical place, it becomes easier to transition from paragraph to paragraph.

Overall, an outline helps your essay become more refined, specific, focused, and easier to follow.

Outlines aren’t a panacea though. They still require attention and detail, and can themselves be a couple of pages if the essay is longer.

You also may start with a solid list, but things don't always go according to plan. Enter, one of my favorite tools, the reverse outline.

Reverse outlines are outlines you do after you've written an essay. Go back through your writing, and identify what's going on in each paragraph. Chances are they’re not what you planned or expected them  to be. This can be illuminating for the same reasons doing an outline is a good first step. It helps you figure out what you've addressed and where the essay has grown as you come up with new ideas. Maybe you discovered you need to address a certain topic in a different place or the topic of a paragraph changed from what you intended. Basically, you discover you need to reorganize a few things. So the next step is to make a new outline as a guide to what you need to do with the next draft..

How many outlines? I would say there should be at least one, maybe two for every draft.

Here's how to use this tool:

• Put together an outline before writing, if you haven't already.
  
• Then write a draft and make an outline based on what you wrote.
  
• Revise that outline to fix whatever issues you came across while making your outline.
  
• Use that revised outline to revise your essay, and then, put together another reverse outline.
  

Outlines give you a way to look at an entire piece on just one or two pieces of paper. Everything whittled down to the bare necessities. Whether it’s the start of a project, or just one in need of revision, taking a step back and transforming your essay into a list is clarifying.

Friend or Foe Part 2: What’s Good About the Five Paragraph Essay

Part 2: What’s Good About the Five Paragraph Essay.

As I said in my last post, I've seen the Five Paragraph Essay taught/learned as a process, resulting in intellectual constipation. But it is good for something.

The Five Paragraph Essay is a model. It gives meaning, structure, and form. It’s an example of what an essay should eventually look like, emphasis on like. I tell my students that if you've just got two or three pages then five paragraphs would be okay on the final product. That’s for two or three pages. I vividly remember receiving a five page essay, however, with particularly long paragraphs. Suspiciously long, as each one conveniently ended with the page. The student had written a Five Paragraph essay for a five page essay. 

It wasn’t a very well written essay. Had it been better, I probably wouldn't have noticed the paragraph to page alignment. But it seemed like the student was cramming enough information into each paragraph to make them long enough for five paragraphs in spite of the number of pages. In my feedback, I pointed this out. I don't know if s/he was trying to have exactly five paragraphs, but s/he did. I advised the student about this and reminded s/he there didn't need to be five paragraphs, especially in a five page essay.

I like telling this story in class because It lets my students know that five isn’t a magic number. There's nothing wrong with more paragraphs and there's nothing wrong with fewer, nor is there anything wrong with just five. Circumstances determine what's best.

No matter what, an essay must have an introduction, a body, and a conclusion; and each body paragraph needs to cover a different but related topic that develops ideas brought up in the introduction. This is what the Five Paragraph Essay is good for. It reminds writers of the form that their final product should resemble. Get out a book or a newspaper or a magazine and look at how those pieces of writing are broken up into paragraphs, and with more than five much of the time. Then look closer and you'll find that some of these larger publications have entire chapters entitled "Introduction" and "Conclusion." Essays have introductions and conclusions. Books have them. Blog posts have them. You'll be hard pressed to have a serious publication without introductions and conclusions in one form or another.

Just don't think that the introduction has to be the first thing written and the conclusion has to be the last.

Friend or Foe Part 1: The Five Paragraph Essay

Part 1: Why I Hate the Five Paragraph Essay.

When I tutored high school students, it was interesting to see their struggles with writing assignments. Most of the time, I could trace their difficulties back to the Five Paragraph Essay, or rather, the way they had been taught to write an essay.

For those unfamiliar, the five paragraph essay is as follows:

• Introduction paragraph
• 3 Body paragraphs – each of these covers a topic introduced in the introduction.
• Conclusion paragraph.

There you have it. Five paragraphs. Seems simple enough, right?

Not to the frustrated students, who were sometimes caught between a prompt and a handout comparing writing to building a sandwich. The problem was they had learned the Five Paragraph Essay as the only way to write the essay: Step one to write the introduction. Step two was paragraph 2, or body paragraph 1. Step three was paragraph 3. Do I need to continue?

The results were students who had no idea how to write. They expected their ideas to come out perfectly the first time, and they wouldn’t lay pen to page until they had something great. I saw students who were angry, frustrated, and bitter, developing a hatred of writing rather than the skill. They made for interesting tutoring sessions, to say the least. My advice for them boiled down to this: the Five Paragraph Essay is a model and not a process.

I've wondered if the insistence on the Five Paragraph Essay is a response to students saying “I don't know how to write.” Unfortunately, it leads to meandering introductions where students figure out what they’re writing about, followed by a good paragraph on the topic they spent their introduction figuring out. Having exhausted their first idea, the rest of the essay meanders before petering out in a conclusion that may or may not address the same topic as the introduction. Now with the requisite five paragraphs they forego any revision and stop with a less than ideal brainstorming session forced into prose.

It’s a tragedy that this kept students from discovering their own writing processes and developing a valuable skill. It denies experimentation and hinders the very learning it is intended to promote.

I'm starting my fourth year of teaching English composition and every class I've taught needed this lesson. Some students are liberated. For some, it's a confirmation of something they figured out already, most likely on their own. Others were so hardened against writing that they don’t even try to listen.

The Five Paragraph Essay has been poorly implemented by students and teachers. It isn’t a universal problem, as I learned when I taught Concurrent Enrollment and the students didn’t have the same issues as those I had tutored years before. But they still needed a reminder of what the Five Paragraph Essay was indeed for and its relationship to good writing.

In short, the good stuff.

Which I’ll be discussing in my next post.