Human language is a remarkable tool.

Through the one tool, language, we do such a wide range

of tasks, from those as mundane as ordering a pizza on the phone to those as sublime as wooing a
lover. No other human artifact that I can think of is as versitile or as powerful at the same time. We
admire those who are good with words. We recognize the power of the written word as well, giving it
a measure of authority afforded to no other form of language. Finally, we know too that writing is an
also art form, something that leads us to believe that writing can only be done by those of us who
have "the gift."

Those beliefs often lead us into a trap: an idea that we can not learn to write effectively unless we
have "that gift." I really don't think that is the correct conclusion at all. The idea that writing can only
be mastered by an elite few rests on the assumption that all writing is the same. However, as I have
tried to argue here at the beginning, language (and therefore written language too) is a diverse and
varied tool. It is a tool we can all use. Moreover, as is the case with all tools, we can learn to use our
tools more effectively. This is why I believe that we can learn to write better, more effectively,
whether or not we also have "that gift" to write beautifully as well.

Although writing is a complex task, it is a learned craft that can be mastered and improved with
practice. Although no formula can guarantee a good essay, many writers have developed
some good advice to help you get started.

What I suggest in the following flow chart is a workable linear model for preparing and writing an
essay — it could be summed up as follows:

Brainstorming
and Writing a Research, reading,
Choosing
other methods tentative and more
a topic
of inventing thesis brainstorming
ideas

Outlining A first draft Revision The final draft

Although writing is a complex task, it is a learned

craft that can be mastered and improved with
practice.
In the real world, the flow chart above would also include different arrows that loop back to different
stages of the process. Real writers, for example, often find that after composing the first draft, they
need to go back to the brainstorming and research/reading stage to develop more information for
the essay. As you gain more experience, you too will discover that you will revisit some parts of the
process more than others. I, personally, for example, revise more than once or twice. (I revised this
page you are reading now — even as short as it is — six, make that seven, times already.)

The important thing is to keep the process in mind. As you become more proficient, you will
become more confident as a writer, developing your own practices and writing techniques.

In the 14th century, English borrowed the word essay from the Middle French wordessai. In Middle
French, the word meant "to try"; it was a verb, something we do. The word's origins ultimately go
back to the Late Latin wordexagium, the act of weighing, evaluating, judging. The history of this
word is instructive, I think, for in its history we see everything that writers hope to achieve when they
compose an essay. More than that, even, we can see in the history of the word what we — as
writers — should do ourselves.

What essay writers are trying to do is nothing short of a miracle — the sort of minor miracle that
language enables and that we take for granted every day. Writers attempt to convey an idea from
one head into another head (from the writer's to the reader's). Writers are attempting to make
meaning. When we write, we cando things that will either help or hinder this process of making
meaning and conveying it to another mind. Part of the craft of writing is learning to try those
techniques that enable us to making meaning for our readers successfully. Remember at least that
an essay is to try.

Toward that end, we can improve our practice — our craft — if we remember some important
general concepts of (academic) writing:

1. Academic writing has a goal (to try to make meaning and convey it to the reader's mind).
Therefore, miscellaneous, random collections of ideas, quotes, details, facts, statistics, etc.,
will not make for an effective vehicle to convey your idea as a writer. Academic essays
often have an argument — explicit or implicit. Even a narrative essay about an important
moment in the life of a child can have an implied argument of demonstrating the truth of
Wordsworth's line "the Child is the Father of the Man." Miscellaneous, random bits of
information really do not prove anything, no matter how suggestive those "factoids" are.
The information must be organized and related logically to your thesis, your point, your
main idea. That is what we do when we write.
2. When — as is often the case — an assigned topic does not provide you with an obvious
thesis, you should first think of possiblequestion(s) you can use to answer the "problem"
presented in your essay's assignment. Asking the right questions can lead you toward
collecting relevant information and ultimately formulating an interesting, worthwhile thesis.
 3. Essays may present an argument differently, but an essay'sorganization — how
it begins, develops, and ends — should be designed to present your argument clearly and
persuasively. (The order in which you discovered the parts of your argument is seldom an
effective order for presenting it to a reader.)
4. Successful methods of composing an essay are various, but some practices of good
writers are almost invariable:

Keep your essay's overall purpose and organization in mind. Give yourself the freedom
to adapt and change youroutline as you are in the process of discovering ideas.
Don't wait till "everything is ready" before you begin to write. Give yourself the liberty
of starting to write even before you have "the whole picture" in your head. As an
undergraduate, I suffered from writer's block very often because I felt that I couldn't start
writing my papers until I had read and understood everything I needed to know about my
subject. However, since there is always more to know, I could never feel ready to begin
writing my papers. It was a mistake, a trap, and eventually I learned that writing itself is the
process of learning and discovering all on its own. Writing itself is a way of knowing.
A gnostic act, to use a truly old-fashioned word. Give yourself the liberty of writing what you
know as you learn it, as you develop those ideas. Feel free later to reorganize and revise
those ideas too, which leads us nicely to our next point...

Don't wait till "everything is ready" before

you begin to write.
Revise extensively. The computer can be an excellent tool to help with revision. Revise
with special attention to transitionsbetween your ideas. Lastly, proofread your final copy,
attending to teh tpyos and errors that can lessen the impact of an otherwise well-written
piece.

When you are given a essay topic or a writing prompt, there usually are clues within the
assignment to tell you how you should approach writing your essay. The idea here is to look for
clues that can guide you as you prepare and write your essay.

What are the key terms stated in the topic or the essay question? Look for words that suggest
the kind of reasoning you should be using in the essay, such as why, how, analyze, compare,
evaluate, argue, etc.

 Why suggests that you should discuss the causes, to be able to recognize relationships
such as cause and effect, even if they are unstated in the source materials.
 How implies the need to find the origins and history behind your subject or topic.
  Analyze requires you to read and discuss your source material critically, to see the
relationship of parts to whole. Look for underlying assumptions and question their validity.
Evaluate the kinds of evidence the authors use to support their thesis.
 Compare asks you to find differences as well as similarities. You should make a list of the
similarities and differences that you can discuss in detail. Use that list to help you organize
your response by using the list as subheading.
 Evaluate asks you to present opinion and to apply your judgement in response to the topic.
This kind of writing topic is often associated with the reading materials of a course.
Evaluation asks for your opinion based on a clear thesis that expresses your point of view
supported by clearly stated evidence. Phrases such as to what extent or in what way also
asks for an evaluation.
 Argue (meaning to agree or disagree) also asks you to state your opinion based on your
analysis of the evidence. The major difference here is that you will need to consider other
possible viewpoints (counter-argument), and defend your own position in comparison to
those other viewpoints (rebuttal).

What method of development does the topic ask you to use? Are you to argue a point with
others, or are you to compare ideas? Does the topic ask you to categorize (i.e., classify) ideas? Or
does it suggest that youevaluate an idea by applying it to an new example? Does the topic ask you
to describe, or to tell a story about how the material you read is relevant to something in your own
life (narrative)?

Once you find the key terms and discover the method of development inherent in the assignment,
you can then start to generate ideas for your essay by asking yourself questions about the specific
topic in terms of the concepts or methods that seem applicable. Another rich souce of ideas for you
is to look for any controversies in the materials. A bit more background reading on your topic may
be helpful too in order that you have a better sense of the whole subject before approaching your
essay.

The next step is to write a tentative thesis to help you organize your own writing. You do not have
to stick to this statement, but it will help focus your work. (See the page on Thesis Statements for
advice on developing a strong thesis for your papers. See also the page on Taking Notes from
Reading.) The epigram above is telling quite a story, really. It might seem as if Williams is simply
joking. After all, the common perception of writing (and the process of writing) is that we can only
begin to write after we have done all the background research and planning. For many of us, we
seem to think that writing is the lastact in the process of composition. So it is humorous to imagine a
writer not knowing what s/he is going to say before s/he begins.
"A writer keeps surprising himself ... he doesn't know what he is saying until he sees it on the page."

— Thomas Williams

However, Williams is telling us something quite different in that epigram. If we take him literally,
and I think we should, he is telling us the process of writing is itself a process of discovering what
we mean to say. Writing is a way of discovering ideas. Writing is a way of learning, a way of
knowing. So in a real way, we do learn what it is we have to say in the course of composing the
page. This is idea of writing that composition theorists and teachers have in mind when they talk of
writing as a process. This process begins with the choosing a topic (unless it has already been
given to you) followed by brainstorming and other methods of "inventing" content for your essay.
The invention of ideas is literally the term that Aristotle used to describe those techniques that
writers can employ to build content and support for a thesis.

By codifying different techniques for the invention of ideas, Aristotle is acknowledging that it is
hard, really difficult, to think of new ideas to add to any subject. Below are several of the techniques
that rhetoricians and writers have employed for at least two millenia.

Look at the big picture:

1. Who is your reader?

2. What is your purpose?
3. Who are you, the writer? (What image or persona do you want to project? What can you
add to the subject simply because you are you — a unique individual with a unique
background and therefore a unique perspective. This fact is very valuable, really, and your
readers will like to know how you perceive the subject of your discourse.)

If you find something (an idea or fact) in the problem that evokes strong feelings in you, positively or
negatively, you are in luck. Some of the finest writing grows from strong feelings that the writer had
in response to a problem. Consider Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal or Martin Luther King
Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Each was composed in response to a problem; each was
composed to address a social injustice; each draws its power from the passion the writers felt.
Writing to the problem — responding with your passion — can create some of the best writing you
will ever do.

Think about your essay's goals:

1. How can you achieve your purpose?

 2. Can you make a plan?

Exploring the goals can help you organize your material.

Explore your topic:

1. Brainstorm
 keep writing
 don't censor or evaluate
 keep returning to the problem
2. Thnink about or talk to your readers
 What questions would they ask?
 What different kinds of readers might you have?
3. Ask yourself questions

Consider also the follow five additional strategies — strategies that go back in some cases to
Aristotle's Rhetoric.

Aristotle's "Common Topics"

Definition

 How does the dictionary define ____?

 What do I mean by ____?
 What group of things does ____ belong to?
 How is ____ different from other things?
 What parts can ____ be divided into?
 Does ____ mean something now that it didn't years ago? If so, what?
 What other words mean about the same as ____?
 What are some concrete examples of ____?
 When is the meaning of ____ misunderstood?

Comparison/Contrast

 What is ____ similar to? In what ways?

 What is ____ different from? In what ways?
 ____ is superior (inferior) to what? How?
 ____ is most unlike (like) what? How?

Relationship
  What causes ____?
 What are the effects of ____?
 What is the purpose of ____?
 Why does ____ happen?
 What is the consequence of ____?
 What comes before (after) ____?

Testimony

 What have I heard people say about ____?

 What are some facts of statistics about ____?
 Can I quote any proverbs, poems, or sayings about ____?
 Are there any laws about ____?

Circumstance

 Is ____ possible or impossible?

 What qualities, conditions, or circumstances make ____ possible or impossible?
 When did ____ happen previously?
 Who can do ____?
 If ____ starts, what makes it end?
 What would it take for ____ to happen now?
 What would prevent ___ from happening?

The Journalist's Questions

Journalists are trained to ask six questions to ensure that they have covered a story from every
angle. We can use the same techniques to explore our subject and develop related ideas.

1. Who?
2. What?
3. Where?
4. When?
5. Why?
6. How?

The cynical among us would add a seventh question:

7. So What?
 Pike's Tagmemic Strategy

Kenneth Pike, a linguist, developed a model of language systems that describe language from
multiple perspectives. His central insight was that each feature of language can be described by its
relationship with other features of the language: through contrast, variation, and distribution. In the
1960s, many rhetoricians adapted his system to the study of writing, using Pike's three-pronged
approach to language as a means of thinking about the invention of ideas.

Contrastive features

 How is ____ different from things similar to it?

 How has ____ been different for me?

Variation

 How much can ____ change and still be itself?

 How is ____ changing?
 How much does ____ change from day to day?
 What are the different varieties of ____?

Distribution

 Where and when does ____ take place?

 What is the larger thing of which ___ is a part?
 What is the function of ____ in this larger thing?

Use analogies

Another time honored invention strategy is to use comparison — analogy — as a way of inventing
ideas in an essay. Using an analogy and metaphor — even strange and weird analogies and
metaphors — can open our minds to see our subject in new and interesting ways. In fact, George
Lakoff and Mark Johnson (coauthors of Metaphors We Live By) argue that analogy and metaphor
are the very essence of human thought. We think metaphorically: we understand one idea by
comparison to other ideas. For example, "writing an essay like changing a tire." I suppose there are
some similarities: first, we need to be willing to do a bit of dirty work. Next, we have to get our tools
out. Third, we have to jack the whole enterprise up carefully. Etc. Sometimes the strangest
metaphors lead to the most interesting ideas.

Cubing
(considering a subject from six points of view)
This last strategy seems to me to blend several of the earlier strategies together in an useful way:
1. Describe it (colors, shapes, sizes, etc).
2. Compare it. (What is it similar to?)
3. Associate it. (What does it make you think of?)
4. Analyze it. (Tell how it's made)
5. Apply it. (What can you do with it? How can it be used?)
6. Argue for or against it.

Though many rhetoricians have commented on the similarity of the wordthesis and the
nameTheseus, I know of no etymological connection between the origins of the word and the name.
However, many writers and rhetoricians through the years have often noticed a metaphoric
connection. Theseus was the mythical hero of ancient Greece who found his way through the
Labyrinths of Crete by following a simple thread. Similarly, an essay's thesis also allows readers to
find their way through the labyrinth of ideas by following a single thread of thought — the thesis.
That is why the thesis is often called the central idea, the governing idea, or controlling idea of an
essay. (Note the wordidea here, notsentence. As we will see below and in the next reading after
this page, Thesis: Traits and Myths, the thesis itself can take on a variety of forms. A single
sentence is just one possibility.) As the controlling idea, the thesis governs the content of all the
remaining information in the body of the essay.

When we formulate theses, we organize information around a central idea. That is what I mean
by the thesis governing the remaining information of the essay. Many writers literally use the thesis
as a metric to decide what information is relevant to the essay (and thereby include it) and what
information is irrelevant (and thereby exclude it). In this way, the thesis functions as a "gate-
keeper," controlling what information is included in the essay and how much.

To my mind, therefore, the most apt analogy for the thesis in academic writing is not the "thread" of
thought woven throughout the essay, but instead the hinge on a door. If an essay were a door, the
thesis would be its hinge. Everything pivots on the hinge. The whole door, no matter how well built,
no matter how beautifully decorated, or strong, is useless unless it has a hinge that can serve its
purpose. A door cannot even function as a door without its hinge. Likewise, the thesis serves as the
pivot around which all information in the essay is organized.

To get a real sense of what the thesis contributes to meaning, we need to examine an example.
The following passage is from The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1872-1914 (pp. 3-4). [I have
added letters to the beginning of each sentence to aid our discussion and shortened it a bit for our
purposes.]
(a) Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love,
the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. (b) These passions, like
great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish,
reaching to the very verge of despair.

(c) I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy — ecstasy so great that I would often have
sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. (d) I have sought it, next, because it relieves
loneliness — that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the
world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. (e) I have sought it, finally, because in the union of
love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets
have imagined. (f) This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is
what — at last — I have found.

(g) With equal passion I have sought knowledge. (h) I have wished to understand the hearts of
men. (i) I have wished to know why the stars shine .... (j) A little of this, but not much, I have
achieved.

(k) Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. (l) But
always pity brought me back to earth. (m) Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. (n)
Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons,
and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.
(o) I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

(p) This has been my life. (q) I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance
were offered me.

I think all of us would agree that this is a beautifully written passage: it's powerful, emotive,
coherent, even poetic. Those qualities derive in part from the fact that Russell is careful to write a
clear thesis, which governs all the rest of the content in the passage. Notice that sentence (a)
functions as the thesis of this example. Note too that everything else (the discussions of love [c-f],
knowledge [g-j], and pity [k-o]) refer directly to that thesis and expand on the ideas presented in that
thesis.

In short, Russell's thesis is the hinge on which everything else in that passage pivots. In this way,
we can see too that the thesis is the first step in helping to organize information for a reader. It is
the thesis that serves as the focus around which all other bits of information rotate. A good thesis
exhibits at least four distinguishing traits: it must make a statement (not issue command or ask a
question), must be a specific statement, must be well supported, and must be relatively high in what
Mortimer Adler called the orders of knowledge. Let's examine each of those traits next.
Thesis as Statement

In a study of academic writing, Richard Braddock (310-323) noted that theses can be simple
(stated explicitly, either in one sentence or in several consecutive sentences), delayed-completion
(begun in one sentence and completed at some point later in the essay), assembled (scattered in
bits and pieces throughout the essay), or even inferred (never explicitly stated — left for the reader
to surmise). Yet no matter how the thesis is presented, it should be clearly defined, or, in the case
of an inferred thesis, clearly definable. That means that writer (and reader) should be able to
articulate the thesis in a simple, explicit statement — a declarative sentence.

Examining Russell's passage again, we can see that Russell's is what Braddock would call a
simple thesis — stated as a single, declarative sentence. That claim that the thesis should be
a statement, a declarative sentence, is not accidental or arbitrary. The thesis must be a statement if
it is to fulfil its primary purpose. Rhetoricians since the time of the ancient Greeks have understood
that only statements make a proposition, a subject about which something can be asserted and
supported (Corbett 45). Neither a command (Fight to preserve our democratic freedoms!) nor a
question (Is democracy threatened by the influence of money in politics?) asserts anything. The
command supersedes the assertion and assumes its own validity, whereas the question makes no
claim at all about its subject. Only the statement — the simple, declarative sentence — makes a
proposition in which the writer must assert something about the subject. (There is more on the
importance of the thesis as statement in the page called Making Meaning.)

The writer who fails to define the thesis clearly risks a common pitfall. That writer has not
committed him- or herself to anything. The consequence of this is that the paper will lack unity
(Crowley 34-6). Aunified essay is one in which all of the writer's arguments, directly or indirectly,
support his or her thesis. If the writer has not defined the thesis clearly, the writer will not know what
arguments need support. Hence, the writer will ramble.

Thesis as Specific Statement

A thesis can be a clearly defined, declarative statement and still lead to a disorganized essay if the
thesis is not adequately specific. A specific statement will work better for you as a writer and is more
likely to be a focused thesis. Any writer needs a thesis that he or she can successfully develop
within a short essay. Using the general topic of economics, you might propose a thesis such as,
"The American government spends more money than it has." That thesis, though clearly defined in
Braddock's terms, is so general that a writer would never be able to cover it adequately in a short
essay. The writer would either move from one economic or political issue to another, discussing
each only superficially, or cover only one or two issues and, thus, failing to demonstrate his or her
own thesis. A more narrowly focused thesis, such as "The Constitution of the United States should
be amended to guarantee a balanced budget," commits you to a specific idea that you can carefully
analyze and thoroughly discuss in four or five pages.

Notice below how I can take Russell's thesis (repeated in sentence 1 below) and systematically
weaken it to the point of inaneness by simply making the statement progressively less specific, as in
(2) and (3) below:

1. Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for
love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
2. Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life.
3. Three things are important in my life.

This demonstrates the need to make the thesis a specific statement.

The Thesis and its Support

Thirdly, any thesis must be well supported. If the essay is to be effective — if it is to persuade
readers — the writer must provide both evidence and arguments valid and copious enough to
satisfy the skeptical reader. Support is the foundation upon which the writer builds rational appeal,
by demonstrating a knowledge of the subject matter, and ethical appeal, by citing the authorities
and the experts who have also written on this subject.

Adler's Orders of Knowledge

Finally, consider a statement like The sun rises in the east. That statement seems to have all the
necessary traits of an effective thesis: it is a declarative statement, it is specific, and it could be
supported by all sorts of data. As a thesis it has all the traits one needs, except one — it's dull.
That's because the statement is a "statement of fact" as Adler (222) would call it, and statements of
facts do not make interesting theses. Mortimer Adler divides knowledge into three classes:
statements of facts, statements about facts, and statements about statements (Adler 222-224). If a
thesis manages to express only a statement of fact, the paper will be nothing more than a report or
a recitation of facts. This is fine if all you want to do is to report the facts you have collected.
However, if the writer wants a paper that is more than a report, the writer must start with a thesis
that is more than a statement of fact. In other words, an interesting thesis is relatively high in Adler's
orders of knowledge.

For example, consider what we could predicate of a subject likedemocracy.

1. Statements of fact: Democracy is a form of government.
 2. Statements about facts: Democracy is the best form of
government for the newly emerging
nations of Europe and Asia.
3. Statements about statements: Democracy's inherent superiority as a
form of government lead to its victory
over Marxist regimes in the former
Soviet bloc.

Similarly, consider what Russell might have predicated about passionbelow.

1. Statements of fact: Our passions have a strong effect on

our lives.
2. Statements about facts: Our passions control what we do and
what we think.
3. Statements about statements: Three passions, simple but
overwhelmingly strong, have governed
my life: the longing for love, the search
for knowledge, and unbearable pity for
the suffering of mankind. [Russell's
orginal thesis]

In both examples, above, statement (1) as a thesis gives us a report: the classification scheme of
different political systems and the definition of the key terms. Adequate for what it is. Statement (2)
gives us something to think about. We need to collect facts, undoubtedly, but we need more: we
need to argue the relative merits of one governmental system over the others in different contexts.
More interesting. Statement (3) opens an whole host of interrelated arguments. It is more complex,
unquestionably, but it also presents the greatest opportunity for the writer to demonstrate his/her
skills. Russell's thesis is stronger since he composes his ideas on a relatively higher order of
knowledge, as Adler would say. Statements about statements make better theses since they are
more likely to lead the writer into more interesting, more specific, topics.

Tentative and Definitive Theses

Finally, we should distinguish between a tentative and a definitive thesis. To have a tentative
thesis, also called a working thesis, is crucial in theearly stages of the writing process. Your
working thesis will help you develop your essay by suggesting questions, ideas, and strategies that
you can use in the body of your essay. What the writer must remember however is that the working
thesis, the tentative thesis, is just that — tentative. The tentative thesis was made to guide the
development of an argument, but the working thesis is subject to revision just as any other part of
the essay is subject to revision as you learn more about your subject. Late in the writing process,
after the writer has collected, arranged, evaluated, reresearched, rearranged, and reevaluated the
supporting materials, the writer settles on a definitive thesis, a final thesis. In this way, the writing
process itself becomes a way to discover new ideas, beyond what you already know, to create
something that comes from you. It is truly an act of making meaning.

A well-crafted thesis becomes the hinge-pin, the pivot, of your essay, upon which the entire essay
hangs. And like a real hinge of a real door, it is essential to the operation of the whole, for just as
the door itself, no matter how beautiful the construction or solid the material, is useless without the
hinge, so too the thesis becomes the central element enabling the function of the whole essay.
Though you must consider a host of issues as you compose (such as style, syntax, organization,
originality,usage, and diction), developing a good thesis is central for developing a good essay.

For more discussion on this topic, including examples of — and myths about — the thesis, see
 Thesis: Traits and Myths.

For an essay on the central role that thesis plays in "making meaning," read
 Making Meaning.

Academic writing centers around an explicit or implied argument of some kind. We readers come
to expect the writer to make a statement of his/her position on the subject at hand and to support
that subject with data, details, analysis — evidence in short. The position the writer takes is his/her
thesis. The evidence the writer uses will be the contents of the essay's body. Typically, the thesis
will be near the beginning of the essay (but see below). A good thesis statement does possess
certain characteristics that make it effective as the central, controlling idea governing all of the
information in the body of the essay. Below are some examples. Note that the better examples
share two traits: they presentspecific argumentative points, not sweeping general statements, and
they suggest that the writer will offer support later in the essay. (See also the page offering advice
onUnderstanding Essay Topics.)

Additionally, a worthwhile thesis also exhibits the following characteristics:

1. It makes a clearly limited assertion that suggests the writer will expand the idea in further
discussion. For example, compare the following.

too obvious, trite:

Shakespeare was the world's greatest poet.
better:
The emotive power of Shakespeare's 87th Sonnet comes from subtle linguistic
manipulation of vocabulary and inflectional morphology.
 2. The thesis points to the writer's central, controlling idea in the essay and indicates how the
writer will develop the argument.

vague:
This essay will show that the campaign finance laws of the 1970s was a disaster for the
American political system.
better:
By limiting the size of an individual's direct contribution to particular candidates and trying to
insulate politicians from the corrupting influence of big money, the campaign finance reform
laws of the 1970s have had the ironic and unintentional effect of making large donations
even more important than ever.

3. A good thesis shows that the writer is aware of the disputes and disagreements
surrounding the essay's subject.

sweeping generalization:
Criminalizing drug use just causes problems, as the history of Prohibition against alcohol
demonstrates.
better:
Although several politicians and political commentators (such a William F. Buckley in "The
War Against Drugs Is Lost") argue from a pragmatic position that current U.S. anti-drug
policies are ineffective and too expensive (both fiscally and socially), I find that the most
compelling case against current U.S. drug policies exist in the history of the U.S. prohibition
against alcohol in the early part of the 20th century.

Some Myths about Thesis Statements

 Every paper requires a thesis (at the beginning). Essays that are personal responses to a
topic, or essays in which you explore a subject from a personal perspective should not
begin with your already formed opinions. Similarly, essays of literary interpretation often
expect us to describe many of the literary effects in the piece under analysis, rather than
focusing only on one view of the text. In such essays, we should not prejudge the issues.
Instead, the thesis (if we mean by that the central, controlling idea) comes at the end, as a
conclusion we reach in the process of describing the subject.
 The thesis must come at the end of the first paragraph. This is a natural position for a
thesis. Remember that the function of the thesis is to provide the intellectual "anchor" for
the material to follow in the body of the essay. So, to position the thesis at the end of the
 first paragraph, a paragraph in which the writer introduces the subject and leads the reader
to the main point, is a natural, logical, obvious position. Function determines form.
However, it is not the only possible position. Some theses can be stated in the opening
sentences of an essay; others need a paragraph or two of introduction; others can't be fully
formulated until the end. See the point above, for example.
 A thesis statement must be only one sentence in length. Though it is true that we can often
point to just one sentence as the thesis of a piece, we would be mistaken to think that all
essays must always have just one sentence as the thesis. It is more important that the
writer's thesis be clear and understandable. If that means that a writer needs two or even
three sentences to capture his/her ideas, then intelligibility is far more important than rules
like this one. A complex argument may require a whole paragraph of coherent exposition of
an idea to make its initial statement clear. In a real way, that whole paragraph is functioning
as the thesis in such cases. We humans have complex, multifaceted ideas, and so the
language we use to capture those ideas might easily be just as complex and multifaceted.
That is the natural course of human language..
 We can't start writing an essay until we have a thesis statement. If writing is a process, a
process in which I collect information, compose a draft, rewrite, and revise, then why
shouldn't I also think of the thesis as a part of writing that will change, be revised, in the
process of drafting, rewriting, and revising too? To begin with a tentative thesis statement
(or hypothesis) is a valuable tool to help guide a writer's ideas, but changing and refining a
thesis is a natural consequence of writing a paper. Furthermore, if we think of writing as a
process, as a way in which we learn, then the thesis too is likely to change and adapt and
grow as our knowledge of the subject changes, adapts, and grows.
 A thesis statement must have three points of support. This myth is a consequence of the
practice of many writing teachers. Often, teachers ask for a "five paragraph theme." If the
introduction and the conclusion are two paragraphs, then the body will be three paragraphs
long, and the thesis will need three supporting points (with sufficient detail). OK. However,
there is nothing magical about the five paragraph essay. It is only a form that is commonly
required by teachers. The reality is that a thesis should have support, and the number of
paragraphs required for that support is not fixed.

An overly simplistic model for the relationship between the introduction, thebody, and
theconclusion is the old newspaper maxim:

"Tell them what you are going to say, say it, and tell them what you said."

To me, that maxim does capture a small grain of truth, but it can also be a recipe for boredom.
Although it is true that in an introduction should lay out a plan for what will follow, an introduction
than merely summarizes the points of your essay wastes a valuable opportunity that each writer has
to engage the readers' interest. Instead, the writer must find a way to open discussion of the topic,
without a teadious recitation of the essay's organizational plan. There are several ways to do this
(see more below), but all of those methods share one trait in common: the effective introduction
uses the analogy of a triangle.

Imagine an inverted triangle, thus:

In this model, the introduction begins with the general and moves toward the specific, as the sides
of the triangle narrow down toward a point. A writer uses the introduction to show how the specific
question addressed in this essay relates to a greater issue or field. For example, if we are writing
about how George Orwell's novel 1984 subverts traditional notions of hero, we might want to begin
by explaining what a traditional notion of hero is, or by discussing the characters in Orwell's work in
general.

The thesis a writer discusses in an essay does not exist in a vacuum; the thesis and the essay are
part of a bigger set of issues. The introduction can provide the necessary background so that the
reader understands how your essay fits into the bigger discussion about some topic. Therefore, it is
important that a writer also determine what the audience knows already, and what it needs to know
in order to understand the context for this thesis, this essay. By the time we reach the end of our
introductory paragraph, we should be ready to state the thesis of the essay. The introduction does
not give away all of the opinions and conclusions to be developed in the essay, but the writer
should give readers a clear idea of what the main idea is to be.

In classical rhetoric, introductions had two equally important functions:

 to inform the audience of the subject of discourse and your thesis
 to create interest in your subject of discourse (disposing the audience to be receptive to
what you have to say)

and were subclassified into five grouping according to the rhetorical strategy the writer uses
predominantly in the opening of his or her work:

Introduction Introduction Introduction Introduction Introduction

Inquisitive Paradoxical Corrective Preparatory Narrative
to generate to use a to gain and hold to explain an to rouse
interest in the paradox — a the audience's unusual mode interest in
 subject by seemingly attention by of your subject
posing an unsolvable announcing that development by adopting
interesting puzzle — your essay will for your the anecdotal
question related to you correct a subject; or to lead-in
subject to commonly held, forestall some
grab the but mistaken, misconception
readers' notion on your of your
attention subject of purpose
discourse, a
subject that has
been
misunderstood,
neglected, or
misrepresented

Some Examples of Introductions

Scroll through to read all five, or click on the category to jump to the specific example. As you read
these examples, you will notice that several of them are the openings of novels and poems. That is
not a mistake: rhetoric is the subject that studies composition, including the composition of fiction
and poetry. So it should not surprise you to learn that all writers use similar patterns in the opening
sections of different kinds of work. Furthermore, the essay itself has long been considered an art
form as well. Finally, I would argue that a well written essay is a creative effort too, akin to the work
of the novelist or the poet.

Introduction
Inquisitive | Paradoxical | Corrective | Preparatory | Narrative

An Example of the Introduction Inquisitive

Whom can I confess to?
The Catholics have some cat
They call father,
mine cutout a long time ago —
Like His did.
I tried confessing to my girl,
But she is not fast enough — except on hair styles,
clothes
face care and
television.
If ABC, CBS, and NBC were to become educational stations
She would probably lose her cool,
 and learn to read
Comic Books.

from Don L. Lee's "In the Interest of Black Salvation," 1968

Notice how Lee uses the opening question to drive us into his topic — the loss of faith. Lee's
narrator in the poem has lost faith in religion, family, and love to save him. He want to "confess," but
confession is only possible when you trust your confessor and believe in your confessor's
goodness. As a contemporary man, Lee's narrator has no one to trust. Lee's poem is an interesting
exploration of faith and belief for the twentieth century person. It is worth the effort to look up the
poem in the library some time to read his conclusion.

An Example of the Introduction Paradoxical

I am a sick man. . . . I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.
However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't
consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I
am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough
not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you
probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course I can't explain who it is
precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay
out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than any one that by all this I am only injuring
myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well — let
it get worse!

from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground, 1864

Dostoevsky, like many of the Russian masters, seems intent on playing with us, his readers. He
will give us nothing solid to hold. In this opening paragraph from Notes from the Underground, he
presents a most confused, and confusing, narrator. The narrator is sick but won't consult a doctor.
He is certain he is sick but doesn't know anything about the sickness. He is educated yet
superstitious. Dostoevsky will give us no clues about who or what is bothering this man. The point is
to pull us into his story.

Or consider this example of the Introduction Paradoxical:

In sleep she knew she was in her bed, but not the bed she had lain down in a few hours since, and
the room was not the same but it was a room she had known somewhere. Her heart was a stone
lying upon her breast outside of her; her pulses lagged and paused, and she knew that something
strange was going to happen, even as the early morning winds were cool through the lattice, the
streaks of light were dark blue and the whole house was snoring in its sleep.

from Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider, 1939

Is this woman losing her mind or is she very anxious about what is about to happen in the new
day? Clearly she has been awake all night (for how many nights, I wonder) and she is driven to the
edge of madness — expressed by the paradoxical nature of her feelings — by something. To find
out what, we need to read further, and that's the point, isn't it?

An Example of the Introduction Corrective

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow,

from T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," 1936

Eliot is in the mood to correct our notion of Spring. Spring, that time when "a young man's fancy
turns to thoughts of love." Spring, a time of renewal. Spring, that time of new vigor that Chaucer
wrote about in the Canterbury Tales:

When April with his showers sweet

The drought of March has pierced unto the root
And bathed each vein with liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,
Quickened again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots

As you can tell by the title of Eliot's work, the April he has in mind is nothing of this sort. His April's
vitality positively hurts him.

An Example of the Introduction Preparatory

Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren't turned properly; they come in askew, free of
sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources. Take the idea of February 17, a
day of canceled expectations, the day I learned my job teaching English was finished because of
declining enrollment at the college, the day I called my wife from whom I'd been separated for nine
months to give her the news, the day she let slip about her "friend" — Rick or Dick or Chick.
Something like that.

from William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways, 1982

Moon's opening paragraph is preparatory. He is preparing us to be cautious of thoughts that come

at times when we are vulnerable, as he was on the evening of February 17th. Moon has had some
difficulties, as you can read, and now he has thought of his escape plan — to sell everything he
owns and buy a van to tour the country. In a wonderful book, Moon describes how his need to
escape turned into a journey of self-discovery.

An Example of the Introduction Narrative

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really
dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a
flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O
my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and
everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there
was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet
against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you
could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would
give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints
in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as
we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one,
and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with.

from Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, 1962

Burgess' narrator, Alex, is a fifteen year old sociopathic marauder of the future. In these opening
paragraphs from the novel, Alex is telling us about a typical day (evening really) in a story that will
take us into Alex's twisted mind and cruel world. Ultimately Alex's story is a story of redemption.

Finally, human psychology offers one more reason why writers need to pay special attention to
1
crafting a solid introduction. Years ago, George Miller conducted a series of experiments at
Harvard, in an attempt to research human learning, learning theory, and memory. In those
experiments, he flashed random digits, random words, random images, etc. to participants in the
experiments for a short period of time, and then he asked the participants to write down the
numbers, words, or images in the correct order, as best as they could remember them. What Miller
discovered was quite interesting and still very useful to
psychologists today.

But instead of my telling you the results, why not try a taste of the experiment for ourselves? When
you click on the words READY NOW below, you will see a random sequence of 11 numbers for
about a second or two (depending on the speeed of your system and its internet connection) and
then the page will disappear. Scan the numbers quickly, and jot them down on a piece of paper
after the screen disappears.

Concentrate, and try to remember the numbers as best you can:

READY NOW

When Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric in the 4th century BCE, he began a process of codifying the
possible ways that speakers or writers could persuade their audiences by the use of evidence. His
schema has proven so useful that it has been the foundation for philosophers and writers for more
than a millennium, and will likely endure as long as civilization does. Aristotle's outline of the use of
evidence for persuasive writing was just as useful for the ancients as it will be in the next century.

Evidence provides support for claims. Evidence is subcategorized according to how it is used to
support the claim. Evidence that focuses on our ability to think is classified asrational appeal,
evidence that focuses on our ability to 'feel' isemotional appeal, and evidence that focuses on our
ability to trust those we find to be credible is ethical appeal.

The Types of Evidence

Rational Appeals Emotional Appeals Ethical Appeals
· facts · the higher emotions · trustworthiness
· case studies 1. altruism · credibility
2. love
· statistics 3. ...
1. expert testimony
2. reliable sources
· experiments · the base emotions 3. fairness
· logical reasoning 1. greed
2. lust
· analogies 3. ...
· anecdotes

For example, consider these quotes from President Clinton's 1996 State of the Union speech. Here
Clinton combines all of the available means of persuasion for his given thesis:

 Ethical appeal (ethos)

 "Before I go on, I would like to take just a moment to thank my own family, and to thank the
person who has taught me more than anyone else over 25 years about the importance of
families and children — a wonderful wife, a magnificent mother and a great First Lady.
Thank you, Hillary" — showing himself to be a sensitive family man;

 Emotional appeal (pathos)

"I have heard Mrs. Gore say that it's hard to be a parent today, but it's even harder to be a
child" — reminding listeners of the challenges children face; and

 Rational appeal (logos)

"To the media, I say you should create movies and CDs and television shows you'd want
your own children and grandchildren to enjoy. I call on Congress to pass the requirement
for a V-chip in TV sets so that parents can screen out programs they believe are
inappropriate for their children. When parents control what their young children see, that is
not censorship; that is enabling parents to assume more personal responsibility for their
children's upbringing. And I urge them to do it."

Those three examples above appeared early in the address. To get a better sense of how Clinton
used those appeals, look at the whole passage from which I drew those examples:

"Our first challenge is to cherish our children and strengthen America's families. Family is the
foundation of American life. If we have stronger families, we will have a stronger America. Before I
go on, I would like to take just a moment to thank my own family, and to thank the person who has
taught me more than anyone else over 25 years about the importance of families and children — a
wonderful wife, a magnificent mother and a great First Lady. Thank you, Hillary.

All strong families begin with taking more responsibility for our children. I have heard Mrs. Gore say
that it's hard to be a parent today, but it's even harder to be a child. So all of us, not just as parents,
but all of us in our other roles — our media, our schools, our teachers, our communities, our
churches and synagogues, our businesses, our governments — all of us have a responsibility to
help our children to make it and to make the most of their lives and their God-given capacities.

To the media, I say you should create movies and CDs and television shows you'd want your own
children and grandchildren to enjoy. I call on Congress to pass the requirement for a V-chip in TV
sets so that parents can screen out programs they believe are inappropriate for their children. W hen
parents control what their young children see, that is not censorship; that is enabling parents to
assume more personal responsibility for their children's upbringing. And I urge them to do it. The V-
chip requirement is part of the important telecommunications bill now pending in this Congress. It
has bipartisan support, and I urge you to pass it now.

To make the V-chip work, I challenge the broadcast industry to do what movies have done — to
identify your programming in ways that help parents to protect their children. And I invite the leaders
of major media corporations in the entertainment industry to come to the White House next month
to work with us in a positive way on concrete ways to improve what our children see on television. I
am ready to work with you."

You can read the full text of another Presidential address to the nation that richly illustrated all
three appeals at work:

Richard M. Nixon's Resignation Speech

As evidence of Aristotle's value to all sorts of people, from Presidents to professors, you might be
interested in reading Russ Kratowicz's Ethos, pathos, logos, in which he demonstrates how
Aristotelian concepts apply to "real" life. The body of the essay is, of course, where all the really
work is done. Having gained the readers' attention in the introduction, the writer must now hold their
attention by offering substantial, interesting, compelling ideas that support, illustrate, exemplify, or
expand the thesis of the essay.

Schematically, the writing process can be captured in a flow chart that might look something like
this:
And it is in those middle paragraphs above (the body) that the hard work of reading, research,
drafting, and revising mostly rests. Some days I feel certain that the person who coined the cliché
"The devil is in the details" must have been a writer.

Regardless of topic, the bodies of all essays share two common features: a plan
of organization and a means of moving between different levels of abstraction — shifting from
general ideas to specific ideas and back again. Indeed, journalists sometimes call this second
point the "roller-coaster effect."

Furthermore, within each paragraph of the flow chart above, the ideas within each paragraph vary
by different levels of abstraction, as in the diagram below.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) wrote "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and
writing an exact man." I have feeling that by writing he meant the detailed work that goes into
preparing the body of the essay. For, as many writers have noted, it is often the process of writing
(the working out of the ideas in the body) that clarifies one's thoughts on any subject.

Your conclusion should neither be a summary nor a mere restatement of yourthesis. Instead, it
mustgo beyond the thesis to reach a judgment, to express your approval of one side of an issue, to
discuss your findings and their implications, or to offer directives. To put it succinctly, you should
say something worthwhile. After all, your readers have stayed with you through several pages; you
owe them a concluding statement.

In classical rhetoric, the conclusion served several functions:

 1. to inspire the audience with a favorable opinion of ourselves and an unfavorable opinion of
our opponents,
2. to amplify the force of the points we have made in the pervious section and to extenuate the
force of the points made by the opposition,
3. to rouse the appropriate emotions in the audience, and
4. to restate in a summary way our facts and arguments.

Composers of music, like writers, have several options to bring closure to their work. There exist
several devices through which writers (and musicians actually) signal the closure of a piece:

1. Thematic closure
 return to the beginning
 end on a key word
 end with a thematic reversal
2. Formal closure
 return to an earlier pattern
 resolve "tension"

To see closure at work, read these final paragraphs from Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974:

And so we ride on and on, down through Ukiah, and Hopland, and Cloverdale, down into the wine
country. The freeway miles seem so easy now. The engine which has carried us halfway through a
continent drones on and on in its continuing oblivion to everything but its own internal forces. We
pass through Asti and Santa Rosa, and Petaluma and Novato, on the freeway that grows wider and
fuller now, swelling with cars and trucks and buses full of people, and soon by the road are houses
and boats and the water of the Bay.

Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live,
but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but
penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these
things.

The formal closure that Pirsig achieves by detailing the last miles of his long motorcycle journey
are reflected in the thematic resolution of tension — a resolution that I am sure you can sense even
without having read the book. Similarly, J. S. Bach's "Little Fugue in G minor" marries formal
closure with a thematic resolution of tension. Listen to how the base and treble play against each
other throughout the piece, building a musical tension as they go, only to have resolution at last by
a harmonious union of the two voices by repetition of the major musical theme in the end:
A composer of music or letters has several options to signal closure. One needn't simply repeat
the thesis; one could consider alternatives.

1. Restate the thesis and reach beyond it with a recommendation, an evaluation, a

prediction, or a question. In essence, you must be conclusive; that is, you must present
your thesis in its final, most persuasive form. In the introduction you were giving the reader
an idea of what was to follow, trying to attract interest. In the conclusion, you have the
weight of the essay behind you, and you can state your case succinctly, knowing that the
reader has all the information you have provided.

For an example from music, listen to Pachelbel's "Canon in D major," where he builds a
simple baseline into a memorable melody by the end of the piece — signaling closure by
repetition that has the weight of all that went before.

For an example from writing, these concluding lines from Carl Jung's "Approaching the
Unconscious" are an example of how a thesis can be broadened at the end of an essay:

Our actual knowledge of the unconscious shows that it is a natural phenomenon and that,
like Nature itself, it is at least neutral. It contains all aspects of human nature — light and
dark, beautiful and ugly, good and evil, profound and silly. The study of individual, as well
as of collective, symbolism is an enormous task, and one that has not yet been mastered.
But a beginning has been made at last. The early results are encouraging, and they seem
to indicate an answer to many so far unanswered questions of present-day mankind. (94)

Consider another example 1

Let us face the problem straight on and try to erase it in the best way we can rather
than throw up our hands and say that all we can do is help the victims and merely
label the abuser a "black sheep." Let us look to the parent or guardian as a victim as
well and try, difficult though it may be, to show love, warmth, and concern to these
people who too often silently cry out of loneliness, isolation, and alienation. Their
violent beating of a child, though we cannot condone it, may be a cry for help.
People, whether young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, need love and the warmth
that family life brings. Unfortunately, those children who lack love fall victims to
hostile, aggressive physical abuse and probably, because they cannot give love,
grow up to be abusers themselves.

2. Close with an effective quotation. For example,

 Billy Budd, forced to leave the Rights of Man, goes aboard the Bellipotent where law, not
morality, is supreme. His death is an image of the crucifixion, but the image is not one of
hope. William Braswell best summarizes the mystery of the novel by suggesting that the
crucifixion, for Melville, "had long been an image of human life, more suggestive of man's
suffering than of man's hope" (146).

3. Return the focus of a literary study to the author. For example,

By her characterization of Walter, Lorraine Hansberry has raised the black male above the
typical stereotype. Walter is not a social problem, a mere victim of matriarchy. Rather,
Hansberry creates a character who breaks out of the traditional sociological image that
dehumanizes the black male. Creating a character who struggles with his fate and rises
above it, Hansberry has elevated the black male. As James Baldwin puts it, "Time has
made some changes in the Negro face" (24).

4. Offer a directive or solution. For example,

The four points above demonstrate a central issue: the troubled parents who were victims
in their own right and those who are victimized by circumstances today must be helped to
recognize their real potential as human beings. The responsibility falls on all health
professionals to provide the necessary treatment. Major cities across the nation and many
rural communities are establishing child abuse centers and parental self-help groups. A few
of the most successful community involvement programs are the Child Abuse Prevention
Center in Toledo, the Johnson County Coalition for Prevention of Child Abuse in Kansas
City, and the Council for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect in Seattle. More cities
should establish such programs.

5. Compare past to present. For example,

In the traditional patriarchal family, the child was legal property of the parents. But the idea
that children are the property of the parents and, therefore, may receive whatever
punishment seems necessary, no longer holds true. Social organizations and governmental
agencies now help young victims in their search for preventive measures. Unlike in the
past, children today have rights too!

This is the same device that Mark Twain uses in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
1885:

Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch guard for a watch, and
is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am
 rotten glad of it, because if I'd 'a' knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't 'a'
tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead
of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it.
I been there before.

Connecting the past to the present — the beginning to the end — is another motif frequently used
by both writers and composers. Listen to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14, "The Moonlight
Sonata."

What Beethoven is teaching us is that we should never do something in the conclusion that is not
anticipated by the work as a whole. In writing, this means never make a claim in your conclusion
that is unmentioned or unsupported elsewhere. New material may rarely enter a conclusion, and
when it does, it must be closely tied to the whole essay before it. To proclaim suddenly in a
conclusion that "the war in Iraq is right" is akin to anon sequitur.

Coherence is product of many different factors, which combine to make every paragraph, every
sentence, and every phrase contribute to the meaning of the whole piece. Coherence in writing is
much more difficult to sustain than coherent speech simply because writers have no nonverbal
clues to inform them if their message is clear or not. Therefore, writers must make their patterns of
coherence much more explicit and much more carefully planned. Coherence itself is the product of
two factors — paragraph unity and sentence cohesion.

Paragraph Unity

To achieve paragraph unity, a writer must ensure two things only. First, the paragraph must have a
single generalization that serves as the focus of attention, that is, a topic sentence. Secondly, a
writer must control the content of every other sentence in the paragraph's body such that (a) it
contains more specific information than the topic sentence and (b) it maintains the same focus of
attention as the topic sentence.

This generalization about paragraph structure holds true for the essay in particular. The two major
exceptions to this formula for paragraph unity are found in fiction (where paragraph boundaries
serve other functions, such as indicating when a new speaker is talking in a story) and in journalism
(where paragraphs are especially short to promote 'visual' ease by creating white space).
 Sentence Cohesion

To achieve cohesion, the link of one sentence to the next, consider the following techniques:
1. Repetition. In sentence B (the second of any two sentences), repeat a word from sentence
A.

2. Synonymy. If direct repetition is too obvious, use a synonym of the word you wish to
repeat. This strategy is call 'elegant variation.'

3. Antonymy. Using the 'opposite' word, an antonym, can also create sentence cohesion,
since in language antonyms actually share more elements of meaning than you might
imagine.

4. Pro-forms. Use a pronoun, pro-verb, or another pro-form to make explicit reference back to
a form mentioned earlier.

5. Collocation. Use a commonly paired or expected or highly probable word to connect one
sentence to another.

6. Enumeration. Use overt markers of sequence to highlight the connection between ideas.
This system has many advantages: (a) it can link ideas that are otherwise completely
unconnected, (b) it looks formal and distinctive, and (c) it promotes a second method of
sentence cohesion, discussed in (7) below.

7. Parallelism. Repeat a sentence structure. This technique is the oldest, most overlooked,
but probably the most elegant method of creating cohesion.

8. Transitions. Use a conjunction or conjunctive adverb to link sentences with particular

logical relationships.

a. Identity. Indicates sameness.

that is, that is to say, in other words, ...

b. Opposition. Indicates a contrast.

but, yet, however, nevertheless, still, though, although, whereas, in contrast, rather,
...

c. Addition. Indicates continuation.

 and, too, also, furthermore, moreover, in addition, besides, in the same way, again,
another, similarly, a similar, the same, ...

d. Cause and effect.

therefore, so, consequently, as a consequence, thus, as a result, hence, it follows

that, because, since, for, ...

e. Indefinites. Indicates a logical connection of an unspecified type.

in fact, indeed, now, ...

f. Concession. Indicates a willingness to consider the other side.

admittedly, I admit, true, I grant, of course, naturally, some believe, some people
believe, it has been claimed that, once it was believed, there are those who would
say, ...

g. Exemplification. Indicates a shift from a more general or abstract idea to a more

specific or concrete idea.

for example, for instance, after all, an illustration of, even, indeed, in fact, it is true, of
course, specifically, to be specific, that is, to illustrate, truly, ...

The audience of any piece of writing is the intended or potential reader or readers. For most
writers, this is the most importantconsideration in planning, writing, and reviewing a document. You
"adapt" your writing to meet the needs, interests, and background of the readers who will be reading
your writing.

It's important to anticipate the informational needs of your audience, so that as the writer, you can
supply the kind and amount of information in a way that most effectively conveys your ideas to the
readers:

 Background-knowledge, experience, training: One of your most important concerns is just

how much knowledge, experience, or training you can expect in your readers. If you expect
some of your readers to lack certain background, do you automatically supply it in your
document? Consider an example: imagine you're writing a guide to using a software
product that runs under Microsoft Windows. How much can you expect your readers to
know about Windows? If some are likely to know little about Windows, should you provide
that information? If you say no, then you run the risk of customers' getting frustrated with
 your product. If you say yes to adding background information on Windows, you increase
your work effort and add to the page count of the document (and thus to the cost).
Obviously, there's no easy answer to this question — part of the answer may involve just
how small a segment of the audience needs that background information.
 Needs and interests: To plan your document, you need to know what your audience is
going to expect from that document. Imagine how readers will want to use your document;
what will they demand from it. For example, imagine you are writing a manual on how to
use a new microwave oven: what are your readers going to expect to find in it? Imagine
you're under contract to write a background report on global warming for a national real
estate association: what do they want to read about; and, equally important, what do
theynot want to read about?
 Other demographic characteristics: And of course there are many other characteristics
about your readers that might have an influence on how you should design and write your
document — for example, age groups, type of residence, area of residence, sex, political
preferences, and so on.

Audience analysis can get complicated by at least three other factors: mixed audience types for
one document, wide variability within audience, and unknown audiences.

 More than one audience. You're likely to find that your report is for more than one audience.
For example, it may be seen by technical people (experts and technicians) and
administrative people (executives). What to do? You can either write all the sections so that
all the audiences of your document can understand them (not an easy task), or you can
write each section strictly for the audience that would be interested in it, using headings and
section introductions to alert your audience about where to go and what to stay out of in the
report.
 Wide variability in an audience. You may realize that, although you have an audience that
fits into only one category, there is a wide variability in its background. This is a tough one;
if you write to the lowest common denominator of reader, you're likely to end up with a
cumbersome, tedious, book-like thing that will turn off the majority of readers. But if you
don't write to that lowest level, you lose that segment of your readers. What to do? Most
writers go for the majority of readers and sacrifice that minority that needs more help.
Others put the supplemental information in appendixes or insert cross-references to
beginners' books.
 Unknown audience. The most difficult situation to face as a writer is the unknown audience.
The obvious advice is to spend whatever time or resources you need in order to find out all
you can about your audience's background. This should be part of your background
research as you prepare any report. However, despite your best efforts, there still may be
times when you find that you must write to an unknown audience. Given such
circumstances, some writers follow a strategy of assuming that the unknown audience is a
 hostile audience, meaning that the audience needs an extra effort from the writer to follow
and accept the writer's ideas. The burden is therefore on the writer to present more than
sufficient evidence to the audience. The writer must organize the evidence in the most
convincing way. The writer needs to adopt a tone that is neutral and unbiased toward the
subject under discussion so that the audience finds him/her open-minded, fair, and
considerate. These strategies are likely to improve the chances of holding the attention of
both the hostile and the unknown audiences.

Audience Adaptation

Writing to your audience may have a lot to do with in-born talent, intuition, and even mystery. But
there are some controls you can use to have a better chance to connect with your readers. The
following "controls" allow any writer a better chance of communicating with the audience:

 Add information readers need to understand your document.

Check to see whether certain key information is missing. For example, a critical series of
steps from a set of instructions; important background that helps beginners understand the
main discussion; definition of key terms. (See the page on the essay'sbody for details.)

 Omit information your readers do not need.

Unnecessary information can also confuse and frustrate readers After all, it's there so they
feel obligated to read it. For example, you can probably chop theoretical discussion from
basic instructions.

 Change the level of the information you currently have.

You may have the right information but it may be "pitched" at too high or too low a technical
level for the knowledge base of your reader. It may be pitched at the wrong kind of
audience; for example, at an expert audience rather than a general audience. This happens
most often when product-design notes are passed off as instructions.

 Add examples to help readers understand.

Examples are one of the most powerful ways to connect with audiences, particularly in
instructions. Even in noninstructional text, for example, when you are trying to explain a
technical concept, examples are a major help — analogies in particular.

 Change the level of your examples.

 You may be using examples but the technical content or level may not be appropriate to
your readers. Homespun examples may not be useful to experts; highly technical ones may
totally miss your nonspecialist readers.

 Change the organization of your information.

Sometimes, you can have all the right information but arrange it in the wrong way. For
example, there can be too much background information up front (or too little) such that
certain readers get lost. Sometimes, background information needs to woven into the main
information; for example, in instructions it's sometimes better to feed in chunks of
background at the points where they are immediately needed. (For related information, see
the pages on thebody of an essay and pages on organization in an essay.)

 Strengthen transitions.

It may be difficult for readers, particularly nonspecialists, to see the connections between
the main sections of your report, between individual paragraphs, and sometimes even
between individual sentences. You can make these connections much clearer by
adding transition words and by echoing key words more accurately. Words like "therefore,"
"for example," "however" are transition words: they indicate the logic connecting the
previous thought to the upcoming thought. You can also strengthen transitions by carefully
echoing the same key words. In a complex essay, it's not a good idea to vary word choice;
use the same words so that people don't get any more confused than they may already be.
(More detail about transition is on the coherence and unity page.)

 Write stronger introductions — both for the whole document and for major sections.

People seem to read with more confidence and understanding when they have the "big
picture" — a view of what's coming and how it relates to what they've just read. Therefore,
make sure you have a strong introduction to the entire document — one that makes clear
the topic, purpose, audience, and contents of that document. And for each major section
within your document, use mini-introductions that indicate at least the topic of the section
and give an overview of the subtopics to be covered in that section. (See the page
onintroductions both for whole reports and for sections within reports.)

 Create topic sentences for paragraphs and paragraph groups.

It can help readers immensely to give them an idea of the topic and purpose of a section (a
group of paragraphs) and in particular to give them an overview of the subtopics about to
be covered. Road maps help when you're in a different state! (See the pages on the thesis
sentence.)
 Change sentence style and length.

How you write — down at the individual sentence level — can make a big difference too. In
instructions, for example, using imperative voice and "you" phrasing is vastly more
understandable than the passive voice or third-personal phrasing. For some reason,
personalizing your writing style and making it more relaxed and informal can make it more
accessible and understandable. Passive, person-less writing is harder to read; put people
and action in your writing. Similarly, go for active verbs as opposed to be verb phrasing. All
of this makes your writing more direct and immediate; readers don't have to dig for it.
(There is more about active and passive verbs on the sentence structure and
emphasis pages.)

And obviously, sentence length matters as well. An average of somewhere between 15 and
25 words per sentence is about right; sentences over 30 words are to be mistrusted.

 Work on sentence clarity and economy.

This is closely related to the previous "control" but deserves its own spot. Often, writing
style can be so wordy that it is hard or frustrating to read. When you revise your rough
drafts, put them on a diet-go through a draft line by line trying to reduce the overall word,
page or line count by 20 percent. Try it as an experiment and see how you do. You'll find a
lot of fussy, unnecessary detail and inflated phrasing you can chop out. (See the pages
on sentence-style and clarity problems for details.)

 Use more or different graphics.

For nonspecialist audiences, you may want to use more graphics — and simpler ones at
that. Writing for specialists and experts tends to be less illustrated, less graphically
attractive — even boring to the eye! Graphics for specialists tend to be more detailed, more
complex. In documents for nonspecialists, there also tend to be more "decorative" graphics
— ones that serve no strict informative or persuasive purpose at all.

 Break text up or consolidate text into meaningful, usable chunks.

For nonspecialist readers, you may need to have shorter paragraphs. Notice how much
longer paragraphs are in technical documents written for specialists. (Maybe a 6- to 8-line
paragraph is the dividing line.)

 Add cross-references to important information.

 In complex essays, you can help nonspecialist readers by pointing them to background
sources. If you can't fully explain a topic on the spot, point to a book or article where it is.
(See the page ondocumentation for details.)

 Use headings and lists.

Readers can be intimidated by big dense paragraphs of writing, uncut by anything other
than a blank line now and then. Search your rough drafts for ways to incorporate headings;
look for changes in topic or subtopic. Search your writing for listings of things; these can be
made into vertical lists. Look for paired listings such as terms and their definitions; these
can be made into two-column lists. Of course, be careful not to force this special formatting;
don't overdo it. (See the pages on outlining for details.)

 Use special typography, and work with margins, line length, line spacing, type size, and
type style.

For nonspecialist readers, you can do things like making the lines shorter (bringing in the
margins), using larger type sizes, and other such tactics. Certain type styles are believed to
be friendlier and more readable than others. (Try to find someone involved with publishing
to get their insights on fonts.)

These are the kinds of "controls" that professional writers use to finetune their work and make it as
readily understandable as possible. And in contrast, it's the accumulation of lots of problems in
these areas — even seemingly minor ones — that add up to a document being difficult to read and
understand. Nonprofessionals often question why professional writers and editors insist on
bothering with such seemingly picky, trivial, petty details in writing, but they all add up! It reminds
me of the Chinese saying about a "death by a thousand cuts."

Good writing is writing that is also pleasing to the ear. That is, good writing is euphonic. Euphony
in writing is a mixture of several processes in language, but the one process I want to share with
you this term is establishing euphony by developing an effective rhythm in your writing. Establishing
and maintaining effective rhythm in writing is a combination of using parallelism for balance and
controlling sentence endings for emphasis. (See the page about Coherencefor more on
parallelism.)

Balance and Rhythm

Words like and, but,or, for, so, yet are used to join parts of a sentence or two or more parts of a
sentence together in a process called coordination. Coordination will grace a sentence with a
movement and rhythm more literate than a noncoordinated sentence. Compare:
  Professional sports such as baseball and football alienate their fans by catering to
athletes who seem more interested in contracts than performance. Owners alienate
fans by caring only for profits.
 Professional baseball and football have alienated fans by catering to owners who
care only for profits and to athletes who care more for contracts than performance.

Although the second sentence is longer than first one, most readers find that it reads better —
sounds better. Those examples illustrate that we can write longer sentences when necessary
without sacrificing readability. (Often we have to: language is the best vehicle we have to carry our
thoughts. Occasionally, we will need complicated, complex sentences to express our thoughts
simply because there are no shorter sentences that can manage the job.) The goal however is to
write those complex sentences with elegance. And we can do that through the process of
coordination.

We can enhance the grace and rhythm of any sentence using coordination if we remember three
simple principles:

1. place the shorter of the coordinated elements first,

2. use correlative conjunctions, and
3. balance the length of the coordinated parts.

First, a coordinated series will move more gracefully if each succeeding coordinated member is
longer than the one before it. So if you coordinate within a conjunction, try compose the sentence
so that the longest member of the series is the last. Compare these sentences, in which the first
sentence violates this principle while the second sustains it:

 Tobacco companies will continue to entice insecure teenagers who have been
hypnotized by the glamor of smoking and need ego support and adults addicted by
their habit.
 Tobacco companies will continue to entice adults addicted by their habit and insecure
teenagers who need ego support and have been hypnotized by the glamor of
smoking.

Most readers find the first version of that sentence much harder to read and less "elegant" than
the second version. The reason is coordination. Whenever two sentences components are joined
by and in the first version, the longer component is placed before the shorter — violating our first
rule of euphony above. The second version follows that rule, placing the shorter before the longer.
We can see the difference if we look at each sentence in a schematic.
Schematically, the first version of the sentence looks like this:

Tobacco companies
will continue
to entice
\
insecure teenagers
| \
| who have been hypnotized
| by the glamor of smoking
| |
| and
| |
| need ego support
|
and
|
|
adults addicted by their habit.

Schematically, the second version of that sentence looks like

Tobacco companies
will continue
to entice
\
adults addicted by their habit
|
and
|
insecure teenagers
\
who need ego support
|
and
|
have been hypnotized
by the glamor of smoking.

Comparing the two sentences above, we can see that the coordinated parts move from shorter to
longer in the second sentence, creating a rhythmically more attractive line.

The second principle uses correlative conjunctions to "announce" to the reader that the sentence
has multiple parts. Furthermore, correlative conjunction provide a balanced coordination and
heighten its dramatic impact. Correlative conjunctions are sets of words that not only link parts of a
sentence together but they also "signal" the connection between the parts through specific words
such as both X and Y, not only X but also Y,neither X nor Y.

Compare this sentence without correlative conjunctions

The chances of a minority language's survival

diminish considerably if the speakers of
the majority language
\
advocate a policy of
discrimination
|
and
|
forbid the use of the
minority language in
\
schools
|
and
|
public places.

to the same sentence with correlative conjunctions.

The chances of a minority language's survival

diminish considerably if the speakers of
the majority language
\
not only advocate a policy of
discrimination
|
but
|
also forbid the use of the
minority language in
\
both schools
|
and
|
public places.

The second sentence above is clearly stronger than the first. Notice that the correlative
conjunctions helps to improve the readability of the second sentence, even though the sentence is
already using the first principle of coordination. The correlatives add a "map" — in a manner of
speaking — aiding the reader's processing of the various, long components of the sentence.
The third principle is to balance the internal parts of phrases or clauses against one another.
Consider the following example, a sentence that is long, yet manages to sustain a high degree of
readability despite the sentence's complexity:

 Neither the tawdry trash of tabloid talk shows nor the sentimental romance of
melodramatic soaps represent the potential that television news promised as a
communications medium or that television entertainment can create as a visual
medium.

That sentence works only because of the balance that parallelism provides. We can see the
sentence's balance better if we look at the sentence schematically:

/ the tawdry trash of \

/ tabloid talk shows \
/ \
Neither -- nor -- represent
\ /
\ the sentimental romance /
\ of melodramatic soaps /

/ that television news promised \

/ as a communications medium \
/ \
the potential -- or |
\ /
\ that television entertainment /
\ can create as a visual medium./

The richest kind of parallelism in coordinated elements counterpoints grammar and meaning: in
the sentence above, the negative grammatical subject is balanced against the positive grammatical
object. Further, the subject and the object are balanced in length and in grammatical complexity.
Finally, the vocabulary of the sentence also provides a sense of balance:

tawdry is balanced against sentimental,

trash against romance,
tabloid against melodramatic,
talk shows against soaps,
television news against television entertainment,
promised against create, and
communications medium against visual medium.

Emphasis and Rhythm

In written English, emphasis is largely a matter of controlling the way a sentence ends. The last
words of English sentences carry the strongest degree of emphasis. When we maneuver into that
sentence-final, stressed, emphatic position our most important ideas and information, we
underscore the most significant idea through grammar. Even natural, intonational stress can seem
weak and anticlimactic if we let a sentence end on lightweight words.

Different parts of speech carry different weights. Prepositions are very light (meaning that they
provide very little information). This is one reason why we sometimes avoid leaving a preposition at
the end of a sentence. Sentences should move toward strength; ending with a prepositions dilutes
that strength. Compare:

 Mediocrity in government is something that, unfortunately, many Americans are

willing to put up with.
 Mediocrity in government is something that, unfortunately, many Americans are
willing to endure.

Adjectives and adverbs are heavier than prepositions, but lighter than verbs or nouns. The
heaviest (most informative) words are nouns, particularly nominalizations (nouns created from verbs
or adjectives). Go to the Nominalization and Passive Voice page to learn more about those
sentence patterns and their stylistic properties. So if you want to end your sentence with greatest
emphasis to highlight a particularly important point, end with a nominalization. Compare an early
draft to the final draft of the closing lines of Winston Churchill's "Finest Hour" speech. Notice how he
changes the verbs at the end of the first draft into nouns (nominalizations actually) in the final draft
to create more emphasis:

... until in God's good time, the New World with all its power and might steps forth to rescue and to
liberate the Old.

... until in God's good time, the New World with all its power and might steps forth to the rescue and
the liberation of the Old.

As useful as nominalizations can be to emphasize a point, the overuse of nominalization (and a

related construction called passive voice) is a hallmark of written English — especially in academic,
business, and technical fields. Read the Nominalization and Passive Voice page to learn more
about the problems associated with those stylistic features. Speakers and writers of any human
language have many options when they compose each sentence they utter. English, for example,
has been gifted with an enormous variety of sentence types. At first glance, each different sentence
type may appear to mean exactly the same as every other type in the examples below so that one
has the idea that there is an enormous amount of wasteful redundancy in the language. But that's
not true. Each sentence has its own subtleties of emphasis and meaning.

Consider the sentenceJohn sent Mary a letterbelow. It expresses the proposition in the most
common grammatical pattern in English — the grammaticalsubject expresses theactor, the
grammaticalverb expresses theaction, and the grammatical objectsexpress
the beneficiaryand goal of the action.

1. The BASIC clause pattern in English

Grammar Subject Verb Indirect Object Direct Object

Meaning Actor Action Beneficiary Goal
Example John sent Mary a letter.

In other words, what it means to be a subject in the basic English clause is to convey meaning
about the actor or agent responsible for the actionrealized in the verb, etc. However, in addition to
the basic clause, there are several more ways to express the same "basic" information, ways that
allow the speaker or writer to emphasize and focus on different parts of the sentence.

2. PASSIVE VOICE

In the passive voice sentence pattern, we find a "reversal" of the information that is presented in
the basic clause pattern. That is, the subject conveys the goal, not the actor, and the actor is
mentioned later in the clause (in a structure known to grammarians as the adverbial); sometimes
the actor is not mentioned at all. For example, consider both example below, where first the subject
expresses the goal in the first example and then the subject expresses the recipient in the next
example.

Grammar Subject Verb Adverbial Adverbial

Meaning Goal Action Recipient Actor
Example The letter was sent to Mary by John.

and

Grammar Subject Verb Direct Object Adverbial

Meaning Recipient Action Goal Actor
Example Mary was sent a letter by John.
Passive voice allows the writer to focus attention on the recipient or thegoal at those times when
the writer wants to ensure that the readers' attention is focused on the most important part of the
message in the sentence.

3. Wh- CLEFT

To cleave means to cut or split into two parts, and the cleft sentence takes its name from the the
fact that the single clause of the basic sentence pattern above is split into two clauses. (We
recognize a clause by the presence of a subject and a verb.) The Wh- cleft is a sentence that splits
the basic clause into two parts, with one of the sentence's parts beginning with a word that starts
a wh. For example, from the basic clause in (1) above, we can create several different wh-
sentences of similar meaning:

Grammar Subject Verb Complement

Meaning Theme Process Goal
Example What John sent to Mary was the letter

In this example above, the fact that the basic clause has been split into two clauses allows us to
emphasize both John and the letter in the same sentence. (You can "hear" the emphasis
on John and the letter in the sentence when you read the sentence aloud — note the extra stress
on those two phrases.) The subordinate clause What John sent to Mary is theTheme of the Wh-
cleft above: theme is the term used in systemic linguistics for the part of the clause the introduces
the message in the clause.

The next example, below, splits the clause with emphasis on the actor (John) and what he did (the
action).

Grammar Subject Verb Complement

Meaning Theme Process Goal
Example What John did was send the letter to Mary

Finally, the last wh- example, below, splits the basic clause in yet a different way to allow the writer
to emphasize all three elements of the basic clause at once — the actor, action, recipient, and goal.

Grammar Subject Verb Complement

Meaning Theme Process Goal
Example What happened was that John sent Mary the letter.
Although the wh- clefts above are similar in meaning, they are not thesame as (1) above or each
other.

4. It CLEFT

It clefts allow writers another type of sentence that splits the basic clause pattern into two parts.
The theme in this sentence pattern is an "empty" function word, a pronoun, it, that really has no
meaning like an ordinary pronoun since it refers to nothing. Instead, the it cleft allows the writer to
focus on the actor in the first example below or on the goal, as in the second example below.

Grammar Subject Verb Complement

Meaning Theme Process focus on Actor
Example It was John who sent the letter to Mary.

Grammar Subject Verb Complement

Meaning Theme Process focus on Goal
Example It was the letter that John sent.

5. OTHER MARKED THEMES

In systemic linguistics, the grammatical subjects in the it cleft and wh- cleft sentences above are
called "marked" themes since those sentences do not begin with the expected, common, ordinary
subject of the basic clause pattern (which is called the "unmarked" theme). Another type of marked
theme can be seen below, a type characterized by the use of the grammatical object at the
beginning of the sentence.

Grammar Direct Object Subject Verb Adverbial

Meaning Goal Actor Action Recipient
Example The letter John sent to Mary.

In the example above, the direct object (the letter) holds the focus of attention as it takes the lead
in the sentence. Occasionally, a writer will seek to add extra emphasis to the object by using a
pronoun (it) to serve as another grammatical object in the in usual position of the grammatical
object, as in the example below.

Grammar Direct Object Subject Verb Direct Object Adverbial

Meaning Goal Actor Action Goal Recipient
Example The letter John sent it to Mary.

When a sentence has an indirect object, that constituent may also function as a marked theme,
the focus of attention, by beginning the sentence. In the example below, notice too the use of the
"second" pronoun (her) object for added emphasis.

Grammar Indirect Object Subject Verb Indirect Object Direct Object

Meaning Benefactor Actor Action Recipient Goal
Example Mary, John sent her the letter.

There are two points I hope you gather from this rather detailed, technical discussion. First, that
each and every sentence you write is important to building an intelligible, "readable" essay. Second,
that human language has this much variety not to confuse or create redundancy, but rather to allow
us to choose the part of our message (the sentence) where we want to place our emphasis. For
example, as an answer to the question Was it John or Bill who sent the letter?, we would more likely
get It was John who sent the letter to Mary than Mary was sent a letter by John. Likewise, as an
answer to What did John send Mary?, we would be more likely to getThe letter, John sent to
Mary than Mary, John sent her the letter.

Each sentence is a remarkable package of information, tailor-made for the situational and linguistic
context. A good writing style grows from an awareness of how a writer crafts his/her sentence to its
context.

There are two sentence patterns that are particularly praised as hallmarks of excellent prose — the
resumptive and summative modifier.

Appositives as Resumptive Modifiers

Appositives are grammatical structures that rename and elaborate upon another part of a clause.
Appositives can be used effectively by writers as 'resumptive modifiers.' A resumptive modifier
repeats a key noun, verb, or adjective and then resumes the line of thought, elaborating on what
went before. The effect is to let the reader pause for a moment, to consider the most significant part
of the message, and then move on. It also helps resolve any problem the reader might have with
ambiguous modifiers. Moreover, if you pick your spots carefully — and not too frequently — you can
use resumptive modifiers to highlight important ideas:
  A real danger in this digital revolution is the potential it holds for dividing society, a society
that will divide into two camps, the techno-elite and the techno-peasants, a society where a
"wired" few will prosper at the expense of the masses.

Relative Clauses as Summative Modifiers

Relative clauses often function as modifiers within another clause, allowing a writer to pack more
information in a clearly understandable way into one sentence. Relative clauses are recognizable
since they usually begin with a wh- word (like who, whom, whose, which or that in place of which).
Careful writers often use relative clauses as summative modifiers. With a summative modifier, you
end a segment of a sentence with a comma, sum up in a noun or noun phrase what you have just
said, and then continue with a relative clause. Summative modifiers let you avoid the ambiguity of a
vague which and let you extend the sentence without becoming monotonous:

 In the last twenty years, the world has moved from the industrial age to the information age,
a sociological event that will change forever the way we work and think.