Aphorisms on Structure

Having a good idea and having a good paper are clean different things: a good idea refers to an effective interpretation of something, while a good paper consists of the effective articulation of a good idea. Don’t allow your good ideas to be murdered by bad papers. Because others have no access to your mind, only to your words, having a good idea does you no good if it isn’t expressed effectively in a paper. I would go so far as to say that, in the world of academic writing, there are no ideas, only papers (or, more accurately, your papers are all that any one else has access to).

To be effective, a paper must be properly organized, a word we take from the Greek organon, which means “that with which one works.” Just consider the organs in your body: there are individual organs (the heart, the lungs, the liver), and there are organ systems (the circulatory system, the respiratory system, the digestive system). For your body to function, each organ system must perform the general task for which it is responsible, and within each system each individual organ must perform a specific task in order for that system to work. Your body only works if each of its internal parts performs the task for which it is responsible, and the same is true of your papers.

At some point in your schooling, you may have been taught “the five-paragraph essay,” a tool for organizing arguments that is commonly used for high school and SAT writing. Forget everything you know about the five-paragraph essay, but also don't. Forget the idea that all arguments can be made in five paragraphs, one that is an introduction, three that give examples, and one that offers a conclusion. Forget the notion that your opening paragraph should end with your thesis, which specifies three important points, one for each of your three body paragraphs, after which you recap those points in a conclusion. Don't forget, however, that argumentation almost always follows the general outline of introduction, body, conclusion: first introduce an issue and make a claim about it, then support your claim by addressing particular aspects of the issue, and finally conclude by considering the importance and implications of your claim. Any argument that you ever make for the rest of your life will be more complex than this, but it is important to understand this general movement.

These three sections – introduction, body, conclusion – are the “organ systems,” as it were, of a paper; each system has individual “organs” that must perform specific tasks in order for the system to operate effectively. General tasks must be performed by each of the major sections of a paper – Introduction, Body, Conclusion – and specific tasks must be performed by each of the individual parts (the “organs”) in order for each section (each “organ system”) to function effectively.

Having a longish (two- or three-page) introduction is perfectly fine, even encouraged, as you move toward the more sophisticated papers of college-level writing.

When organizing an argument, allow your text to do your organization for you as much as possible. If you are making an argument about history, allow the chronological sequence of events to structure your presentation. If you are advancing some abstract theory, work sequentially through your logic, from start to finish. If you are reading a text, work sequentially through that text, unless there is some significant benefit to a different organization.

When you write a paper, you’re telling a story, not a summary of your text, but the story of an idea – an idea that, like a literary text, has a beginning, middle, and end. The body of your paper should lead your reader sequentially through your idea, from beginning to middle to end.

Academic papers, especially shorter papers (up to 10 pages), are so short that you really only have time to do something once, so you have to do it well and in a way that your reader’s going to remember. 

Title: Don’t try to be cute or funny in titles. Don’t ask questions in titles. Instead, your titles should identify your text (the book, idea, topic, situation, event, phenomenon, etc. under consideration), specify any key pieces of textual evidence(particular documents, aspects, cases, examples, data, or the like that you emphasize), and gesture toward your argument(your central claim about your text).

Introduction: In advanced academic writing, it is not enough simply to have a good argument. In research papers, that argument must be framed as it relates to the published scholarship on an issue, and this framing ought to occur in your introduction. At the very least, your introduction must articulate what you’re interpreting (your text), why it needs interpretation (your problem), and what your interpretation is (your thesis); you might also consider including some thoughts on how you’re going about your interpretation (your method). In the outline I’m offering here, there are four main components to an introduction: your analytical question, your literature review, your method, and your thesis. You could consider providing a paragraph for each component.

Analytical Question: Don’t start your paper with any version of the statement, “Humankind has always ... ,” or, “Since ancient times … ”. Don’t begin with some random quote from a Socrates or a Machiavelli. And don’t start with a definition from Webster’s Dictionary. Instead, your opening should get straight into the problem at hand by offering a quick close reading that leads up to an analytical question. You write an analytical question by making a reference, making a claim, and asking a question. More specifically, you (1) present one or more key pieces of evidence from your text, (2) analyze that evidence, and (3) open up a field of inquiry by discussing the problems and questions that emerge from your analysis of that evidence.

Evidence: The evidence you use to build up to your analytical question might be textual evidence or historical evidence. As always with evidence, you must analyze it for your reader (in this case, en route to an analytical question).

Problem₁: Every paper must state its problem, the reason it needs to exist, or the reason the text in question needs to be interpreted. It is important to justify the reason your text needs interpretation early in your paper, and you will probably include multiple statements of your problem peppered throughout your paper. Your first statement of your problem, what I call problem₁, should be a “problem statement” about your text: What is the question about or problem with your text, and why is that question a question, that problem a problem?

Literature Review: Identify your text and review the scholarship devoted to that text (that is, the previous attempts to interpret the text, especially as the scholarship pertains to the specific problem in the text that you’ve identified in your problem₁).

Text: After your analytical question, clearly state your text, which is the thing you’re interpreting in your paper, whether that “thing” is a book, idea, situation, action, event, trend, or some other social phenomenon. Your textis a promise to your reader that must be fulfilled by your argument. Your text must be what your argument is about, and your argument must be an interpretation of your text. Your “text statement” should identify the specific aspect(s) of the specific document(s) that you’re addressing. Especially if your analytical question opened up a field of inquiry by asking several leading questions, it’s important to identify a narrow and specific topic of consideration.

Critical Community: Your critical community is the scholars who have interpreted the same text that you’re interpreting, maybe not the exact same aspect of the text that you’re focusing on, but at least the same general topic. Through citation, quotation, paraphrase, and summary, review and analyze these previous interpretations, narrating the various camps or perspectives that exist in this academic conversation, identifying any classic or landmark scholars or works, and explaining which interpretations are the least satisfactory and which are the most illuminating.

Problem₂: If your problem₁ is a statement about a problem that exists in your text, your problem₂ is a statement about a problem that exists in the critical response to that text (that is, in the critical community you’ve just mapped out). Justify the need for your paper to exist for a second time by identifying any gaps in the scholarship, any unresolved issues regarding your text, and/or any issues that are wrongfully thought to be resolved.

Method Paragraph: If your text is the thing you’re interpreting, your method is the way in which you’re going about your interpretation. Not every research paper involves a unique or specialized method. If your marshaling and analyzing evidence from your text, you don’t need to say that because that’s what every academic paper does. If, however, there is some specialized approach or perspective that you’re taking, then you should be explicit about it. Your statement of your method might discuss your theoretical community and define any terms that may play a major role in your argument.

What’s at Stake: You should articulate how you’re going about your interpretation, sure, but also the virtue of going about your interpretation in that way. That is, identity the academic field or area of inquiry that your interpretation has the potential to impact.

Theoretical Community: If your critical community is the scholars who have already addressed the issue you’re addressing, your theoretical community is the theorists and philosophers who have provided you with abstract ideas and conceptual schemes that have aided you in your interpretation of your text (or, alternately, ideas and schemes that are contributing to your articulation of your argument, even if they did not play a major role in your actual interpretive process).

Terms: Your statement of your method is also the place to identify and define any key terms that may play a role in your argument. Don't assume your reader knows your analytical vocabulary, or shares your understanding of key concepts. The idea behind defining terms is that you can explain in detail what you mean by a given term, then you can use that term whenever you need to (especially in your thesis) without having to explain yourself every time. Often these terms will be the abstract ideas and conceptual schemes that you’ve drawn out from your theoretical community, and you can use the writings of those theorists and philosophers to help you define your terms.

Thesis Paragraph: Once you’ve introduced your text, clearly and concisely state your thesis about that text (that is, your central claim about and original contribution to our understanding of the text). Remember that your thesis must be responsive to your text; you must actually be interpreting what you said you were going to interpret. Your thesisshould also be responsive to your problem(s); how does your argument resolve or explain the problems or questions that you’ve identified in your text? Usually a thesis comes at the end of an introduction, though it is important to remember that, given the somewhat sophisticated introduction outlined here, the end of your introduction probably won’t be the end of your first paragraph. You may want to consider including two parts to your thesis statement: a short sentence that offers a truth-claim, and a longer sentence or two offering a logic-claim.

Truth-Claim: In your thesis statement, your truth-claim is a clear and concise statement of what you want your reader to understand about your text.

Logic-Claim: Your logic-claim is a brief summary of the reasoning that underwrites your truth-claim, reasoning that will be addressed in deeper detail and supported with evidence in the body of your paper.

(Counter/Response: If your argument is particularly provocative or implausible (that’s a good thing!), you might consider acknowledging and responding to any obvious counter-arguments directly after stating your thesis. Do so by drawing attention to the provocative or implausible aspect of your argument, and then defuse those concerns.)

Body: Having introduced your text, outlined your problem, reflected on your method, and stated your thesis, you’re ready to move into the body of your paper, which gives evidence and analysis to support your argument. Whether you are writing a section or paragraph, the basic organization is the same. You make an assertion; you provide the evidence that supports your assertion; you offer some analysis that describes how that evidence supports your assertion; and you offer some analysis that describes how that assertion supports your main argument. As such, you can think of every body section/paragraph as a miniature essay, and every paper as a gigantic section/paragraph: they follow the same structure, only on a different scale. In a paper you make an argument in your introduction, then you give the evidence for that argument in your body paragraphs, and you explain why your argument matters in your discussion. In a section/paragraph you make an assertion, then you give the evidence for that assertion, and you analyze how that evidence supports your assertion and how that assertion supports your argument.

Assertion: Most body sections/paragraphs should begin with an assertion, or a claim about a particular piece or set of evidence. Don’t write topic sentences; write assertions. Topic sentences tell your reader the topic to be addressed in a section/paragraph; assertions make interpretive claims about the material being addressed. It might be helpful to think of an assertion as the thesis statement of a section/paragraph. Like a thesis statement, an assertion is a claim that hasn’t yet been supported with evidence, and just as your thesis is followed by body paragraphs that support it, your assertions should always be followed by evidence.

Evidence: In the system for writing papers that I’m presenting here, there are three kinds of evidence: textual evidence, historical evidence, and citational evidence.

Textual Evidence: As the most important kind of evidence, textual evidence consists of the specific aspects of your text (e.g. data, examples, cases, etc.) that you focus on for detailed analysis. In terms of the kinds of sections/paragraphs outlined above, textual evidence is what you bring in for passages of demonstration.

Historical Evidence: Historical evidence is information that, strictly speaking, does not fall within the narrowly defined realm of your text, but information that is nonetheless relevant to your interpretation of that text (e.g. cultural histories, biographies, laws, legislations, circumstances, analogies, precedents, etc.). In terms of the above kinds of sections/paragraphs, historical evidence is what you bring in for moments of situation.

Citational Evidence: Citational evidence is the scholarship that you draw upon to help you present and interpret your other kinds of evidence (e.g. a critic who has addressed one of your examples or a historian who has surveyed a cultural history that is relevant to your topic). In terms of the kinds of sections/paragraphs, citational evidence can be brought in at any point, but it is especially helpful for moments of explanation.

Analysis: Don’t assume your reader will connect the dots for you if you provide the evidence that supports your argument. You’re the analyst here, so do your job. After each piece of evidence you present – or, sometimes, after presenting chunks of evidence – you must analyze the meaning of that evidence.

Analysis₁: After presenting evidence – whether textual, historical, or citational – you should offer some analysisthat describes how the evidence you’ve offered supports the assertion it is supposed to support.

Analysis₂: After you analyze how your evidence supports your assertion, you should offer some further analysisthat connects that assertion back to the overall argument you’re making in the paper.

Counters and Responses: Be sure to account for alternate possible interpretations by including counters and responses. You should include counters and responses at both the paragraph-level and the paper-level; that is, address counter-claims or counter-evidence to your argument as well as counter-claims or counter-evidence to your assertions and analyses.

Counters: Don’t think about counters by asking, “What are the opinions I know to be wrong that I can easily knock down,” which is called a straw-man argument (i.e., one easily knocked down). Think about counters by asking, “How could someone who is just as intelligent as me, or more intelligent, come to a different conclusion when looking at the same evidence?” Alternately, sometimes it can be more useful to present counter-evidence than counter-arguments.

Responses: In your response to a counter, you must explain not only why your position is a more satisfying position but also where the thinking of your imaginary interlocutors goes off-course. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you must bat down violently and absolutely any position that is different from your own, of thinking that it is a weakness to qualify your argument. It is actually a sign of intellectual strength to be aware of the limits of your claims, and to acknowledge honestly any loose ends that remain. Use your discussion of counters to qualify your argument. Sometimes it’s not a matter of being right or wrong; it’s just a matter of different perspectives or different emphases.

Conclusion: Having stated your thesis in your introduction, and offered evidence and analysis to support it in the body of your paper, you should use your conclusion to return to the problem(s) or question(s) you mapped out in your problem to address how your argument fits into that conversation. As such, your conclusion is the place to offer an overview of your argument, to deal with any major counter-arguments, and to discuss the implications of your ideas.

Counters and Responses: Consider beginning your conclusion by identifying any major counters to your central argument, whether those counters are actual or hypothetical, and responding to them.

Argument: Provide a thorough overview of your argument, or the sequence of concepts and claims that underwrites your thesis. An “argument statement” will usually be significantly longer than a “thesis statement” because your argument synthesizes all the concepts, claims, evidence, and analyses presented throughout the paper into one clear yet concise statement (whereas a thesis simply gives the “take away” from the argument).

Implications: One of the last things to do in a paper is to explain why any of this matters: this is the inevitable “so what?” State the usefulness of your argument, its implications and importance, but be aware of certain traps when articulating your implications. Don’t try to save the world. Don’t try to make your reader a better person. Instead, provide specific thoughts on how your ideas might contribute to a specific topic of study or field of knowledge. Don't try to write to all or even multiple audiences. Instead, be aware of the intellectual community to which you want to contribute, and use your conclusion to explain how your interpretation advances our understanding of a certain topic or field. You may also use your concluding thoughts to provide specific questions that still remain; to provide specific directions for future research; and/or to provide specific policy implications.