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Having arrived at these three paraphrases, we can use them to explore what they suggest—i.e., their implications. Here is a short list. Once you start paraphrasing, you discover that there’s a lot going on in this sentence.

One implication of the sentence is that as people come to know more and more, they feel less confident about what they know.

Another is that ignorance and stupidity are probably not the same thing though they are often equated.

Another is that there’s a difference between feeling certain about something and being aware of this certainty as a conviction.

Another implication is that stupidity is hard to define—perhaps it can only be defined in practice, “operationally,” and not as an abstract concept.

As we paraphrased, we were struck by the repetition of “certainty” in “certain,” which led us to wonder about the tone of the passage. Tone may be understood as the implicit point of view, the unspoken attitude of the statement towards itself and its readers. The piece overtly attacks “a conviction of certainty” as “a sign of ignorance” and perhaps (“may be”) “a definition of stupidity.” So by implication, being less sure you are right would be a sign of wisdom. But the statement itself seems extremely sure of itself, brimming with confidence: it asserts “a certain sign.”

One implication of this apparent contradiction is that we are meant to take the statement with a grain of salt; read it as poking fun at itself (ironically)— demonstrating the very attitude it advises us to avoid.

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Try This 2.6: Experiment with Paraphrase 3 3

Recast the substantive language of the following statements using Paraphrase × 3:

“I am entitled to my opinion.”

“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

“That’s just common sense.”

What do you come to understand about these remarks as a result of paraphrasing? Which words, for example, are most slippery (that is difficult to define and thus rephrase), and why?

It is interesting to note, by the way, that Thomas Jefferson originally wrote the words “sacred and undeniable” in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, instead of “self-evident.” So what?

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Try This 2.7: Paraphrase and Implication

Two recent books on Abraham Lincoln offer a fascinating conflict in their accounts of the president’s death. Use paraphrase to discuss the difference between these two accounts.

a. “Now he belongs to the ages”—Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, as Lincoln expired, according to Doris Kearns Goodwin in Team of Rivals.

versus

b. “Now he belongs to the angels”—Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War, as Lincoln expired, according to James L. Swanson in Manhunt.

You might also consider for a moment an assignment a student of ours, Sean Heron, gave to a class of high school students he was student-teaching during a unit on the Civil War. He asked students to paraphrase three times the following sentence: “The South left the country.” His goal, he reported, was to get them to see that “because language is open to interpretation, and history is conveyed through language, history must also be open to interpretation.” Use paraphrase × 3 to figure out how Sean’s sentence slants history.

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5. IDENTIFYING THE “GO TO” SENTENCE

Every writer has a “go to” sentence, a characteristic way of putting things. With a little practice, you can learn to spot writers’ “go to” sentences. These can reveal a lot about how the writer thinks and the ways he or she approaches the world.

Once you’ve acquired some of the specialized vocabulary of grammar and style, you will be able to see the shapes of sentences more easily and to understand what those shapes tell you about both the writer and his or her point of view on the subject at hand. But you don’t need a lot of specialized vocabulary to begin; this exercise is based on careful description. (To acquire the terms and concepts you need, see Chapter 18, The Rhetoric of the Sentence and The Glossary of Grammatical Terms at the end of Chapter 19.)

Step 1: Select a single