• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

2. Don’t try to do too much. Offer only the most relevant context, the most essential parts of your road map, and (disciplinary conventions permitting) a first rather than last claim.

3. Always introduce a working (hypo)thesis, frame it with (appropriately cited) background or other context, and indicate your method or angle of approach.

4. Especially in longer papers, you can use a procedural opening to forecast the organization clearly, but don’t let it distract you from also stating your claim.

5. Experiment with opening gambits: challenge a common view, use your second best example to set up the issue, or exemplify the problem with a narrative opening.

Conclusions

6. Culminate—don’t just summarize. Offer your most fully evolved and qualified statement of the thesis or your final judgment on the question posed in the introduction.

7. Come full circle: revisit the introductory hypothesis and context. This strategy will unify your paper and locate it within an ongoing conversation on your topic.

8. Your conclusion should not unqualifiedly claim more than your evidence has established, but it should leave the reader with further implications or speculations to ponder (a send-off).

9. Let your conclusion gradually escort the reader out of the paper. Like the introduction, it is a social site, so try to leave the reader with a positive last impression.

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Assignments: Analyzing Introductions and Conclusions

1. Introductions and Audience. Compare and contrast introductory paragraphs from a popular magazine with those from an academic journal aimed at a more specialized audience. Select one of each and analyze them to determine what each author assumes the audience knows. Where in each paragraph are these assumptions most evident? If you write out your analysis, it should probably take about a page, but this exercise can also be done productively with others in a small group.

2. Analyzing Introductions. One of the best ways to learn about introductions is to gather some sample introductory paragraphs and, working on your own or in a small group, figure out how each one works, what it accomplishes. Here are some particular questions you might pose:

• Why does the writer start in this way—what is accomplished?

• What kind of relationship does this opening establish with the audience and to what ends?

• How does the writer let readers know why the writing they are about to read is called for, useful, and necessary?

• Where and by what logic does the introduction funnel?

3. Analyzing Conclusions. Find some examples of concluding paragraphs from published writing. First, compare the conclusion with the introduction, looking for the way the conclusion comes full circle. Which elements of the introduction are repeated to accomplish this? Then look for the statement of the essay’s thesis in its final, culminating form. Finally, locate the send-off by finding implications and limitations that the writer has noted as part of his final So what? On the basis of your findings, write a few paragraphs in which you describe the writer’s approach to conclusions.

At this point, you will be ready to repeat this exercise with some of your own work. Only this time, rather than describing the writer’s approach, write an improved version of one of your conclusions based on what you learned from your analysis.

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Chapter 17

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Revising for Style: Word Choice

THIS FIRST CHAPTER ON STYLE ADDRESSES WORD CHOICE, also known as diction, and its effect on style. The chapter seeks to make you more self-conscious about the kinds of words you habitually use and to expand your range of choices. Chapter 18 attempts to do the same with sentence shapes (syntax). The unit’s final chapter moves from stylistic questions—a matter of choice—to common grammatical errors, a matter of correct versus incorrect forms. For this chapter and the next, we’ll be asking you to think rhetorically, that is, in