What's true of things can just as well be true of writing. Ordinarily, we don't think much about writing, we just do it. And often it turns out fine. For example, in most of the writing assignments so far you've been operating inductively. That is, you've been doing concrete writing first, and then later you've been trying to derive general principles or understandings about writing. And a lot of that deriving has probably been unconscious, happening even though you may not have been consciously aware of it.

    However, in discussing the news stories you wrote (or that you'll write later in this course) for the "NewsPaper" assignment, we operated more or less deductively. We discussed the formulaic structure of most news stories, and I insisted that the structure of your news story adhere to the formula. The same was true of your resume and cover letter.

    There are a few other types of writing situations that generally call for formally structured writing. The inter-office memorandum is one, the scientific lab report is another. And the academic essay, or "paper," is a third. (I don't mean to suggest, by the way, that the contents of any of these types of writings ought to be formulaic; on the contrary! But it's often easier to see what is original when it is presented in a standard structure.)
 

THE ARGUMENT
    One of the oldest and most highly developed writing forms is often called ARGUMENT. That word generally suggests a fight of some kind, and that's just what formal argument usually turns out to be--a fight to the death in which you try to smash your opponent. A lot of academic writing takes the form of argument, so I'm going to describe the standard structure right now, and then suggest an alternative structure that in many real-life situations is much more effective.

    The argument as a form has been around for more than 3,000 years. There are many variations, but a synthesis of them can be stated like this:

1. State your thesis or position.
2. State the other party's position correctly and completely.
3. Show what is wrong with the other party's position.
4. State your own case, giving clear and objective evidence to support it. There may also be an introduction and a conclusion.

THE ROGERIAN ARGUMENT
    That traditional argument form works fine if you're trying to demolish someone. But Carl Rogers, a clinical psychologist interested in helping people get along with one another peacefully and productively, developed a gentle variation that we should probably all pay attention to. Rogers said that you're not likely to convince anyone by logic alone (or by deceit, either, for that matter). You might be "right," but you'll never "win" an argument. The best you can hope for, he said, is to show that you're reasonable and that you have a valid point of view. If you can do that, then you may be able to convince the other party to modify their position somewhat, even though you probably won't ever get them to change their mind completely. Your intention, in this Rogerian argument, is not to polarize yourself and the other party, but to improve communication between the two of you BY ESTABLISHING A GOAL YOU BOTH SHARE.

    Rogers' main idea is to state the other party's position first. This has the double function of making the case clear and showing that you have taken the trouble to understand the other party's position. Rogers had in mind face-to-face discussions, but his idea works just as well in most other argument situations.

    You might try it and see if it works for you.
 

THE ACADEMIC ESSAY
    Another type of writing that often adheres to a formula is the formal academic "paper," sometimes called "essay." (Papers are structured differently in different languages, by the way. I'll discuss the English-language structure here.)

    Most formal academic papers have at least these three elements:

A subject. This could be, for just a few examples, "nuclear power regulation" or "corporal punishment in the Henrico County public schools" or "hedonism in American popular music of the 1980's" or "noise pollution along the Powhite Parkway."

A thesis. This is the writer's idea about the subject and is usually stated in one sentence. It corresponds to #1 in the argument form that I described above. It's the most important part of the essay: necessary--but not sufficient without:

A "main body." This is where the thesis is explained, demonstrated, or illustrated. (You'll often hear the terms "support" or "supporting evidence" for this.)

    Usually, THE BEST LOCATION FOR THE THESIS IS AT THE VERY BEGINNING, so that everything in the main body is obviously related to it and so the logic is clear.

    But naive writers almost always put their thesis last--because that's where they're writing when they think of it. They put their thoughts down on paper and while doing so reach a "conclusion" about the subject. They think "Aha! That's right" and, thinking they're finished, they stop. But then the reader must slog along, following every twist and turn of the writer's thinking, traveling blind, not knowing the writer's idea until the very end. What's worse, writers often arrive at their thesis intuitively--by an intuitive leap--so the reader is likely to find a huge logical gap between the thesis and most of what has preceded it.

    Most people think in this intuitive way. But a reader's needs are different from a writer's intuition, so an experienced writer figures that once the thesis is discovered, the actual "writing" of the paper begins. This is where you have to start moving anything useful from the beginning to someplace after the thesis. And it's where you have to start cutting out anything that doesn't support the thesis.
 

INTRODUCTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS
    It's sometimes useful to begin a paper with an introduction that directs the reader's attention to whatever subject is to be discussed. In a typical three-to-five page college paper, the introduction will occupy the first paragraph, and the thesis will probably be the last sentence of that first paragraph.

    At the very end of the paper there is sometimes a conclusion--a paragraph or so that is the concluding portion of the argument of the paper. This corresponds roughly to the last part of a Rogerian argument, where the writer tries to show the other party how they share a common goal.

    (N.B.: A conclusion is NOT A SUMMARY. Ordinarily, you won't need a summary in a paper shorter than, say, ten or twelve pages.)

    So an introduction introduces the audience to the thesis, and the conclusion returns the audience to their own lives ready to apply or use the thesis.

    Unfortunately, good introductions and conclusions are hard to think up--because they're not just an expansion of the thesis and main body, they're radically different. Usually, they operate on different levels of abstraction or specificity from each other and from the rest of the paper. So to get them, you have to do a different kind of thinking; you have to see the particular subject of the paper in some greater context.

    Here's a little example of levels of abstraction--a classic syllogism, taken from a standard logic textbook (Copi's Introduction to Logic):

1. All men are mortal. GENERAL PREMISE
2. Socrates was a man. SPECIFIC PREMISE
3. Therefore, Socrates was mortal. CONCLUSION

    The first statement corresponds more or less to the thesis of a paper, the second to the main body, and the third to the conclusion. You can see an even better example in Tom Jefferson's essay that we call "The Declaration of Independence," and I urge you to look at a copy of it right away. You'll see that there's an introduction, a thesis, lots of specific supporting evidence, and an inescapable conclusion. (Can you identify the thesis and the syllogistic structure?)

    (I should say, too, that some syllogisms are invalid, such as: "All rats love cheese.  My sister's boyfriend loves cheese,  Therefore, my sister's boyfriend is a rat." There's an equivocation on the word rat, which is used in two different ways. Also, some valid syllogisms are false because one or more of their premises is false, as: "All politicians are liars; the president is a politician; therefore the president is a liar." Surely not ALL politicians are liars!) If you'd like to see more specific info about such logical fallacies, search the Web or try these addresses (they open in a new window):

        The Nizkor Project http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
        The Fallacy Files  http://gncurtis.home.texas.net/
        The Fallacy Zoo  http://www1.primenet.com/~byoder/fallazoo.htm
        Logical Fallacies in Scientific Writing  http://mason.gmu.edu/~arichar6/logic.htm

    In syllogisms, the structure of an argument is made obvious so that it can be examined for validity and truth. In some papers, the structure is also very obvious--so obvious, in fact, that you may even get distracted from the content of the paper and start thinking about the structure. And in other papers the structure is so subtly done that you never notice it, even though it guides you firmly but discreetly from beginning to end. Probably the best writing, like the best of almost anything, is of this last type.
 

P.S. You might take a minute now to examine THIS paper to see whether it has a structure--and to decide what you think of what you see.
 

P.P.S.  Here's a neat tip for writing in-class essay exams.  Phyllis Davis, a colleague who was in my freshman composition class once upon a time, said she discovered this by accident while taking an econ exam.  She didn't know the answer to one particular question, but didn't have enough time to think the problem through and just plunged in, hoping it would come to her as she wrote.

She plunged in to write--but for some reason she left the top half of the first page blank.  Several pages later she figured out a good answer to the exam question.  And--guess what--that blank space was still on page one.  She went back there and wrote in her answer--her thesis--right where it would do the most good.

She got an A on the exam, of course.  And the econ prof never knew what had happened.  He saw the answer to his question, followed by a thoughtful discussion.

(I should say that Phyllis had a straight-A GPA her entire college and grad school career.)