Chapter Nine

Support

Support Your Assertions

Minneapolis is a lovely city. Through its heart runs the Mississippi River, cascading over the muffled beat of St. Anthony falls. The downtown, a mix of high-rise office buildings, classy retail centers, restored brick warehouses, and a few old theaters, gives way to neighborhoods of tree-lined boulevards and corner shops. Near its western border a chain of lakes is surrounded by park land and walking paths, on the south a parkway meanders beside Minnehaha Creek past another set of lakes and Minnehaha Falls, and on the southeast a great river gorge slices through layered sandstone and limestone bluffs. A center of commerce, education, culture, and recreation, Minneapolis achieves a pleasing balance between urban appeal and natural beauty.

In that paragraph I follow a fundamental two-step pattern in writing: I make an assertion, then I support it with examples and detail. Without that second step, I would be asking you, my reader, to accept on blind faith my opinion (“Minneapolis is a beautiful city”).

There are many ways to support your assertions. In this chapter, I discuss some of the more common ones.

Offer specific, concrete, relevant details.

As I discussed in chapter two, Joseph Conrad advised writers not to tell their readers, but to show them. Don’t just tell your readers, “Susan works hard.” Show them: “Last month Susan came in at 6 A.M. every day to help complete the internal audit on time.” Don’t just tell your readers, “Morale is declining.” Show them: “This year grievances increased by 14 percent, and employee turnover by 8 percent.”

In Handbook for Writers, Lynn Quitman Troyka offers a handy memory device called “RENNS,” which stands for Reasons, Examples, Names, Numbers, and Senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch). Thinking of RENNS will help you determine whether you have provided sufficient detail. It will also suggest ideas for different types of detail you might use in developing your thought. As Troyka points out, most paragraphs do not make use of every category of details, but a fully developed paragraph will usually make use of more than one.

A common mistake on the part of beginning writers is to offer insufficient evidence to support or explain their assertions. Don’t make the reader guess at your meaning. Illustrate your points with specific, concrete details. Support your points with evidence that is specific, detailed, colorful, relevant, and adequate. Appeal to the senses as well as to logic, emotions, and values. Use anecdotes, analogy, metaphor, and direct quotes.

Appeal to the senses with concrete and colorful detail. As I discussed in chapter two, language that refers to things that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched generally makes a more vivid impression than abstract language. Rather than write about how clear-cutting a forest “changes the landscape,” describe “a field of ruts and stubble.” Rather than describe a happy occasion by writing “We celebrated our victory,” write “Within minutes of the announcement the champagne corks were popping and project team members were hugging.”

Appeal to logic, emotions, and values. Your reader wants to know not only what you think but also why you think it. As I discuss later in the chapter, in persuasive writing, offer evidence that appeals to the head with logic, to the heart with emotions, and to the soul with values. To back up an assertion such as “Starting a small business is risky,” consider offering evidence that appeals to all three: “Twenty-five percent of them fail within the first five years, causing hardship to employees as well as loss to unsuspecting investors, who have a right to full disclosure.”

Use anecdotes to make your point.As I discussed in chapters six and seven, one of the most effective ways to illustrate your thinking is to tell a story. Anecdotes, like parables, use the narrative appeal of character and action to reinforce a point or to teach a lesson. I’ve noticed, for example, that whenever I tell a story in my writing workshops, the participants momentarily open their half-closed eyes and lift their nodding heads.

Use analogy and metaphor to explain your thinking. If you are writing without making comparisons, you are neglecting one of the most powerful tools of communication. Figurative language makes your writing vivid. It not only draws on your own creativity but appeals to your reader’s imagination, thereby evoking an active response. After an assertion such as “The first time you get up on water skis is exhilarating,” offer a comparison such as “You feel as though you are a plane skimming across a runway and about to take off.” As I discussed in chapter five, the quality of your metaphors can be evaluated according to three criteria: aptness (your metaphor seems right, even though it may suggest similarity between two very dissimilar things), simplicity (it isn’t overly elaborate, forced, or contrived), and novelty (it is unexpected or offers an element of surprise).

Quote others to enhance your credibility. Use testimony from credible sources. Direct quotes bring a fresh perspective, create a sense of immediacy, and add emphasis to your writing. (As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, I like to quote other writers to support my points.) Rather than say, “American writers tend to be wordy," quote a writer like Willian Zinsser, who in On Writing Well wrote, “Clutter is the disease of American writing.”

Document your sources. For more formal types of research and academic writing, you need to cite the sources of quotations, summaries, paraphrases, and any facts or ideas that are not common knowledge, and your citations must follow standard documentation styles. The three most commonly used styles are those of the Modern Language Association (MLA), used in English and the humanities; the American Psychological Association (APA), used in psychology, the social sciences, and business; and The Chicago Manual of Style, used in history and book publishing generally. In addition, there are a number of style manuals specific to particular fields or disciplines, such as The Associated Press Stylebook and Libel Manual in journalism; Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers in biology; and The Style Manual for Political Science.

MLA and APA styles are similar, but they differ on certain key points. In fact, they are just similar enough to be confusing. Both styles use the same three components of documentation: signal phrases (or phrases of attribution), parenthetical references for in-text citations (rather than footnotes or endnotes, as required by The Chicago Manual of Style), and lists of sources following the text.

Offer enough—but not too much—detail.

One of your most important decisions as a writer is how much detail to offer in support of your arguments. How much is enough? How much is too much? The answer, of course, depends on the three things you must keep in mind whenever you write: your purpose, your audience, and your subject.

Your thesis or statement of purpose (which I discussed in chapter six) will help you determine which details are relevant and which are extraneous. In addition to purpose, consider your audience. What does your reader need to know to understand your message? What does your reader already know? What needs to be pointed out or made explicit? A good assessment of your audience requires insight and imagination. Finally, consider your subject. How much explanation or development is required to achieve your purpose with a particular audience?

As a general approach, err on the side of including too much detail when you draft, then cut back as you edit. “Cut what does not contribute to the whole,” as Donald Hall points out in Writing Well. “But first, you must have a whole.” To help you decide what to retain and what to cut, keep in mind this simple guideline: If a detail does not contribute in some significant way to achieving your purpose, delete it.

In descriptive writing, make sure every detail is relevant, whether you are describing a scene for the purpose of creating a certain mood or describing “a mechanism and the function of its parts”—to use Judith VanAlstyne’s words in Professional and Technical Writing Strategies—so that the reader can “judge the efficiency, reliability, and practicality of the mechanism.” In narrative writing, every detail—as Kurt Vonnegut points out—should remark on a character or advance the action. In expository writing, every detail should help explain or illuminate the subject. And in persuasive writing, every detail should serve a particular strategic purpose.

For Persuasive Writing, Determine a Rhetorical Strategy

In chapter eight, I discussed how rhetorical strategy influences the arrangement and organization of your arguments. Here, I return to rhetorical strategy as it determines the type of support you use in developing your arguments.

There are three basic types of appeals: appeals to reason (logos), appeals to emotion (pathos), and appeals to ethics (ethos). Generally, the most effective persuasive writing makes use of all three types.

Logical appeals rely on evidence, research, examples, and data to convince the reader of the truth or validity of an argument. They invite a reasoned response and are usually most effective when the reader is expected to disagree with what is being asserted.

According to Arthur Biddle in Writer to Writer, “The logical method is directed to the rational faculty of the audience through the reasonableness of the piece. It employs facts, data, and evidence that the mind can weigh in assessing the truth or validity of the assertion. This is the classical mode of argumentation.”

Emotional appeals attempt to arouse the feelings, instincts, or biases of your reader. As professional fund-raisers know, the most effective way to motivate a sympathetic audience to shell out the money is to follow the formula of “feelings first; facts follow.” Common in advertising and fund-raising letters, emotional appeals often rely on what Herschell Gordon Lewis in How to Write Powerful Fund Raising Letters calls the “five great motivators”: fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed, and anger. Emotional appeals are generally most effective when the reader is expected to agree with the argument.

Despite their usefulness, emotional appeals are sometimes neglected by writers who think them inappropriate in carefully reasoned writing. According to Arthur Biddle:

Ethical appeals rely on the reader’s sense of right and wrong. As Biddle points out, they also depend on the writer’s credibility and reputation “as a reliable, qualified, experienced, well-informed, and knowledgeable person whose opinions … are believable because they are ethically sound.” In other words, with ethical appeals, “The audience is moved not only by what is said but by who said it.”

Use a combination of rhetorical appeals.

People are complex. They are rational, emotional, spiritual beings. If you want to change their opinion about something or get them to accept your point of view, you need to appeal to them on more than one level.

Consider, for example, the following illustration of how to combine all three rhetorical modes. Imagine you are the chair of the Department of Philosophy and your university’s central administration has proposed cutting your department’s supply budget. “None of the other philosophers has new computers,” they have told you, “so why should you?” What would you do?

You could protest on the grounds that a new computer could be purchased (with an educational discount) for only $1,500, and that a new computer would increase your department’s productivity by 5 percent, and that 5 percent of your department’s operating and expense budget of $60,000 is $3,000, which amounts to a net savings of $1,500 (logos). Or you could argue that a cut in your supply budget would so thoroughly demoralize the faculty in your department that they might resign and seek positions at competing institutions (pathos). Or you could appeal to central administration’s sense of fairness by pointing out that every faculty member in the school of business got a new computer last year and that the humanities faculty always seems to come last in appropriations (ethos). But your most persuasive argument would combine all three appeals.

As a rule, when writing to a sympathetic audience, appeal first to feelings and emotions; when writing to an unsympathetic or hostile audience, appeal first to reasons and logic. And for most persuasive writing situations, follow Aristotle’s advice. Appeal to the whole person: the head (logos), the heart (pathos), and the soul (ethos).

Avoid common fallacies in persuasive writing.

As you gather your evidence to support your arguments, avoid these six common errors:

1. Presenting a false premise
2. Wrongly assuming that a premise is accepted by the audience
3. Providing too few examples to support an assertion
4. Offering irrelevant evidence or examples
5. Making ad hominem (or “to the man”) attacks on the person advancing the argument rather than challenging the argument itself (a variation of which is name-calling)
6. Overgeneralizing the conclusion (especially making faulty assumptions regarding an entire group, race, class, or sex on the basis of a few examples) or seeking to derive a broader conclusion than the evidence warrants

Follow standard rules of evidence.

To be persuasive, your evidence must meet five criteria. It must be:

1. Accurate
2. Specific and detailed
3. Sufficient and complete
4. Relevant and connected to the argument
5. Meaningful and appropriate to the audience

“Everyone loves Donald Trump!” might serve to arouse a crowd at a campaign rally, but the statement is far from accurate. “Because everyone loves Donald Trump, he’ll make a great president” compounds the error because it offers a conclusion based on a false premise and insufficient evidence.

Remember: The best way to support your argument is to offer evidence that is specific, concrete, relevant, accurate, and colorful. And as I have said before, to make your evidence colorful, use detail that appeals to the senses.

Don’t forget your reader.

For all types of writing—from sales proposals to personal essays and appellate court briefs—the pattern is the same: First you assert, then you support. The two steps lead in opposing directions. When you make an assertion, you look inward. You concentrate on your own thoughts and how to express them. When you support your assertion, you look outward. You turn your attention to information that will help your reader comprehend your meaning and appreciate your point of view. To acknowledge your reader is to acknowledge that all communication involves relationship. For this reason, supporting your arguments is one of the most powerful—and empowering—things you can do as a writer.