Structure that carries an argument

The test that distinguishes an argument from a list

Take your paragraphs and shuffle them. If the essay still makes sense, it is a list of things about a topic, not an argument.

A real argument has paragraphs that depend on each other. Paragraph three establishes something paragraph four uses. Reorder them and paragraph four now refers to something that has not happened. That dependency is the difference between the middle band and the top one, in every essay subject and in most report writing.

This is also the clearest structural signature of generated prose. Generated essays are almost always reorderable, because they are assembled as a set of relevant sections rather than a chain.

The shape underneath

Most good academic arguments have the same skeleton:

1. The question, made precise. Including which interpretation of an ambiguous term you are adopting, and why.
2. The claim. Contestable, specific, stated early.
3. The strongest support, first, not last, and not buried in the middle where students traditionally put it.
4. The best objection, stated at its strongest.
5. The response, which may concede ground. Conceding a real point is a strength; it demonstrates you understood the objection.
6. What follows, including what your claim does not establish.

Step four is where marks are won and lost. A straw objection (some may argue X, however this ignores Y) costs you rather than gains you, because it demonstrates that you either did not find the real objection or avoided it.

Using a model on structure without giving it away

The safe requests are all diagnostic and all operate on your text.

Here are my topic sentences. Which two make the same point? Where does the argument jump without support? Which paragraph could be removed with no loss?

Here is my draft. Reorder my paragraphs at random and tell me whether the essay still works. If it does, tell me which dependencies are missing.

What is the strongest objection to my claim? Not a general counterargument: the specific one somebody who knows this literature would raise.

I claim X. What would somebody have to believe for X to be false?

Every one of these gives you a diagnosis and leaves the writing with you. Compare with restructure my essay, which hands over stage four from the previous lesson.

The paragraph, mechanically

A paragraph that works usually has four parts, and checking them is quick:

• A claim: the topic sentence, stating what this paragraph argues, not what it is about.
• Evidence: specific, cited, with a page or a figure.
• Analysis: why the evidence supports the claim. This is the part students omit, and it is where the marks are.
• A link: how this leads to the next paragraph.

The most common failure is a paragraph that presents evidence and then moves on, leaving the reader to work out why it mattered. The marker will not do that work for you, and analysis is usually the largest single band in a rubric.

A useful check on your own draft: highlight the analysis sentences. If a paragraph has none, it is description.

Signposting, and how much is too much

Academic writing needs enough signposting that a reader knows where they are, and students overcorrect in both directions. In this essay I will argue X, then Y, then Z, followed by having argued X, I will now turn to Y, is a common generated pattern and reads as padding.

Better: signpost by making the connection explicit rather than announcing the structure. If the fiscal explanation holds, then the timing of the reforms should track revenue crises rather than elections: that sentence both moves the argument on and tells the reader what is coming, in one move.

Length, and what to cut

When you are over the word limit, cut in this order:

1. Anything that summarises what you are about to say or have just said.
2. Background the reader of your course already has.
3. Quotations longer than a sentence, which are almost always cuttable to a phrase.
4. Any paragraph whose removal you cannot immediately object to.

What you never cut: analysis, the objection, and the specificity of your evidence. Students under a limit tend to cut exactly those, because they are the hard parts and look expendable, and the essay drops a band.