STYLE

STYLEMaking Rhetorical Arguments, Ch. 4

Adding variety to your sentences is like inflecting your voice when you speak—it keeps your audience’s interest and prevents them from falling asleep.

How can you add variety to your sentences? Vary the length of your sentences Vary tone (slightly! Big jumps in tone will alienate

your readers) Vary sentence structure

Variety

Marvin Chester Stone was feeling thirsty. Winding down after a long day's work, he sipped a mint julep at his home off 9th Street in Washington, D.C. But something was getting in his way. More particularly, something was getting in his drink. It was an unwelcome reedy residue. It was his straw.

His straw was shedding.

This was the 1880s, when gentlemen sipped their whiskey through long tubes made of natural rye that lent a grassy flavor to whatever drink they plopped in. For many centuries, it was not uncommon for a sot to order a gin and tonic and wind up drinking a gin and tonic infused with natural grass flavors. Stone didn't have much patience when it came to non-mint plants floating around in his mint julep, and did something radical that billions of people around the world have appreciated in the 130 years since. He reinvented the straw.

--Derek Thompson, “The Amazing History and the Strange Invention of the Bendy Straw,” Nov. 22, 2011 The Atlantic

Variety: Sentence Length

The sun did not shine. It was wet. Too wet. We could not play. We sat. I was there. Sally was there. We were in the house. It was day. 

It was cold. We wished for something. We wanted to do something. Sally wore a dress. The dress was pink. The dress had polka dots. Sally is my sister. Sally sings.

Sentence combining

Choose a paragraph from your paper that needs some work.

Combine sentences and split sentences to make sure you have a variety of short and long sentences. Use short sentences to add emphasis where you need it.

Exercise #1

Transitions like these not only guide readers through the twists and turns of your argument but also help ensure that you have an argument in the first place. In fact, we think of words like “but,” “yet,” “nevertheless,” “besides,” and others as argument words, since it’s hard to use them without making some kind of argument. The word “therefore,” for instance, commits you to making sure that the claims preceding it lead logically to the conclusion it introduces. “For example” also assumes an argument, since it requires the material you are introducing to stand as an instance of proof of some preceding generalization. As a result, the more you use transitions, the more you’ll be able not only to connect the parts of your text but also to construct a strong argument in the first place. And if you draw on them frequently enough, using them should eventually become second nature.

--Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, pp. 11-112

Effective transitions

Transitions like these not only guide readers through the twists and turns of your argument but also help ensure that you have an argument in the first place. In fact, we think of words like “but,” “yet,” “nevertheless,” “besides,” and others as argument words, since it’s hard to use them without making some kind of argument. The word “therefore,” for instance, commits you to making sure that the claims preceding it lead logically to the conclusion it introduces. “For example” also assumes an argument, since it requires the material you are introducing to stand as an instance of proof of some preceding generalization. As a result, the more you use transitions, the more you’ll be able not only to connect the parts of your text but also to construct a strong argument in the first place. And if you draw on them frequently enough, using them should eventually become second nature.

--Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing, pp. 11-112

Effective transitions

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/574/02/

Transitional words

Choose a paragraph from your paper that needs some work.

Add transitional words, phrases, or sentences to the beginning and end of the paragraph that clearly tie it back to paragraphs preceding and following it.

Add transitional words, phrases, or sentences within the paragraph itself to glue it together. Make sure all of the sentences build on each other.

Exercise #2

Instead of “The evidence overwhelmingly supports the conclusion

that . . .” “From the data already presented it is obvious that . . .”

Say, “The arguments made above imply that . . .” “These data seem to warrant the following hypothesis.”

--MRA, p. 127

Understatement

“In arguing that religious advocates must meet the standard of rationality in public discourse, Sturges completely ignores her very treatment of religious movements of the nineteenth century.”

--MRA, p. 127

Overstatement

Your tone should stay consistent throughout your paper.

Ways of playing with tone (sarcasm, irony, humor, etc.) have the potential to make you appear unprofessional or disrespectful. Be judicious in your use of these strategies.

A Warning About Tone

Normal pattern of English sentences: Subject, Verb, Object

We add clauses and phrases (modifiers) to the beginning, middle, or end of this pattern to create variety.

--MRA, p. 129

What is a modifier?

Summative modifiers Summarizes the original clause Ex. “I washed my car on Saturday, a chore that

took more time than I had planned.” (MRA, p. 130)

Modifiers

Write two sentences using summative modifiers.

Exercise #3

Resumptive modifiers Repeats a word from the original clause Ex. “On Saturday I washed my car, the car that

has been the bane of my existence ever since I bought it.” (MRA, p. 131)

Modifiers

Write two sentences using resumptive modifiers

Exercise #4

Free modifiers Adds something to the original clause Ex. “On Saturday, I washed my car, grumbled

as I went, and knew that it would probably rain on Monday because I had washed my car.” (MRA, p. 133)

Modifiers

Write two sentences using free modifiers

Exercise #5

A comparison using the words like or as.

“Writing similes can be as difficult as getting up early on Saturday morning.” (140)

Simile

Write a simile that you might be able to include in your final paper.

Exercise #6

Analogies compare things where there are two or more points of comparison.

“All animals are the same but different. Like a cake recipe passed down from generation to generation—with enhancements to the cake in each—the recipe that builds are bodies has been passed down, and modified, for eons. We may not look much like sea anemones and jellyfish, but the recipe that builds us is a more intricate version of the one that builds them.” (Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish, p. 115)

Analogy

Write an analogy that you might be able to include in your final paper.

Exercise #7

A comparison that doesn’t use the words like or as.

A is a B “My paper is a mutilated corpse.” (MRA, p. 143)

A’s B “This paper’s mutilated corpse is not worth resuscitating.”

(MRA, p. 143)

B of an A “This mutilated corpse of a paper expired at the scene of

the accident.” (MRA, p. 144)

Metaphor

Write a metaphor that you might be able to include in your final paper.

Exercise #8

A grammatical linking of two ideas that do not have the same semantic value.

“For 50 years or more Elizabeth Windsor has maintained her dignity, her sense of duty, and her hairstyle.” (From Helen Mirren’s acceptance speech, Best Actress, Academy Awards, 2007). –MRA, p. 145

Zeugma

Write a zeugma that you might be able to include in your final paper.

Exercise #9

“Having always loved the lichens because they have a quality of fairyland—silver rings on a stone, odd little forms like bones or horns or the shell of a sea creature—I was glad to find Roger noticing and responding to the magic change in their appearance wrought by the rain. The woods path was carpeted with the so-called reindeer moss, in reality a lichen. Like an old-fashioned hall runner, it made a narrow strip of silvery gray through the green of the woods, here and there spreading out to cover a larger area. In dry weather the lichen carpet seems thin; it is brittle and crumbles underfoot. Now, saturated with rain which it absorbs like a sponge, it was deep and springy. Roger delighted in its texture, getting down on chubby knees to feel it, and jumping up and down in the deep, resilient carpet with squeals of pleasure.”

--Rachel Carson, A Sense of Wonder, p. 39--qtd in MRA, pp. 154-155

Imitation

Having always loved freshmen because they have a quality of eagerness—dutiful minds intent to learn, willing hearts ready to comply, unspoiled curiosity free from skepticism or narcissism or cynicism of an upperclassman—I was glad to find my class noticing and responding to the sudden change in their writing wrought by their skill. The classroom was arrayed with first-year students, in reality freshman. Like a military parade, it was arrayed in neatly aligned rows of well-ordered desks, here and there rearranged to accommodate student activity. In upper division classes, the students seem bored; they appear jaded and mumble under their breath. Now, filled with zeal, which they radiate like the sun, the freshmen are focused and active. Linda delighted in their ardor, engaging each one in vigorous conversation, and going from one student to another to enter a deep and deliberate exchange with nods of understanding.

--Making Rhetorical Argument, p. 159

Imitation Example

Write a paragraph imitating the Rachel Carson paragraph.

Exercise #10

What should a title do? Introduce the subject of the paper Grab the reader’s interest

Titles

Which of these papers do you want to read most?

The Crusades Political Motives and the Crusades The Crusades as a Force in European Unity:

Preventing Internal Political and Theological Division through External Distraction

Titles

From research essays: It’s Not Your Grandfather’s Media: Why the Fairness Doctrine

Should Not Be Brought Back Intelligent Omission: Recognizing the Necessary Absence of ID in

the ClassroomFrom magazine articles: Marry Him!: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (The

Atlantic March 2008) The Amazing History and the Strange Invention of the Bendy

Straw (The Atlantic November 2011) Is It Wrong to Feed Pink Slime to Our Children in School Lunches?

(The Atlantic April 2012)

More effective titles

Write a title for your paper that both grabs your readers’ attention and indicates the controversy of your paper.

Exercise #11

Start with your main point Summarize or restate your most important points

but don’t repeat them word for word. Add a New Significance or Application

Drive home why your readers should care. Call for More Research

Consider where the discussion should go from here.

--The Craft of Research, pp. 244-245

Conclusions

But first an introduction:“At Oxford in the nineteen-forties, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was

generally considered the most boring lecturer around, teaching the most boring subject known to man, Anglo-Saxon philology and literature, in the most boring way imaginable. “Incoherent and often inaudible” was Kingsley Amis’s verdict on his teacher. Tolkien, he reported, would write long lists of words on the blackboard, obscuring them with his body as he droned on, then would absent-mindedly erase them without turning around. “I can just about stand learning the filthy lingo it’s written in,” Philip Larkin, another Tolkien student, complained about the old man’s lectures on “Beowulf.” “What gets me down is being expected to admire the bloody stuff.”

“It is still one of the finest jests of the modern muses that this fogged-in English don was going home nights to work on perhaps the most popular adventure story ever written, thereby inventing one of the most successful commercial formulas that publishing possesses, and establishing the foundation of the modern fantasy industry.”

--Adam Gopnik, “The Dragon’s Egg: High Fantasy for Young Adults,” The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2011

Example Conclusion

“One might mock—one does mock—the mastery of what is, after all, mere mock history. But the fantasy readers’ learned habit of thinking historically is an acquisition as profound in its way as the old novelistic training in thinking about life as a series of moral lessons. Becoming an adult means learning a huge body of lore as much as it means learning to know right from wrong. We mostly learn that lore in the form of conventions: how you hold the knife, where you put it, that John was the witty Beatle, Paul the winning one, that the North once fought the South. Learning in symbolic form that the past can be mastered is as important as learning in dramatic form that your choices resonate; being brought up to speed is as important as being brought up to grade. Fantasy fiction tells you that history is available, that the past counts. As the boring old professor knew, the backstory is the biggest one of all. That’s why he was scribbling old words on the blackboard, if only for his eyes alone.”

--Adam Gopnik, “The Dragon’s Egg: High Fantasy for Young Adults,” The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2011

Example Conclusion

“While a completely unified public may be a fiction, while universal, ultimate success in social matters is a false hope, at least more and more healthy manifestations of the public can be a part of the reality forever in the making.

“The upshot of this view is that “the public” may not be as fractured as some believe, or, better, it will not be as fractured as some believe if the public continues to forge a fruitful discourse and manifest better versions of itself. Both Burke and Dewey say that language can be used to create a fabric that unites people through shared understandings and pursuits. Dewey calls this project “the energetic, unflagging, unceasing creation of an ever present new road upon which we can walk together” (134). The project of the current generation is to find a language that will fruitfully engage the specific problems at hand. Success may only come in small steps, but those steps are enough to begin sharing the words that ameliorate our interconnected world.

--Paul Stob, “Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, and the Pursuit of the Public”

Example Conclusion

Write a new conclusion for your paper that ties your argument together and provides the reader with something new (a new insight, direction for research, question to chew on, etc.).

Exercise #12

A type of free modifier that has no verb.

“Verene and Curtler both propose changes to the university curriculum, Verene suggesting core texts and individual canons, Curtler a more regulated and programmatic curriculum of cluster courses.” (MRA, p. 137)

Absolutes