How to Write Good
I just finished putting this together for one of my little brothers.
... I'm indebted to a kind English professor who shared this method of old Quintillian with me, on a flight home from England many moons ago....
Narratio/Section 1:
a) Draw your audience in by explaining the problem to be solved; appeal to emotion and imagination; lay the paper’s purpose out clearly for your reader.
b) State the main issue on which your paper will focus: Given that …., this paper will address the issue of whether….. I will conclude by proposing that…”
Peroratio/Section 2:
Explain the history/historical background of the problem: “to contextualize this issue, we note the following background…”
Oratio/Section 3:
Illustrate your proposal/claim and defend it with evidence, arguments, or examples.
Refutatio/Section 4:
Offer/anticipate a hypothetical opponent’s (one-two) counter arguments and refute them with evidence, arguments, or examples: It could be argued that…;however, I will show that…. thus my proposal offers the clearest solution to the issue at hand.”
Conclusion/Final Section:
a) Re state your claim/proposal
b) Re-state/summarize the illustration of the problem and its historical background.
c) Re-state/summarize your arguments for your proposal, and remind the reader why the opponent’s anticipated arguments are unsound.
d) Back up your position by offering some further advantages which attach to your proposal.
e) Summarizing sentence: “I have shown that…”
posted by MM at 7:25 AM
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