Organizing an Argument

Kate Eickmeyer

One of the biggest challenges of writing a research paper is organizing your ideas, outside sources, and what can seem like a ton of information into something like a coherent argument. The previous essay discusses how to use the methods of philosopher Stephen Toulmin to organize your ideas, and here I drill down into more detail about what exactly that organization can look like and discuss how to avoid one of the one of the most common mistakes writers at all levels are tempted to make as they sort through new material.

Organize your essay by idea, not by example.

There’s no one “right” way to structure an essay. There are as many different structures as there are essays, because an essay’s form is inseparable from its content, and the best mode of communication depends on audience, context, and goals, among other things. However, when it comes to writing an argument essay (and most college essays require arguments of some kind), a few techniques can help take your writing from the high school level to the college level and beyond.

You can improve your essays by organizing paragraphs around ideas instead of examples or outside sources. This is not a strict rule, and it’s fine to continue developing ideas with additional examples broken off into separate paragraphs. However, aiming to organize your essay by ideas, and devoting most of your topic sentences to expressing those ideas clearly, can take your work to the next level. (Topic sentences express the main point of a section or paragraph and usually work best at the beginning of a paragraph as a transition and a road map to let readers know how to navigate what’s ahead.)

What does it mean to organize your essay by idea? Let’s say you want to make the argument that chocolate chip is the best flavor of ice cream. The high school way to write that essay would be to talk about three different examples of chocolate chip ice cream—say, one body paragraph on Ben and Jerry’s, another one on Friendly’s, and yet another on Baskin Robbins—and make various points about the advantages of each in the context of each example. The college way to write the essay is to think of three conceptual ideas about why chocolate chip is the best flavor, then bring up examples when useful. Here is a chart demonstrating the difference:

High School Essay

• Thesis: Chocolate chip is the best flavor of ice cream.

• Body paragraph #1: Ben and Jerry’s chocolate chip is great.

• Body paragraph #2: Friendly’s chocolate chip is great.

• Body paragraph #3: Baskin Robbins chocolate chip is great.

• Conclusion: These three examples prove chocolate chip is the best flavor of ice cream.

College Essay

• Thesis: Chocolate chip is the best flavor of ice cream for its flavor and texture, its universal appeal, and its widespread availability.

• Body paragraph #1: Chocolate chip has the best flavor and texture of all ice creams. [Then use examples of specific brands to support your reasons.]

• Body paragraph #2: Chocolate chip pleases vanilla and chocolate lovers alike, so it’s the best choice for parties and groups. [Here, you can refer to statistical and anecdotal evidence, referring to particular brands as they arise.]

• Body paragraph #3: Because almost every grocery store and ice cream shop sells chocolate chip, you can rely on its availability wherever you go. [Again, you can refer to anecdotes and/or statistics, referring to particular brands if necessary.]

• Conclusion: Due to its convenient availability, crowd-pleasing appeal, and its superior flavor and texture, chocolate chip is the best flavor of ice cream.

In the comparison above, the high school essay only has one idea, and uses multiple examples to support that single, general idea. The college essay has one main argument, but then makes three smaller arguments to support the main argument, each supported by examples. As a result, the college essay does the work of conceptualizing persuasive concepts with supporting examples, while the high school essay shifts that conceptualization work to the reader.

This organizational strategy goes a long way towards solving one of the big problems students face: that horrible feeling that you don’t have enough to say to hit the word count requirement. In the high school essay above, you can see why the writer might have that problem; there isn’t much to say because there’s only one idea to work with—chocolate chip is good—and how many different ways can you restate that one idea? The college writer is in much better shape because the main idea is just that—a main idea—supported by a bunch of smaller ideas. By branching out into multiple subarguments to support your thesis, you give yourself a lot to write about, because you can then enlist examples, analysis, and evidence to defend each individual point. It’s not a shortcut; it’s the work of writing an essay.

Let’s consider another example, this time, using a research paper. Let’s say you want to argue that, despite common conceptions, research suggests the hippopotamus is a more dangerous animal than the lion.

High School Essay

• Thesis: Despite common conceptions, hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Body paragraph 1: Source #1 says hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Body paragraph 2: Source #2 says hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Body paragraph 3: Source #3 says hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Body paragraph 4: Source #4 says hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Body paragraph 5: Source #5 says hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Conclusion: My five sources show people should worry more about hippopotamuses than lions when visiting an area where both live.

College Essay

• Thesis: Despite common conceptions, hippopotamuses are more dangerous than lions.

• Body paragraph 1: Statistics show hippopotamuses kill more people than lions on an annual basis. [Here you can introduce multiple sources that support this claim.]

• Body paragraph 2: While lions mostly attack on land, hippopotamuses attack humans in the water when they are swimming, bathing, or even riding in boats. [Cite specific examples and sources.]

• Body paragraph 3: Hippopotamuses also pose a greater threat because they forage for food, which can bring them close to humans, and unexpected encounters can provoke attacks. [Cite specific examples and sources.]

• Body paragraph 4: Another reason for so many hippopotamus attacks is that tourists believe the animals are harmless and get too close. [Cite specific examples and sources.]

• Body paragraph 5: Despite their reputation for being so ferocious, lion attacks are infrequent, perhaps because people fear and avoid them. [Cite specific examples and sources]

• Conclusion: Despite the lion’s image as the most dangerous animal, the hippopotamus poses a greater threat to humans because of its ability to attack in water, its propensity to stray close to humans, and human tendencies to get too close to the hippopotamus.

See how the college essay opens up the options for making more arguments, using more sources, and offering more analysis? It might seem like it’s somehow using a shortcut to meet a word count, but it’s not; each of the subarguments and pieces of evidence that support those subarguments genuinely strengthen the essay’s main claim. Think about what convinces YOU of an argument. Imagine someone with different political views from yours tries to convince you that they are right by showing you a lot of quotes that state their position. You might be swayed a little if their sources are credible, but you won’t really be convinced (at least you shouldn’t be) unless you can understand the reasoning behind their arguments. Students are sometimes afraid to rely on detail in their essays because they imagine it looks frivolous, but most professors are happy to read detailed arguments, and they far prefer to read detailed analysis than to read the same general arguments over and over again.

Structural balance and proportion

There’s a classic philosophical argument about a three-legged table...or is it a four-legged table, and you take one leg away? I can’t remember, but that’s okay, because this isn’t that argument. This is a bunch of elephants trying to stay dry in a rainstorm:

This is one visual metaphor for a successful essay built on subarguments, what Lisa Blankenship describes as Toulmin’s notion of “grounds” or “reasons” in the previous essay. Imagine that the umbrella is the thesis statement, each of the elephants is one subargument, and each elephant wears rain boots, which represent pieces of evidence that support each subargument, and a raincoat, representing your analysis. Your job is to set this whole thing up. Crafting an argument essay means corralling enough similar-sized elephants under an umbrella, getting them to hold it up, and giving each of them a raincoat and a sturdy pair of waterproof boots to wear.

Make sure your thesis isn’t too big or too small for your subarguments to hold up and fit underneath. If the thesis is too broad, the subarguments won’t be strong enough to hold it up, and it’ll flop over. If the thesis is too narrow, some of the subarguments won’t fit underneath. Either way, elephants get wet.

Try to balance your essay’s attention to each subargument. If you spend four pages on your first subargument, with plenty of evidence and analysis, and then devote only one short paragraph to each of your other subarguments, the essay will be out of balance, and it will leave your reader wondering if you just ran out of time and steam for the later arguments. You’ll have a giant elephant holding one end of the umbrella and tiny elephants holding the rest of it, and it will flop over, getting all the elephants wet.

Use evidence to support individual subarguments. Each subargument needs evidence and examples. If a subargument-elephant is missing her evidence booties, her feet will get wet, she’ll get grumpy and probably a case of the sniffles too, and then she’ll drop her umbrella pole and go home. Then the umbrella will be out of balance and flop over, and all the elephants will get wet. If each subargument is protected and supported by solid evidence, they will all happily hold up your thesis.

Don’t forget to include your own analysis of each subargument. For each example or piece of evidence you introduce, explain your reasoning for how it supports that subargument. If an elephant is missing her raincoat, she’ll get cold and go home; then the umbrella will flop over, and all the elephants will get wet.

The Organizational Process

Let’s work through the process of sorting through a pile of ideas and examples into an essay structure. Imagine you’re in the entryway of the subargument-elephant preschool, it’s pouring rain outside, and you’re holding a big thesis-umbrella. There’s a pile of evidence-booties in front of you, and all the little subargument-elephants are running around going berserk like they’re at Chuck E. Cheese’s, yelling and pushing each other and giggling and throwing things. Your job is to choose several of them, corral them under the thesis-umbrella, get each of them to hold their umbrella pole, and get their evidence-booties on, so they can go outside and wait for the bus together without getting wet.

Let’s start with the main argument we want to make (what Toulmin calls a “claim”):

Thesis: Baruch is the best college in the entire universe.

Hmm, that’s a little broad for a thesis statement. Maybe we can refine it to be a little more specific, like this:

Thesis: For students looking for a great education at an affordable price tag in New York City, Baruch is the best choice.

Okay, I think I can use this version as a tentative thesis, or at least a hypothesis. Now, I’m going to look through pages on Baruch’s website to find some relevant information, examples, and evidence.

Brainstormed list of supporting examples found from pages on Baruch’s website :

●Ranked #1 for social mobility rates by Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014

●Ranked #1 for best public college in the Northeast by Money magazine

●Ranked #2 most bang for your buck by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

●Zicklin school of Business

●Weissman School of Arts and Sciences

●29 majors

●13 NCAA Division III varsity sports teams

●104 languages spoken and 168 countries represented on campus

●Designated a military-friendly school

●Ranked among 25 top universities for getting a front-office job at JP Morgan and

○Goldman Sachs

●Students won data science competition

●Mishkin Art Gallery presenting exhibit, “The Aesthetics of Learning”

●Global Strategic Plan to be a more international campus

●Great library

●Lots of extracurriculars

●Manhattan location

●Starr Career Development Center

Now, let’s take this list and sort it into categories of subarguments that support our thesis. Any classification process involves some discretion. Let’s set aside our elephants for a moment and consider a laundry analogy. When you sort your laundry, you might sort it by socks, shirts, and pants, or you might be one of those people who store their clothing by color, or by occasion and formality, or by outfit for each day of the week. By the same token, your priorities and creativity can determine how you want to group and classify pieces of information in an essay. The important thing is to go through a classification process, and to ensure you’re classifying the information according to conceptual ideas.

Thus, having acknowledged there are many ways to do this, here is one way:

Thesis: For students looking for a great education at an affordable price tag in New York City, Baruch is the best choice.

Subargument #1: Baruch prepares aspiring financiers and entrepreneurs for careers in business.

●Ranked among 25 top universities for getting a front-office job at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs

●Ranked #1 for social mobility rates by Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014

●Manhattan location

●Starr Career Development Center

●Extracurricular opportunities

Subargument #2: Baruch is incredibly diverse, preparing students for careers in the globalized world and offering opportunities to network and interface with people from all over the world.

●104 languages spoken and 168 countries represented on campus

●Global Strategic Plan to be a more international campus

●Extracurricular opportunities

●Manhattan location

Subargument #3: In addition to its renowned business programs, Baruch offers an array of opportunities for study in the humanities, arts, and sciences.

●29 majors

●Students won data science competition

Subargument #4: In an economy of increasingly crushing student debt, Baruch offers great value at an affordable price.

●Ranked #1 for best public college in the Northeast by Money magazine

●Ranked #2 most bang for your buck by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance

●Designated a military-friendly school

Subargument #5: Even with its value-driven model and great career foundations, Baruch doesn’t scrimp on facilities, arts, or athletics.

●13 NCAA Division III varsity sports teams

●Great library

●Mishkin Art Gallery presenting exhibit, “The Aesthetics of Learning”

Raise Counterargument #1: Some prospective students might have outdated worries about prestige, but Baruch’s fantastic reputation reaches far and wide.

●Ranked among 25 top universities for getting a front-office job at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs

●Hosted Mayor Bill De Blasio’s State of the City Address

Raise Counterargument #2: Instead of an old-fashioned, rural campus isolated from its surrounding community, Baruch has something better: a vibrant community of students and faculty engaging in intellectual life in the midst of New York City.

●Manhattan location

●Extracurricular opportunities

●Refer back to library, athletics, art facilities

Conclusion: Because of its excellence in academics, athletics, arts, diversity, and facilities, Baruch is an outstanding college in general, and its affordability, location, and acclaimed business program make it the best choice for anyone aspiring to build a successful career in New York City.

At this point, I’ll need to go back and get more specific information about each item on the list, track down sources if necessary, and think about how to flesh out my descriptions and consider what kind of analytical reasoning I want to add. I will probably also want to refine my thesis a bit more to make sure it’s proportional to the subarguments. From there, I can focus on presenting all the ideas and evidence I’ve gathered in a persuasive and stylish way.

Note that this is only one approach to process. Depending on what your instructor requires, you don’t necessarily need to produce this kind of traditional, formal outline before you start writing. You might be better served at this stage by another style of cognitive map, mental flowchart, or nonlinear clusterings of ideas and information. You might find it more useful to write the essay first and then go through the process of reverse outlining your essay so you can check its structure after you write it. In many cases, you may discover what you really want to say in an essay by writing it first and adjusting its structure later. Talk to your instructor about your writing process.

Some frequently asked questions regarding this structural model:

●Does each subargument need to be exactly one paragraph? No. Sometimes you have so much detail or analysis to convey that you can communicate more clearly by breaking up a subargument into multiple paragraphs. In fact, when subarguments grow and develop into separate sub-subarguments, you’re probably getting into a compelling and credible level of analysis.

●Do I always need exactly five subarguments and two counterarguments? No. The number of subarguments and counterarguments will vary depending on your topic, genre, and discourse community.

●Do I always need to make all my subarguments first and then answer all my counterarguments? No. Sometimes to make a subargument convincing, you need to raise and answer counterarguments germane to that specific subargument right away, before moving onto the next subargument. In making those decisions, try to put yourself in the reader’s shoes and ask what it would take to convince you. In general, you can often be most persuasive by putting your strongest arguments first and then answering counterarguments, but it’s not a hard and fast rule.