SECTION Three -- Organizing Papers: Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings

For most readers, interest and understanding are closely related. If they don’t understand what a writer is up to, they won’t be much interested in what he has to say. If an opening captures their interest, they’ll work harder to understand what follows. If it doesn’t interest them, all the clarity in the world won’t help much. Your beginnings should be clear, then, for understanding, and they should catch the attention of your readers, for interest.

You might think that the sure way of achieving clarity would be to use the strategy of announcing. But a labored statement of purpose can kill off a reader’s interest: “This paper is going to discuss.. . . The four chief topics to be treated are. . . . First in importance is. . . .“ This sort of blueprinting works in some stereotyped situations, as in technical reports, where the only considerations are ac curacy and system; and in special circumstances it can be dramatic, as when a trial lawyer begins, “I am going to prove to you that. .. . First, I will describe.. .. Second, I will trace. . . Third, I will expose. . , . And finally I will demonstrate.. .“ But for most purposes the announcing should be done more subtly.

And it need not be done in the first sentences of a paper. The program paragraph — the announcing paragraph — is not necessarily the leadoff one. In a long paper it’s often the last in the sequence of paragraphs that makes up the opening section, sometimes the first paragraph of the second section. In such cases it’s preceded by a stretch of material that contrives to bring the reader into the paper less formally and less abruptly—a short anecdote, a pas sage of descriptive details (giving, say, the look of clouds in a summer sky as a way in to a precise account of what causes cloud formations and how clouds are classified), the larger context that points up the significance of the issue being debated, and so on.

Worse than a dull opening is an opening that tries to manipulate readers or that misleads them. When attempts to whip up interest can be recognized as no more than that, they do more harm than good. Sensational details, forced enthusiasm, and chitchat actually draw attention away from the subject, not toward it. One trouble with a wildly provocative opening is that it robs you of the opportunity to build to a climax; the paper can only run downhill. And concentrating on grabbing the reader’s attention often produces an opening that has little connection with the real subject of the paper and therefore mis leads the reader. The short, dramatized narrative used as a standard opening in popular magazines is sometimes relevant to what follows, often no more than a gimmick.

Remember: A good beginning arouses expectations that the body of the paper satisfies.

In general, a beginning should point not only to the real subject of the paper but to the way the discussion will be handled; the opening sentences should set the tone. Com pare these two beginnings, each of which is entirely in keeping with what follows:

I have at least one qualification for writing about the generation gap. I have lived with two, if not three, of them during my lifetime. To be sure, practice does not make perfect. But it does teach one to realize an important human truth. The movement of events is almost always a great deal faster than the movement of our own minds.

In my youth, for example.. . .

—Walter Lippmann, Harper’s

I’ve grown damned sick and tired of having the youth culture, whatever that is, rammed down my throat by members of my own generation. I am all, as I said here last month, for the self-determination of the old, or getting on for old, and I don’t think that a mindless and guilt-ridden capitulation to the questionable values of the young will set my people free, Those of us who were born before, say, 1935, have some values and some virtues of our own, and I think it’s high time one of us spoke up for them.

In the teeth of a perfect gale of mass-media propaganda to the contrary, I’d like to suggest that the middle generation possesses a greater share of skill, subtlety, discipline, and judgment than its juniors.. . .

— L. E. Sissman, Atlantic

Common types of openings include the anecdote, often in the dramatized form already mentioned; the generalization followed by a quick narrowing down to the specific subject; the quotation; the citation of statistics; and the rhetorical question. Here are some examples:

Anecdote

The strapping rodeo bull rider grabbed Jerry Jeff Walker’s arm in a vice-like grip and stared angrily at the singer, who bore a beatific, faraway expression on his face. “Didn’t you hear me, boy?” he growled. “I told you to play that song about red-necks. Now play it. Fast.”

Stoned and drunk and uncertain if he was in a honky-tonk in Austin or in Oklahoma City, Walker struggled to concentrate on his dilemma. If he played the song, which he knew the cowboy hated, he would probably be beaten up. If he refused the request, he would also be beaten up. Finally, he began to play. The cow boy hit him three times, smashed his guitar and left him bloody. “Situations like that,” Jerry Jeff explains cheerfully, “are what being an outlaw is all about.”

The outlaws of country music need all their dark memories these days; tales of brawls, drug busts and rejection slips seem to be their best means of coping with the fact that they are suddenly rich and fashionable. — Pete Axthelm, Newsweek

Generalization

More and more people are seeking out islands, I read in the newspaper recently, in the hope of finding freedom from neighborhood blight, crime, atmospheric pollution, noise, and the general fears and insecurity of a troubled world. The law of supply and demand having asserted itself, the article continued, habitable islands are becoming almost impossible to acquire.

I live during the more moderate months of the year on a small island close to the coast of Maine, and perhaps I can furnish a footnote on the prizes — and shortcomings — of island life. — Caskie Stinnett, Atlantic

Quotation

“There are no such things as incurables,” said Bernard Baruch. “There are only things for which man has not found a cure.” A lifetime in medical practice, education and research has con vinced me, too, that we need not accept disease as an inescapable human destiny, despite our lack of information about many forms of human illness.

—Michaei E. DeBakey, M.D., Saturday Review/World

Statistics

Ben-Hur, as everyone knows, cost $15,000,000 to make, runs for almost four hours, has a cast variously estimated at 50,000 (by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) and at 10,400 (by Time), was directed by William Wyler, and has had the biggest advance sale ($500,000) in film history. But what no one knows who hasn’t seen it’s that it’s lousy.

—Dwight Macdonald, Esquire

Rhetorical Question

How much bureaucratic stupidity do we have to put up with?

— University newspaper

English teachers and editors who have been swamped with openings that are phony or plodding or pointless sometimes advise throwing away all first paragraphs and letting second paragraphs stand as openings. It’s true that a short paper scarcely needs a paragraph that can be identified as a separate, distinct “beginning.” But both writer and reader must have a sense that the starting point is a logical or natural one, and throwing out the first paragraph doesn’t guarantee that the next one will make a strong start. The best course is to cut in on your material at a point that has caught your own interest and get started. It’s much better to build up some momentum than to sit around trying to compose the perfect opening. If you can’t find a way in, try writing your introduction last. Then you can gear it to the rest of the paper.

Endings

Short papers seldom need formal conclusions. When the process has been described, the narrative completed, the problem solved, nothing more need be said — or nothing but a brisk comment or two, perhaps an allusion to some thing at the start to round out the paper.

But discussions that move through several stages need recognizable endings if they’re not to give the impression that they’ve been cut off or that they’ve simply run down. You can turn this necessity to your own advantage. The ending is your last chance to win acceptance for your ideas — to establish your generalization, to drive home your thesis, to clinch your argument. A good conclusion brings out the significance of all you’ve written. A mechanical summary on the order of “In this paper I have shown that . . .“ is lifeless, but some sort of restatement of the course of your discussion is appropriate in papers four or five pages long and may be necessary even in short papers when the material is difficult.

When you’ve built up evidence throughout a paper, you can end by stating authoritatively what you presented at the start as no more than a possibility. Or you may finish up by recapitulating only the strongest of the points you’ve made. Even when it’s little more than a summary, your ending can take on freshness from a slight change in style— a sharpening of the tone or a relaxation of tension or a touch of humor.

Your ending should make clear that the paper has arrived at its destination. It should strike a note of finality and completeness. Don’t use it for apologies, for after thoughts, for bringing in ideas that should have been treated in the body of the paper, or for introducing a brand- new issue. Make it as affirmative and positive as your discussion justifies. Point to broader implications, indicate the significance of your findings, make predictions or recommendations, or throw out a challenge to your readers. An ending that brings a paper to a totally satisfying conclusion may at the same time generate a follow-up paper.

One good way to test the effectiveness of an ending you’ve written is to see how well it fits the beginning of the paper. In the following paired passages, the expectations set up in the second half of the opening paragraph are fulfilled by the summary of the “serious weaknesses” of American football—weaknesses which have been discussed in detail in the body of the article:

Like many American institutions, the game of football was acquired from England. Rugby football, as it’s played through out the British Commonwealth, Ireland, and France, contains most of the ingredients out of which the American game has been developed— such as running with the ball, passing, kicking, and tackling — but in the American game these ingredients have been complicated, padded, and shot through with specialized operations. The result has been that the more salutary technique and the better spirit of Rugby football have been lost.

The general mood which most distinguishes the Rugby scene from American football is that of temperance; and this temperate mood is made possible to a considerable extent by the simplicity of the game. The intemperance which is associated with American football may have a number of causes, but frustration is a prominent one. The American game won’t allow many able-bodied and interested people even to join a team; it won’t allow many of the members of a team to play a full game; and of those actually playing, only a few can engage in the full range of activity. These are serious weaknesses in the American game, and anyone interested in getting rid of them ought to observe how Rugby football is played in England.

— Allen Jackson, Atlantic

In the next pair the opening narrative raises the question of why the “deadly device” had been planted. The last one-sentence paragraph is a reminder, in a play on words, of the opening. The substantive conclusion, which makes up the second last paragraph, is characteristic of inquiries of this kind. It both indicates the limits of our present knowledge and points the way to investigations that urgently need to be made.

It was just after dawn on a chilly November morning, and the three surveyors were scratching about the barren earth south west of Fort Stockton, Texas, looking for the old cedar stakes that would give them their bearings. The men were members of a seismic team, jolting and bullying the earth out of its geologic secrets on behalf of a major petroleum company. One of them, 49-year-old Raymond Medford, reached down to tug at a gray pipe protruding from the chalky soil; as he did, there was a sharp report and something tore upward into the fleshy part of his hand. “What happened?” one of the other men shouted. Med ford, confused and shocked, was running in circles. Then he calmed and said, “That thing went off! It had an explosion, whatever it was.” A doctor in Fort Stockton looked at the bloody hand, administered first aid and sent the surveyor off to bed. An hour later Medford was dead.

Investigation showed that the pipe in the earth was a so-called “coyote-getter,” a deadly device loaded and cocked and set to shoot a cyanide charge into the mouth of any animal that pulled at its aromatic wick.

One comes away from a discussion with this plain-spoken biochemist—and other experts in the field—with the uneasy feeling that there are serious gaps in the toxicological profile of sodium fluoroacetate. Whole tables and booklets have been prepared on such practical matters as the exact amount of 1080 required to kill kangaroo rats, ferruginous rough-legged hawks, Rhode Island red hens and Columbian ground squirrels, but no one seems to have done much research into an equally practical matter: What is the total amount of 1080 and other poisons that the sodden soils and polluted waterways of the West can absorb without becoming lethal agents themselves? One asks, and one is told: “Nobody knows.”

Someday we may be dying to find out.

—Jack Olsen, Sports Illustrated

In the following pair the ending, with its guarantee that “ you will become stronger” as a result of practicing jujitsu and other martial arts, reminds the reader of the weak, helpless victim the writer presented herself as at the start of the article.

My involvement with the martial arts began the day I spread my arms out from my sides (unconsciously asking, I suppose, to be crucified) to stop a thief from leaving my office. Grabbing my left wrl.t, he flipped me as easily as he would a pancake. Later, grimly contemplating the black and blue marks which ran across the right side of my body, I was forced to realize not only how vulnerable I was but how naive as well.

Like most women, I had little knowledge of how to defend myself.

Of course, the martial arts are not a panacea. Learning any martial art is a painstaking process, which is why you must have a competent instructor who will let you go at your own pace. One woman in my first jujitsu class broke her collarbone because she tried a forward roll she did not feel ready for, but had been urged to do by her instructor. That was a painful, bitter lesson: learn to trust your own instincts. A good instructor will teach you to tap or slap your thigh, your partner, or the mat, as a signal to your partner that she or he is hurting you.

While a broken collarbone is the exception rather than the rule, you can expect to be occasionally black and blue, to suffer minor sprains, pulled muscles. And, as with any new subject, you may at first feel apprehensive and awkward. However, as you acquire competence, you will probably feel exhilaration at overcoming your fears of pain and violence. You will begin to become aware of the potential power of your body. Yes, you will become stronger. — Victoria Pellegrino, Ms.

Here a brief, generalized anecdote opens a discussion and evaluation of eyewitness testimony. The paragraph that concludes the article indicates that the “impressive testimony” in the opening should not impress jurors as much as it does.

The woman in the witness box stares at the defendant, points an accusing finger and says, loudly and firmly, “That’s the man! That’s him! I could never forget his face!” It’s impressive testimony. The only eyewitness to a murder has identified the murderer. Or has she?

Perhaps she has, but she may be wrong.

It’s discouraging to note that the essential findings on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony were made by Hugo Munsterberg nearly 80 years ago, and yet the practice of basing a case on eyewitness testimony and trying to persuade a jury that such testimony is superior to circumstantial evidence continues to this day. The fact is that both types of evidence involve areas of doubt. Circumstantial evidence is tied together with a theory, which is subject to questioning. Eyewitness testimony is also based on a theory, constructed by a human being (often with help from others), about what reality was like in the past; since that theory can be adjusted or changed in accordance with personality, with the situation or with social pressure, it’s unwise to accept such testimony without question. It’s up to a jury to determine if the doubts about an eyewitness’s testimony are reasonable enough for the testimony to be rejected as untrue. Jurors should be reminded that there can be doubt about eye-witness testimony, just as there is about any other kind of evidence.

— Robert Buckhout, Scientific American

In this last pair a serious proposal Is introduced by bold appeal to a precedent that the writer knows his readers will find distasteful. The last paragraph is intended to clinch the argument that has been made in the body of the article. The wry humor of the last line echoes that of the proposal, with its “lock, stock, and burglar’s kit.”

Stalin did establish one useful precedent. He made it a practice to bump off whoever served as head of his secret police. He never let anybody stay in the job too long. As a successful dictator, Stalin seems to have felt that anybody who had collected so many secrets would be a No. 1 menace to security if he ever went sour. Stalin thought it safer not to wait.

I think we ought to take Stalin’s example one step further. I think we ought to get rid of the CIA altogether, lock, stock, and burglar’s kit.

A government, like an individual, hates to hear what it doesn’t want to believe. This is why no intelligence agency in any society ever really understands — or can afford to let itself understand — what is going on. The bigger the intelligence agency the more powerfully its sheer inertial weight reinforces the misconceptions of the ruling class it serves. Hence the paradox: the more “intelligence” a government buys the less intelligently it operates. The CIA will go down in the books as a vain attempt to change history by institutionalizing assassination. It deserves a dose of its own favorite medicine.—I. F. Stone, New York Review of Books

• For Analysis and Writing:

1. Here are the openings of two papers on the fluorescent lamp, the first prepared for beginning high-school students, the second for college students with some knowledge of physics. State in detail the differences between them and discuss their appropriateness to their intended audiences.

a. You turn the switch. For an instant, nothing happens. Then light flickers along the tube. And finally there is full, steady illumination. As contrasted with the ordinary bulb, which lights up as soon as its switch is turned, the fluorescent tube always provides a moment of dramatic uncertainty. Why the hesitation?

b. The fluorescent lamp is a device which utilizes a relatively low voltage electric current to provide artificial illumination. Unlike an incandescent light, it employs an electrical discharge through tenuous mercury vapor to convert electrical energy into light energy. The discharge produces invisible ultraviolet light. The long glass tube through which the discharge passes is coated on the inside with a substance that transforms the ultraviolet light into visible radiation. That the visible light comes from this coating rather than directly from the discharge differentiates the fluorescent lamp from other types of discharge lamps.

2. Describe and evaluate the beginning and ending in each set quoted below. What expectations does the beginning arouse? How do you know that the ending is an ending? In making your evaluation you may find it useful to take into account the publication in which the essay appears.

a. People like getting something for their money, even when the money is going to a good cause. That’s why fund-raising events often are more successful than outright solicitations for contributions.

All kinds of groups — service clubs, school and church organizations, charities, civic associations, community agencies, political organizations — are putting on fund-raising events these days. For some, an annual fund-raiser is the only method used to get financial support.

Don’t get the idea that staging a successful fund-raiser is a cinch. It’s not. To succeed, the event must be well planned. All sorts of details have to be carefully worked out for even a fairly small-scale project. And there are some pitfalls that must be skirted.

When the curtain has fallen on your event, the receipts tallied and the bills paid, follow up by sending thank- you notes to every person and firm that contributed in any way to its success. Even the most altruistic volunteer workers and helpful business firms like to be recognized for their contributions. — Changing Times

b. They still tell in our family how the 14-year-old, my father, came off the boat with a rope around his waist to hold up his pants. When he bent to kiss the ground, the rope loosened and his pants fell down. “ America!” he cried.

The cataclysmic assaults upon faith and myth, innocence, invincibility all came after my father’s death. I cannot imagine what he would think today, but I suspect that he would still hear America singing. It was a sound so sweet that he could never have borne to relinquish it. — Martha Weinman Lear, New York Times Magazine

c. Many members of the older generation are under the impression that their values and ways of life are the only right ones. They think that their children must inherit these qualities or they, the parents, have failed. They refuse to acknowledge that teenagers might have some legitimate ideas of their own. I am tired of having my opinions put down by my parents simply because of my youth and relative lack of experience.

Family ties are extremely important to my father and mother. They feel that their children should prefer to do things with the family rather than on their own. Unfortunately, their attitudes make me unwilling to spend time with them.

I don’t mean to sound like my parents are inhuman. My mother and father have always been more than generous, giving me everything I ever needed. I love them both dearly and don’t mean for it to appear otherwise. They have taught me many valuable lessons. But though I appreciate their efforts to give me the best upbringing possible, according to their standards, I think we would get along much better if they would only try to understand my feelings and remember that I am an independent adult with ideas of my own, however different they may be from theirs.

d. Karen Tucker is a 35-year-old reservations clerk with Ozark Airlines. “Just a clerk,” she says. “ You know, like ‘just a house wife.’ I sit all day with earphones that are too heavy—all the girls get ear infections from them. But just housewives’ have rights. Clerks have rights, too. In small-town U.S.A., just like everywhere else.”

Mrs. Tucker is an outspoken feminist and a union organizer in a town so renowned for its conservatism that the very word Peoria has become a mass-media synonym for Middle America. She is one of the many energetic examples of the influence exerted by the women’s-liberation movement in an area of the country where people don’t take quickly to new fashions or new social trends.

The concrete advances represented by women found on the assembly line are accompanied by subtle psychological changes, which are difficult to measure.

Last year a writer for the local newspaper, the Journal-S tar, was asked to prepare a list of Peoria citizens who would appear on the “David Frost Show.” He made notes about each potential participant for Frost’s staff. A lawyer’s wife—an old friend of the writer—asked one of Frost’s assistants why she and her husband had been asked to appear on the show. He looked at the writer’s notation and told the woman, “Well, the slip says that your husband is a brilliant attorney and you’re very beautiful.”

Sitting in his office, the writer recalled how his woman friend came to him in tears. “She said to me, ‘You’ve known me all these years, and all you can say about me is I’m beautiful.’ I was stunned. Of course, this woman is a lot more than beautiful. But there it was — what I had written down was that her husband was brilliant and she was beautiful. Like everyone else, I have a lot of thinking to do.”—Susan Jacoby, Saturday Review

e. An acquaintance of mine from Alabama served in Poland for seven years with the U.S. State Department. His children, now 10 and 12, went to Polish schools, having learned the language with the ease of the very young. Now back in Virginia, the two children, despite their pure Anglo-Saxon Baptist features, are the constant object of playground abuse. Children shout “goulash!” at them. They are called “Hunky.” They are the constant butt of “dumb Polack” jokes. On one occasion when the older lad could bear the humiliation no longer, he had an inspiration. He turned on those who were taunting him with a challenge: “Can you speak Poll The others fell silent and then he hit them: “How does it feel to be dumber than a Polack?”

Too many Americans make a joke out of Polish jokes. They expect people of Slavic descent (all of whom suffer under these jokes; no one can tell us apart) to take these jokes as funny, to show our own sense of humor, gracefully to laugh at ourselves. If mere graciousness were at stake, we could easily oblige.

The intent of Polish jokes, however, is not humor alone.

Cannot some major center of learning conduct a study of how much damage is done to the psyches of people constantly stereo typed in public? Can’t the American Civil Liberties Union and a wide range of anti-defamation societies join in protests to the magazines, television channels and gatherings of (otherwise) sophisticated people who tell ethnic jokes of the inherently demeaning kind? We don’t need Supreme Court decisions, per haps, but we do need a basic sense of public fairness. Eastern Europeans cannot halt Polish jokes alone. The help of all is required.

This is supposed to be a nation of civility toward all, bigotry toward none. It’s not. But when the laughter rings, it rings for thee.—Michael Novak, Newsweek

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