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..The structure of a paper is always strongly influenced by the nature of the material and the writer’s purpose. In most writing the third major influence should be the audience. With the audience in mind you decide whether to organize your material according to the rhetorical strategy of announcing or the rhetorical strategy of disclosing. Announcing and Disclosing In announcing, you make the structure of your paper explicit, either in a fairly elaborate program paragraph early in the paper or in guidepost statements at key points throughout (or, sometimes, in both). A program paragraph previews the organization by indicating the divisions of the subject or by listing the topics to be treated; it may or may not include a thesis statement or a direct statement of purpose of the “This-essay-will-attempt-to show” type. In any case, one way or another you tell the reader what you’re going to do before you do it. When the announcing is done by sentences interspersed through the paper, they often summarize as well as forecast, re minding the reader of what ground has already been covered besides giving clues to what lies ahead. You use the strategy of announcing when you begin a paper by saying that the decline in the President’s popularity has been caused by a series of administrative decisions or that you propose to record the sequence of events that has led to the decline in the President’s popularity or that news analysts are offering five reasons for the decline In the President’s popularity. When you announce, you keep few organizational secrets from the reader. The structure of your paper is exposed or at least lies close to the surface. In the strategy of disclosing, your structure lies deeper. Your beginning doesn’t forecast your ending, and you proceed from stage to stage without revealing to the reader just how each is related to the point you’ll eventually make. When you use the strategy successfully, the subject seems to unfold according to its own inner pressure, and the climax sometimes brings an element of surprise. (In the good paper the surprise is immediately followed by a “Why, of course!”) Although announcing may seem to be the likelier strategy for a paper that moves from a generalization and disclosing for a paper that moves toward a generalization, this isn’t always the case. A problem-solution paper may begin with an announcement of what procedures are being followed, what alternatives excluded, and so on. Or it may be handled in such a way that the reader is gradually brought to realize that a problem exists and then given a sense of sharing in a joint inquiry that leads to a solution. Choosing a Strategy For some of your papers it will seem natural to adopt one strategy rather than the other. But often you can use either. In making your choice you should be guided by your estimate of the needs, interests, and predispositions of your audience. If the material is difficult or the organization necessarily complicated, you may decide that readers will find the paper hard going unless you announce at some length, offering a blueprint to show how each topic or section fits into your whole scheme. Or you may decide that instead you should begin with material your readers are familiar with and gradually work up to the more complex aspects of the subject, disclosing your full scheme only toward the end of the paper. ( You can find both approaches in the textbooks on your desk.) If you can count on your readers having a strong interest in the subject, you may decide to plunge in without offering any guidance to the structure. Or you may conclude that sketching the course of your discussion in a program paragraph will make it easier for readers to concentrate on the content as they move confidently through the paper. If’ you suspect that their interest is so slight that they’ll go woolgathering while you’re expounding, you have a harder decision to make. Can you announce in such a way that your promise of interesting things to come will counteract their indifference? Or does the strategy of disclosing seem more likely to capture their attention? If you’re writing an argument, size up the probable attitude of your audience. Is it largely hostile to your position, or sympathetic to it, or indifferent? Will announcing increase the hostility or diminish it? Answers to questions like these depend on the individual writing situation. Few rhetorical problems are solved by formulas. Handled well, either strategy can result in strong, satisfying organization. But each has its draw backs. Though announcing ensures that readers know where they’re going, it may make the structure seem too mechanical. The strategy of disclosing escapes this danger; but unless the parts of the paper have a tight, organic connection, making the logic of a shift from one part to another immediately clear, readers may not see what direction the paper is taking. And if they have difficulty detecting the general drift, they’ll probably miss the significance of many of the details. A good writer always provides clues to structure, even if he plants them deep. One strategy doesn’t necessarily rule out the other. In long papers you often have occasion to use both. In the first half you lay out your subject, perhaps by giving a chronological sketch of the origins of a problem, analyzing its current dimensions, and offering a method for solving it — all this in a structure strong in announcing. In the second half you shift the technique, now organizing the discussion as an exploration in which you and the reader are carried forward by the logic of the inquiry. Whether you choose to announce or to disclose (or to announce and disclose by turn), your motive should be to involve your readers in your discussion as deeply as you’re involved in it. You want them to understand what you have to say, to take an intelligent interest in it, and finally to accept it. Parts and Paragraph Sequences As we’ve already suggested, in all but the shortest and simplest papers the discussion moves through stages. In most writing you can better control the organization if you think of the paper as consisting of a few parts, each per forming one significant role in relation to your purpose, rather than as consisting of three or four times that many separate paragraphs. The beginning is a part, whether it’s a single sentence, several sentences, a paragraph, or three or four paragraphs in sequence. The ending of a paper is a part, no matter how long or short it is. Each bridge between one stage of the discussion and the next is a part. And each paragraph or sequence of paragraphs that forms one of those stages is a part. In revising a paper, you can work more efficiently once you’ve identified the paragraphs that belong together, those so related that an attentive reader will recognize that they perform one main function in the total scheme. You can make sure that such paragraphs are grouped in a sensible order, and you can shift or drop any paragraph that appears in a sequence where it doesn’t belong. Revising one sequence, or block, of paragraphs before turning to the next is more likely to produce a paper that has direction and point than simply revising paragraph by paragraph without paying attention to these groupings. Once you have the parts of your paper mapped out, you should be able to answer such basic questions about its structure as these: Are the parts in an order that makes the best sense in terms of my purpose? Will the connections between the parts be clear to my readers? Are the beginning and ending suitable in this rhetorical situation? Are the proportions satisfactory? Have I given most space and emphasis to what’s most important? These matters we’ll consider in the remainder of this section. ++ For Analysis Go back to the article on woodcutting by Rowsome. Mark off the main parts, and explain how each part is related to the writer’s purpose. top of page Home Similar Articles |