by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: August 01, 2008   Last Updated: November 16, 2010

An argument is an appeal. Make your side believable. It is not often in writing that a writer gets to take sides, but when writing an argument for or against, to stop an outrage your words must be chosen for their forcefulness. You are asking your readers to see it your way. to be for or against something, to do something, to get in there and get this thing going, or to stop it. When writing arguments you appeal to the emotions of the writer throughout the column, article, or whatever.

Good writing demands that you have a purpose for writing what you write and that purpose should be obvious in the first few paragraphs. If, as an example, you are a newspaper reporter and your assignment is to persuade the local citizenry that a certain street needs a light, you don't exactly demand that somehing be done, not at first. You do that after you've presented them with the fatality fatality statistics up front.

Further on you will tell them who is raising a ruckus about the lack of a light, and who opposes it. How do you gauge what comes next in writing? For a newspaper you put the most important argument in the first paragraph and each one after that supports the basic theme of the article.

You, in theory at least, reach out and grab attention with your topic. It, to be effective should be a compressed summary of good argument. Conflict brings tension and readers will continue reading to see how the problem presented will be resolved or not resolved. Readers read or will not read according to how relevant it is. The author is for or against or he can remain quietly in the background.

Arguments are varied and keeping them alive throughout keeps your audience interested and reading. There are forceful arguments; arguments appealing to a readers monetary sense; arguments that gently sway without too much controversy. Modern writers don't fuss about explanations of their arguments as did older writers. Today writers usually present their arguments and facts and opinions in the column, the story, the essay and leave and leave it to the reader to read or not read.

All-time-favorites such as Saint Thomas Aquinas and John Milton preferred to explain their arguments. Aquinas in the 1200s in "On Law, Morality, and Politics" spelled out the process of how to construct arguments and come to believable conclusions; John Milton, when writing "Paradise Lost" as well as "Paradise Regained" explained each book of poems and his purposeful arguments.

An argument as it relates to writing is not the same as an argument between friends, but is more like an agreement to disagree while showing the other side of the verbal picture being painted. No longer do poets explain their longs poems as they once did, preferring to leave any arguments and appeals and explanations up to the reader. None-the-less, arguments are there but are often presented in artful ways.

What else is life but arguments and an attempt to come to conclusions? Of course these conclusions do arrive. In writing they come as a finale; in life they come in death; in writing another assignment awaits us; in death, who knows?

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