"Our town has a skate park" can't start an argument, because nobody will push back and there is nothing left to say. "Our skate park has done more to keep teenagers out of trouble than the curfew ever did" commits you to something: a reader can doubt it, so the next three sentences have to prove it. That is the unit of argument writing this topic builds: one paragraph, one claim worth defending, evidence that defends it, and sentences that show the reader how the evidence does its work. Topic 1.3 taught you to find these parts in someone else's argument; here you build them.
A claim that needs defending
Your paragraph's claim (its topic sentence, in most paragraphs) is the sentence the rest of the paragraph exists to prove. A good one passes three tests:
- Someone could reasonably disagree. If the sentence is a fact, there's nothing to argue. If no sensible person would dispute it, there's nothing to argue either.
- It is narrow enough to prove in a paragraph. "Technology has changed society" would take a library. "Group chats have replaced the hallway as the place where a school's rumors start" can be defended with a few pieces of evidence.
- It is your position, stated in your words. A sentence that reports what a source says ("The article discusses school start times") is a summary; it becomes a claim when you take a stand on it.
| Weak | Why it fails | Revised claim |
|---|---|---|
| The library is open until 5 p.m. | A checkable fact | Closing the library at 5 p.m. shuts out the students who need it most, the ones who work after school. |
| Exercise is good for you. | Nobody disputes it | A required gym class does less for students' health than a daily walk to school would. |
| Social media has many effects. | Too vague to prove or disprove | Posting a photo of a meal changes how people eat it: they order for the picture. |
| I like reading on paper. | A preference, with no stakes for anyone else | Students remember more of what they read on paper than on a screen, so assigned readings should come in print. |
Notice that each revision makes the paragraph's job visible. "Shuts out the students who need it most" tells you the evidence must show who uses the library and when they're free.
Evidence that fits the claim
Topic 1.3 listed the kinds of evidence. Writing means choosing among them, and the claim tells you which kind you need.
- A claim about how common or how large something is needs numbers or several examples: one story can't show a trend.
- A claim about what something is like (how a policy feels to the people under it) needs details, an anecdote, testimony, or personal experience.
- A claim about cause needs a comparison: what happened with the cause and without it, as in an experiment or a before-and-after.
- A claim that turns on specialized knowledge (whether a bridge is safe) needs someone who has it.
Then check the evidence against three questions. Is it relevant: does it prove this claim, or only touch the topic? Is it specific: a named place, a number, a particular moment, rather than "many people" or "studies show"? Is it enough: would a skeptical reader still say "that's one case"? A paragraph with one specific, relevant piece of evidence and a clear explanation beats one with four vague ones.
Where evidence comes from depends on the task. In the argument essay you draw on what you know: your reading, history, current events, and your own experience and observations. Specific knowledge you actually have beats an invented statistic, which a reader has no reason to trust. In the synthesis essay your evidence comes from the provided sources, cited by letter. In the rhetorical analysis essay it is the passage's own words.
Bringing a source into your sentence
When evidence comes from a source, you can quote it, paraphrase it, or summarize it, and in each case it becomes part of a sentence you wrote. That joining is called embedding.
- Quote when the exact words matter: they are striking, they carry the source's authority, or you are about to analyze the wording itself. Quote only the words you need.
- Paraphrase to restate one specific idea in your own words and sentence structure, when the idea matters more than the phrasing. Swapping in synonyms while keeping the source's sentence shape is not a paraphrase; either quote it or rewrite it from scratch.
- Summarize to compress a longer passage or a whole source to its main point, when you need the source's position as background.
All three need a signal phrase naming whose idea it is ("the transit report found," "as the coach put it"), and the verb can show how you regard the source: found and shows grant authority, claims and insists keep a distance.
An embedded quotation has to fit your sentence's grammar, as if the quotation marks weren't there. If it doesn't fit, quote fewer words or change your sentence. You may mark small changes: an ellipsis (. . .) shows words you left out, and square brackets show words you changed or added so the quotation fits ("she [the coach] never cut a player"). Neither may change what the source meant; cutting a "not" or an "only some" is misquoting.
A quotation set in its own sentence with nothing introducing it and nothing explaining it is a dropped quotation. The reader is left to guess who said it and why it's there, which is the work your paragraph was supposed to do.
Building the paragraph
A Unit 1 argument paragraph has three working parts:
- The claim, usually first, so the reader knows what the evidence is for.
- The evidence, specific and embedded in your sentences.
- The explanation that links them: why this evidence makes this claim more believable. This is the reasoning Topic 1.3 asked you to find in other writers' arguments, and it is easy to leave out, as if the evidence spoke for itself. It doesn't. If you cite a number, say what the number means for your claim.
A paragraph often has two rounds of evidence and explanation, and may end with a sentence that shows what the claim adds up to. Length is not the goal: each sentence should either make the claim, supply evidence, or explain it. Unit 3 goes further into commentary and how paragraphs link into a line of reasoning.
Worked examples
Revise each sentence into a claim that a reader could dispute and that one paragraph could defend.
- Many students have part-time jobs.
- The school's cafeteria serves pizza every Friday.
- Music is important.
Show solution
- Revised: "A part-time job teaches students more about managing time than any study-skills class, because a shift can't be postponed the way homework can." The original is a fact. The revision takes a position others could dispute (some would say jobs take time from schoolwork) and names the reason the paragraph will develop.
- Revised: "Friday pizza is the cafeteria's best argument against an open-campus lunch: it is the one day most students choose to eat at school." The fact about pizza becomes evidence for a claim about why students stay on campus, which tells the paragraph to supply a comparison of how many students buy lunch on Fridays and on other days.
- Revised: "Cutting the middle school's band program would cost the high school its best students, since most of the honor roll started an instrument in sixth grade." "Music is important" is too broad to prove and no one disputes it. The revision is narrow, disputable, and points to the evidence the writer would need, a count of honor-roll students with band experience. The writer would also have to explain why band, and not some other difference between those students, made the difference: that is the reasoning a reader will look for.
The move in all three is the same: ask what the plain statement is evidence for, and make that the claim.
A writer is arguing that the town should extend bus service past 9 p.m. This passage comes from a report by the town's transit office:
Of the 312 riders we surveyed, 118 said they had turned down a job or an evening shift because no bus could bring them home afterward. Most of these riders were under twenty-five or over sixty.
Show a quotation, a paraphrase, and a summary embedded in the writer's own sentences, then fix this dropped quotation: Buses stop at 9 p.m. "118 said they had turned down a job or an evening shift." This needs to change.
Show solution
Quotation. The transit office's own survey found that more than a third of riders, 118 of 312, "had turned down a job or an evening shift because no bus could bring them home afterward." The quoted words fit the sentence's grammar, and the exact phrasing earns its place: "turned down a job" is concrete and comes from the town's own report.
Paraphrase. According to the transit office's survey, more than a third of riders have passed up work at night because they had no way home on the bus, and most of those riders were either young adults or older residents. New words and new sentence structure, same meaning, still attributed.
Summary. A transit office survey ties the 9 p.m. cutoff to lost work, especially for younger and older riders. One clause states the source's main point as background for the writer's claim.
Fixing the dropped quotation.
Ending bus service at 9 p.m. costs this town workers. When the transit office surveyed 312 riders, 118 said they "had turned down a job or an evening shift because no bus could bring them home afterward." Each of those riders had work on offer and refused it only because the last bus left too early, so that work went undone for the lack of a few late routes.
The claim comes first, the signal phrase tells the reader whose numbers these are, and the last sentence explains what the numbers mean for the claim, which "This needs to change" never did.
Prompt: Some people argue that rules work best when the people who must follow them help write them. Write a paragraph that takes a position on this idea and supports it with evidence.
The model below is written in the voice of a student whose school really did change its lunch phone rule this way. Use experience of your own in its place; if you have none that fits, lead with evidence you do have.
Show solution
Rules work best when the people who live under them help write them, because a rule you helped make is one you have already agreed to defend. My school learned this with phones. When the principal banned phones at lunch, students hid them under the tables, and teachers spent the period confiscating them. The next year a committee of six students and two teachers wrote a new rule, phones away during the first twenty minutes so the tables would talk, and within a month the lunch aides said they rarely had to remind anyone. The second rule wasn't stricter or easier to enforce; the difference was that students had argued for it in front of their friends, so breaking it meant going back on their own word. The same pattern shaped the country's founding document. Several states ratified the Constitution only after its supporters promised amendments protecting individual rights, and the Bill of Rights followed in 1791: the people who would live under the new government insisted on a hand in its rules before they would accept them.
Why it works.
- The claim in the first sentence is disputable (someone could argue that rules work best when they come from people with authority and experience) and it already names the reason the evidence will support: ownership.
- The first piece of evidence is personal experience, told with specifics: who wrote each rule, what happened, how long it took. Those specifics are what let a reader weigh it; "things got better at my school" proves nothing. Use only experience you actually have. A made-up anecdote is no better than the invented statistic warned against above, and specifics you can genuinely supply are always more convincing than ones you would have to imagine.
- The explanation after it does the paragraph's real work. It rules out an alternative cause (the second rule wasn't simply stricter) and names the mechanism, students arguing for the rule in public.
- The second piece of evidence is history, and it shows the pattern isn't just one lunchroom. The writer explains its connection in the same sentence after the colon, so the example never stands on its own.
On the argument essay, a paragraph like this, with specific evidence and explanation that ties it to the claim, is what lifts the evidence-and-commentary score. A paragraph that listed three rules and said "these show people follow rules they make" would have the evidence and none of the explanation.
The passage below is a draft.
(1) Every high school in the county has a greenhouse, but ours may be the least used. (2) It was built in 2009 with money from a local nursery. (3) The greenhouse sits empty for most of the school year. (4) Only the biology classes use it, and only for a short unit each spring. (5) Opening it to the community on weekends would put it to work. (6) Residents without yards have nowhere to start seedlings. (7) "We turn away forty families a year." (8) A weekend program run by volunteers would cost the school little and give those families a place to grow food.
Question 1. The writer wants to add evidence after sentence 3 to support the claim made in that sentence. Which of the following would best accomplish this goal?
- (A) Interest in home gardening has grown across the country over the past decade.
- (B) The greenhouse's sign-in sheet shows it was used on 31 of the 180 school days last year.
- (C) One student said that working in the greenhouse was her favorite part of biology.
- (D) The greenhouse has twelve benches and an automatic watering system.
Question 2. The writer wants to revise sentence 7 (reproduced below) so that it is clearly connected to the argument of the passage.
"We turn away forty families a year."
Which of the following versions of sentence 7 best accomplishes this goal?
- (A) (as it is now)
- (B) Quotations can make an argument more interesting: "We turn away forty families a year."
- (C) The demand is real: the director of the community garden on Elm Street says, "We turn away forty families a year" from its waiting list.
- (D) As someone once said, "We turn away forty families a year."
Show solution
1. (B). Sentence 3 claims the greenhouse sits empty most of the year, so the evidence has to measure how often it is used. A count from the sign-in sheet does exactly that, and 31 days out of 180 is less than a fifth of the school year. (A) is about gardening in general, not this greenhouse. (C) is testimony about enjoyment, which supports nothing in sentence 3 and could even suggest the greenhouse is used. (D) describes the equipment, which is relevant to the later proposal but says nothing about use. The trap is (D): it is about the right building, and it still doesn't prove the claim.
2. (C). As written, sentence 7 is a dropped quotation: the reader can't tell who "we" is or what they turn families away from. (C) adds a signal phrase naming a source with direct knowledge, the director of a community garden with a waiting list, and its opening clause ("The demand is real") ties the quotation to sentence 6's claim that residents have nowhere to grow plants. (B) introduces the quotation but talks about quotations instead of the argument. (D) attributes it to no one, which removes the authority that makes it evidence.
Where students lose points
On the exam
Multiple-choice questions on student drafts test this skill directly: which piece of evidence best supports a given sentence's claim, whether to add a sentence or a quotation, how to introduce or integrate a quotation, and which version of a sentence makes the most effective claim. All three essays score evidence and commentary together, in your own words: the strongest essays bring specific, relevant evidence and consistently explain how it supports each claim, and essays that summarize or list evidence without that explanation score lower. In the synthesis essay, cite each source you use by its letter or description, whether you quote, paraphrase, or summarize it.
Check yourself
Question 1
A student is writing a paragraph about the town's plan to replace its public tennis courts with a parking garage. Which of the following would make the most effective claim to open the paragraph?
- A
The town council has proposed replacing the tennis courts with a parking garage.
- B
Tennis is a popular sport that many people enjoy.
- C
Trading the tennis courts for a garage would give drivers forty more spaces and take away the only free place in town where teenagers and retirees play side by side.
- D
There are many opinions about the parking garage.
Show answer
C
C takes a position a reader could dispute and tells the paragraph what it must show: who uses the courts and what the town would lose. A is tempting because it is specific and on topic, but it is a fact about the proposal, so there is nothing to defend.
- A
Question 2
A writer claims that the school's late-bus program is underused because students don't know it exists. Which piece of evidence would best support this specific claim?
- A
The late bus runs at 5:15 p.m. on weekdays.
- B
Of 150 students surveyed in the after-school clubs, 98 did not know a late bus was available.
- C
Many schools in other states have late-bus programs.
- D
A student who rides the late bus says it is clean and on time.
Show answer
B
The claim is about a cause, students' lack of awareness, so the evidence has to show how many don't know about the bus, and the survey measures exactly that among the students most likely to need it. D is tempting because it is testimony about this bus, but a rider's praise speaks to quality, not to whether other students have heard of it.
- A
Question 3
A source says: "The new rule did not reduce absences in the first year, though it did in the second." A student writes: The study found that the new rule "did . . . reduce absences." What is wrong with this use of the source?
Show answer
The ellipsis cuts "not" and the first-year result, so the quotation claims the rule reduced absences outright when the source says it failed in the first year and worked only in the second. An honest version would say the rule reduced absences in its second year but not its first.
Ellipses may drop words only when the meaning survives. Removing a negative or a qualification turns the source into evidence for a claim it doesn't make, which is misrepresenting it.
Question 4
Here is part of a student's paragraph: "Schools should start at 8:30 instead of 7:25. A survey at our school found that 70 percent of students sleep fewer than seven hours on school nights." Write the sentence that should come next, and say what job it does.
Show answer
For example: "An 8:30 start would let those students sleep about an hour later each morning, which puts the seven-hour night they now miss within reach without going to bed any earlier." It explains how the evidence supports the claim: it connects the sleep statistic to the specific change the claim proposes.
As written, the paragraph has a claim and evidence but no explanation, and the statistic alone doesn't say why a later start is the answer. The next sentence should start from the evidence and end at the claim. Another piece of evidence first would leave the first one unexplained.