AP® English Language and Composition review sheet from Aim for Five (aimforfive.com/lang/units/3/3-1)
Unit 3 · Topic 3.1
3.1 Commentary: explaining how evidence supports a claim
Commentary is your explanation of how and why a piece of evidence supports your claim and moves your argument forward. It's the difference between a summary and an argument, and it's what Row B of the essay rubric, Evidence and Commentary, worth 4 of the 6 points, rewards most.
Key terms
- commentary
- analysis
- evidence
- claim
What commentary does
Evidence shows readers something. Commentary tells them what it means. Good commentary does three jobs: it makes the logical link between the evidence and your claim, it explains why the evidence matters, and it shows how this point fits into your larger line of reasoning.
If you deleted your commentary and your paragraph still said the same thing, you didn't have commentary, only a summary with quotation marks.
Summary versus commentary
| Summary says... | Commentary says... |
|---|---|
| Paine says tyranny is hard to beat. | Paine compares tyranny to hell, which turns a political fight into a moral one. |
| Thoreau lists the cost of his house. | Thoreau's half-cent precision makes him sound like a careful accountant, not a dreamer, so readers trust his claim that simple living is affordable. |
| Source C shows that families in low-income neighborhoods owe the most in fines. | Source C's data suggests fines fall hardest on the families with the least money, which undercuts the idea that fines are a fair penalty. |
Questions that produce commentary
- What does this word, image or detail suggest beyond its literal meaning?
- Why would this audience, at this moment, respond to it?
- What would be lost if the writer had said it a plainer way?
- How does this connect to my claim, and to my thesis?
- So what? Why does this matter for the writer's purpose?
Moves and verbs for commentary
Sentence frames help when you're stuck: "By ___, [the writer] ___, which ___." "This choice matters because ___." "For an audience that ___, this ___."
Precise verbs make commentary sharper than "shows." Try: suggests, implies, reinforces, undercuts, dignifies, mocks, reframes, heightens, invites, contrasts, unites, warns, concedes, challenges.
Another useful move is "not just... but": "The image doesn't just describe the hallway; it makes readers feel trapped in it." It pushes you past the obvious meaning toward the effect.
Row B in plain words
Row B is worth 0 to 4 points. Low scores come from restating the thesis, repeating information, or summarizing evidence without explaining it. A middle score explains some evidence but without a clear line of reasoning. The top score supplies specific evidence for every claim and consistently explains how that evidence supports a line of reasoning. In the synthesis essay, the evidence also has to come from at least three of the provided sources to score above 1. Consistently is the key word: commentary belongs in every paragraph, not just one.
Worked examples
Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.
- Example 1
From summary to commentary
Write a Question 2 body paragraph on this sentence from Thomas Paine's first "American Crisis" (December 1776), written to keep discouraged Americans in the war: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." First look at a summary-only draft (written for this page): "Paine says that tyranny is like hell and hard to conquer. He says the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. This shows he wants people to keep fighting."
Show the solutionHide the solution
- Step 1: Diagnose the draft: it repeats Paine's words, then adds a vague "this shows" sentence. That's Row B's low end.
- Step 2: Find what's worth explaining: the simile "like hell" and the turn at "yet," which flips the hardship into a reason for hope.
- Step 3: Ask why it would work on this audience: soldiers were exhausted and losing. Paine can't deny that it's hard, so he redefines the hardship.
- Step 4: Write claim, evidence, commentary, and a link to the purpose. Let the commentary be longer than the quotations.
Answer: Model paragraph: [Claim] Paine admits the war is brutal, then turns that admission into a reason to keep going. [Evidence] He compares tyranny to hell, "not easily conquered," [Commentary] a simile that raises the stakes from a quarrel over taxes to a struggle against something evil, so giving up would mean surrendering to it. [Evidence] Then he pivots on "yet": "the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." [Commentary] For soldiers who had just lost battle after battle, this is a clever move. Paine doesn't pretend things are going well, which would sound false; instead he makes their suffering the very thing that will give victory its value. [Link] The worse the winter gets, the more each soldier who stays becomes part of a story worth telling, which is exactly the commitment Paine needs.
Common mistakes
- Writing "This shows that..." and then repeating the quotation in other words.
- Saving all the commentary for the last sentence of a paragraph instead of explaining each piece of evidence as it appears.
- Naming a device ("Paine uses a simile") as if naming it were the analysis.
- Using long quotations with one short sentence of explanation. Aim for at least as much commentary as quotation.
On the exam
- Row B is worth 4 of the 6 points on every essay, so most of your time should go into evidence and commentary.
- Reading questions about the function of a sentence or detail are testing the same skill: explaining what a piece of text does for the argument.
Connected topics
Videos
Check yourself
5 questions on 3.1 Commentary: explaining how evidence supports a claim. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.
Written for this practice set: two body paragraphs from a student's draft of a rhetorical analysis essay on Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address (1865).
Sentence 3 (reproduced below) is weak commentary. "This quotation is from the first paragraph of the speech." Which version best explains how the evidence in sentence 2 supports the claim in sentence 1?
Sentence 7 (reproduced below) is the weakest sentence in paragraph 2. "This shows that Lincoln uses religion." Which of the following best explains why?
Which version of sentence 7 provides the most effective commentary?
Written for this practice set: a student's draft of two paragraphs from a synthesis essay. Source A is a town water report, Source B is a magazine article and Source C is a letter from a homeowners' association; all are invented.
The writer wants to add commentary after sentence 2 that explains why the statistic matters to her argument. Which choice best accomplishes this goal?
Sentence 8 is effective mainly because it
0 of 5 answered