Unit 7 · Topic 7.1

7.1 Introductions and conclusions for complex arguments

Once your argument includes qualifications and counterarguments, your introduction and conclusion have more to do. A strong introduction shows readers why the issue is complicated before you state your position. A strong conclusion explains what's at stake, instead of just repeating the thesis.

Key terms

introduction
hook
thesis
conclusion
significance
call to action

What an introduction does

An introduction presents the subject to the audience, and it often presents the thesis. Its other job is to get readers ready: to orient them (what's the issue?), engage them (why should I care?) and focus them (what exactly is being argued?). Writers do this with a quotation, a surprising statement, a short anecdote, a question, a statistic, a bit of background or a scenario.

For a simple argument, a hook plus a thesis may be enough. For a qualified argument, the introduction should also show the tension you'll work through. If your thesis says "Convenience helps people, but only when it frees time for something better," the reader needs to see first that convenience has real benefits and real costs. Otherwise the qualification looks like hedging instead of thinking.

A pattern for complex introductions

Open with something concrete: a scenario, a fact or a short example that captures the issue.
Name the tension: show the strongest reason on each side, in a sentence or two.
State your qualified position: say what you believe and under what conditions.
Optionally preview your line of reasoning, so the reader knows the order of your claims (4.3).

What a conclusion does

A conclusion ties the whole argument together. It may restate the thesis in fresh words, but the strongest conclusions do something more:

Explain the significance of the argument in a broader context: what larger problem or value does this issue connect to?
Explain implications: if your argument is right, what follows?
Admit limits: what your argument doesn't settle, and why that matters.
Call readers to act, or suggest a change in attitude or behavior.
Propose a solution, leave a memorable image, or return to the opening scenario with new meaning.

On a timed essay

Keep the introduction short: two to four sentences is plenty, because the evidence-and-commentary row is worth 4 of the 6 points. Don't spend ten minutes on a hook. A one-sentence conclusion is acceptable if time runs out, but a conclusion that situates your argument in a broader context, explored in a few sentences rather than a sweeping one-liner, can help earn the sophistication point.

For the rhetorical analysis essay, the introduction should briefly set up the rhetorical situation (who is speaking, to whom, when and why) before your thesis about the writer's choices.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Upgrading an introduction and conclusion
Practice prompt (written for this practice set): Write an argument about whether convenience improves people's lives. Weak introduction: "Convenience is everywhere today. Some people think it's good and some think it's bad. In this essay I will explain my opinion about convenience." Weak conclusion: "In conclusion, convenience has good and bad sides, as I have shown." Rewrite both for a qualified argument.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Diagnose the introduction. "Some think it's good and some think it's bad" only summarizes both sides, and "I will explain my opinion" announces instead of arguing. There's no defensible thesis yet.
2. Step 2: Start concrete. A specific scenario makes the issue real.
3. Step 3: Name the tension in one sentence: convenience saves time, but it can also take away effort that gives life meaning.
4. Step 4: State a qualified position with a condition, so the reader knows exactly what you'll defend.
5. Step 5: For the conclusion, don't summarize. Widen the lens: connect the argument to how people choose to spend their time, and give the reader something to do with the idea.
Answer: Introduction: "A grocery app can deliver dinner ingredients in twenty minutes, and a meal-kit company will even measure the spices. That speed is a real gift to a parent working two jobs. Yet the same convenience can quietly remove the effort that makes cooking, or learning, or friendship, worth doing. Convenience improves people's lives when it frees time for things they value, but it impoverishes them when it replaces those very things." Conclusion: "The question, then, isn't whether to accept convenience but what to spend it on. Every app that saves us an hour is offering a trade, and the trade is good only if we know what the hour is for. Before we let the next shortcut decide for us, it's worth asking which efforts we'd miss if they disappeared."

Common mistakes

Announcing instead of arguing ("In this essay I will discuss..."). State your position.
Writing a long, general opening ("Since the dawn of time...") that wastes minutes and says nothing specific.
Ending with a word-for-word repeat of the thesis. Use the conclusion to show why the argument matters.
Adding a brand-new argument in the conclusion that the essay never supported.

On the exam

The thesis can be anywhere in the essay, but putting it at the end of a short introduction makes it easy for a reader to find and reward.
Multiple-choice writing questions often ask which sentence would best introduce or conclude a draft. Pick the choice that fits the draft's specific claim and audience, not the flashiest one.

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Check yourself

5 questions on 7.1 Introductions and conclusions for complex arguments. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best, from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning, by study; and studies themselves, do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not.

Francis Bacon, "Of Studies," from Essays (1625 edition); the opening of the essay, in a modernized-spelling text that keeps some older forms: "proyning" means pruning, "contemn" means scorn, "conference" means conversation, and "maketh" means makes.

Question 1 of 5

The opening sentence ("STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability") serves the passage chiefly by

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

[. . .] The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.

[. . .] A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.—‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’—Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," from Essays: First Series (1841). Bracketed ellipses mark omitted text.

Question 2 of 5

Emerson begins the essay with his reaction to "some verses written by an eminent painter." This opening serves as an introduction mainly by

(1) Everyone hates traffic. (2) Free public transit would completely solve our city's traffic problem.

(3) Cities that have eliminated fares have always seen ridership soar. (4) In one mid-sized city that dropped fares as a pilot program, bus ridership rose by about a third in the first year. (5) More riders mean fewer cars on the road.

(6) Of course, fares pay for part of the system, so the city would have to find that money elsewhere. (7) Some riders might also find buses crowded at rush hour. (8) But these problems are small compared with the benefits. (9) In conclusion, free transit would solve traffic, and the city should adopt it.

Written for this practice set: a student's draft of an argument essay. The pilot-program figure is invented.

Question 3 of 5

The writer wants to replace sentence 1 with an opening that shows why the issue is more complicated than it looks. Which sentence best accomplishes this goal?

Question 4 of 5

The writer wants to add a sentence after sentence 2 that previews the conditions the argument will discuss. Which sentence best accomplishes this goal?

Question 5 of 5

The writer wants to replace sentence 9 with a conclusion that does more than restate the thesis. Which sentence best accomplishes this goal?

0 of 5 answered