A prolific painter of portraits before and after the French Revolution ...

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Chapter 7
explaining
• Review possibilities for visuals or graphics. What additions or changes to
images might be appropriate for your purpose, genre, or audience?
• Compare your thesis sentence with what you say in your conclusion. You
may have a clearer statement of your thesis near the end of your paper. Revise
your original thesis sentence to make it clearer, more focused, or more
in line with what your essay actually says.
• Explaining means showing and demonstrating relationships. Be sure to
follow general statements with specific examples, details, facts, statistics, memories,
dialogues, or other illustrations.
• In a formal definition, be sure to include the class of objects or concepts
to which the term belongs. Avoid ungrammatical writing, such as “Photosynthesis
is when plants absorb oxygen” or “The lymphatic system is where
the body removes bacteria and transports fatty cells.”
• Avoid introducing definitions with “Webster says. . . .” Instead, read definitions
from several dictionaries and give the best or most appropriate definition.
• Remember that you can modify the dictionary definition of a term or
concept to fit your particular context. For example, to you, heroism may
mean having the courage to say what you believe, not just to endanger your
life through selfless actions.
• Don’t mix categories when you are classifying objects or ideas. If you are
classifying houses by floor design (ranch, bilevel, split-level, two-story), don’t
bring in other categories, such as passive-solar, which could be incorporated
into any of those designs.
• In explaining how something occurs or should be done, be sure to indicate
to your audience which steps are most important.
• In cause-and-effect explanations, avoid post hoc fallacies. This term
comes from the Latin phrase post hoc, ergo propter hoc: “After this,
therefore because of this.” For example, just because Event B occurred
after Event A, it does not follow, necessarily, that A caused B. If, for
example, statistics show that traffic fatalities in your state actually declined
after the speed limit on interstate highways was increased, you should not
conclude that higher speeds actually caused the reduction in fatalities.
Other causes—increased radar patrols, stiffer drunk-driving penalties, or
more rigorous vehicle-maintenance laws—may have been responsible for
the reduction.
• As you revise to sharpen your meaning or make your organization
clearer, use appropriate transitional words and phrases to signal the relationships
among the various parts of your subject.
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