Like writing style, essay structure is an aspect of argumentation that many people overlook as a rhetorical decision. How you arrange your paragraphs and your entire text helps you clarify your points, prioritize information, and emphasize important aspects of your argument. An essay structure that is coherently organized and easy to follow can be an effective appeal to reason, an appeal to character, or both. Throughout the semester we'll conduct in-class workshops on essay structure. In the meantime, if you would like to read more, consult the chapters in Writing with Style on openers, middles, and closers.
Some writers think revision is just a matter of correcting sentence-level rhetoric.
But this is only a small part of the process. After you've made a decision about your argument's thesis, consult the Reader's Checklist for Revision on page 105 of The Aims of Argument . Next you should make whatever changes you think are necessary to satisfy your audience. Once you've gone through these steps and filled out an editing log to keep track of how your writing style develops, you've completed a global revision. We'll use The Aims of Argument , Writing with Style , and in-class workshops to examine the process of revision in more detail.