We've already looked at the logical structure of arguments: now we start looking at how to map those logical pieces into units of writing in a way that makes sense to readers. Indeed, the way you design an essay is just as important as your ideas and evidence. Good structure helps make an essay easier to follow. Your reader, remember, doesn't know where the essay is going or how it's going to get there. Even if he knows the main argument, he won't be sure what you're doing at any given point—why this example, this quotation, this paragraph. And when we as writers get sloppy about these things, as we do all too often—wandering off track in a sentence, a quotation, a paragraph—how can we expect our reader to stay on track?

Inexperienced writers forget to look at their writing from the reader's point of view, and don't give enough attention to careful organization and clear signposts for where the essay is going. Writing an essay, especially on a topic you've been thinking a lot about, is like giving a stranger directions to your home: it's hard to come up with easy-to-follow, step-by-step directions for a process you take for granted.

The basic blueprint

Essays have a basic blueprint with three main parts: a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The beginning should engage the reader's attention, state the argument, and provide an essential context so the reader has a sense of "so what?" It should do more than say something like this: This essay will look at Amazon.com. A good introduction should pose a problem: Jeff Bezos became a billionaire after founding Amazon.com in 1995, but his company has yet to make a penny of profit. How did Amazon get so big so fast? Can it sustain its remarkable growth? And will Amazon and scores of other high-profile dot-coms ever become profitable—or are they built on a flawed business model?

After the beginning, the middle is where you actually make your argument—where you grapple with the problem you've introduced. Here's where you bring in background material, tell your story in detail, and work through the argument step by step. These logical steps typically unfold in paragraphs or clusters of paragraphs (whole chapters, in a book).

Finally, the ending is where you remind your reader of what you argued, and make some larger point that sends him off with a satisfied feeling that he's learned something worth learning, that he hasn't wasted his time.

The simplicity of this structure is kind of reassuring: it means that you already know how to design good essays. But the simplicity of this standard design also poses a difficulty for you, because it means that to your reader there's nothing immediately distinctive about your essay. The frame—introduction, body, conclusion—is so general that your reader is going to need a lot more guidance to get through your particular argument.

Scientific research papers

The two most common kinds of papers students have to write in the sciences are review papers and lab reports. Review papers, as the name implies, review current knowledge and research on a particular topic. The point of a review paper is not to display original thinking, but to demonstrate one's understanding of current knowledge, as well as one's ability to conduct and present research. Review papers (1) pose a question or problem, explaining its significance; (2) survey recent research, breaking it down and presenting it in some logical fashion; and (3) summarize key findings and avenues for further research.

Lab reports, on the other hand, do report original research. The point is not usually to propose a new theory, but to test an existing theory or answer a question. But lab reports have a similar structure to review papers. They (1) pose a question or problem, explaining its significance; (2) describe the materials and methods used in the experiment; (3) present the results; and (4) summarize key findings.

Both of these structures have the same basic three-part essay of beginning, middle, ending common to all essays:

Thus one can employ the same strategies and techniques in writing science review papers and lab reports as in other kinds of essays (though certain things like quoting conventions or citation style may be different: see CBE documentation).

Before turning to more detailed treatment of beginnings, middles, and endings, let's glance at three significant structural principles: dealing with an argument's weaknesses, staying on track, and balancing general and specific.

Dealing with weaknesses

No argument is perfect. All arguments have weaknesses, like missing or contrary evidence or plausible alternative interpretations. Some writers tend to sweep these things under the rug, afraid that if they call attention to them they're encouraging the reader to reject the whole argument. But such an all-or-nothing attitude isn't the right tack to take in essay-writing. It's understood that academic essays make arguments, not proofs. Instead, you can achieve the apparently paradoxical effect of strengthening your argument by conceding its limits. Disarm the opposition ahead of time, and your reader is likely to trust you and your argument more:

Another example, from an essay arguing that Shakespeare was influenced by Machiavelli:

One more, from an essay praising Thomas Jefferson's political thought:

Let's look at one example in a bit more detail. Here's how a writer, arguing that NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia caused massive and unjustifiable environmental damage, seeks to defuse the objection that Yugoslavia's environmental problems predate the bombing. The whole paragraph is quoted so we can observe the structure:

The writer does something inexperienced writers don't realize they can do: rather than avoiding the complicated argument of figuring out when pollutants date from, she takes on the argument, even laying out its data in some detail (the mention of toxins dating back to the 1960s). But notice the sound structure: at the end she reasserts her argument (in the penultimate sentence, beginning But...). And in the final sentence she actually uses the preexisting damage argument to buttress her own case for the need for environmental cleanup. Over the course of the paragraph she nimbly turns an apparent weakness in her argument into a strength.

See the section on Evidence for more guidance on building persuasive arguments.

Staying on track

As noted earlier in the section on Thinking, essay writing does not proceed in linear fashion, thinking  writing. Instead, thinking and writing are intertwined and mutually dependent activities. As you write, you will inevitably modify and develop your ideas. You may come up with additional evidence or arguments, or problems you hadn't anticipated. As you pore over your textual material, you may even start having new ideas in a quite different direction.

This happens to all writers. It's actually a good thing; it's one of the ways writing helps you think.

You do of course need to end up with a focused essay, but that may not mean slavishly following your original plan of attack. Don't force your material to fit your argument. Instead, expect to reshape your argument to fit the material. It's remarkable how often students argue simplistic points in an essay, as if they feel trapped by what they decided to say in the first paragraph. You're never trapped: as you write, you think, and if you need to go back and rethink your thesis, do it rather than make a poor argument.

Balancing general and specific

Finally, you strengthen an argument by achieving a balance of general and specific statements. Some writers stumble by never resorting to quotations or other forms of evidence; others stumble by never rising above a deluge of facts, quotes, and details. There is no ideal proportion, nor does every paragraph need to balance these elements. But over the course of the essay be sensitive to a steady rising and falling rhythm, from high to low, from general to specific.

  Next: The beginning