Counterintuitive Spring 2024

Monday we practiced trading vague, weak opening paragraphs for more direct, clear, provocative claims to begin an essay.

Tonight, let’s practice the simplest, most effective technique to improve your writing: robust subjects and verbs.

Better Arguments

1. Your essay is a long argument whose clearest declaration is its THESIS SENTENCE.
2. Every paragraph makes a shorter argument whose clearest declaration is its TOPIC SENTENCE.
3. Every sentence is a short argument whose clearest declaration is its SUBJECT AND VERB.

Editing for Power

Your Open Strong entries showed vast improvement over the early drafts of your Proposals and White Papers. They can be further improved at the sentence level by identifying the THESIS of your sentences and expressing them in the most definitive Subject/Verb pair.

• Use the “star” of your argument as your subject.
• Use active verbs (disappoints instead of is disappointing).
• Use precise verbs (argues instead of makes an argument).
• Use verbs to make claims (refutes instead of says).
• Avoid passives (took instead of was taken).
• Reduce “to be” verbs (no is, no are, no was, no were).

Since we completed the in-class exercise, I have highlighted the improved subject-verb pairs in red.

A1. Electricity is an enormous driving force behind innovation, and also deterioration.

A2. Electricity drives both innovation and deterioration.

B1. Innovation is geared toward making tasks or goals more easily attainable. The more easily attained, the less work is required.

B2. Innovation reduces the work required to accomplish tasks.

C1. In every sector of life that the convenience of electricity has penetrated, in muscles, work ethic, and decisiveness among many other things, time has inadvertently shown some sort of degradation.

C2. The convenience of electricity has degraded our physical ability, our work ethic, and our decisiveness.

D1. Having a good topic can determine how well you can make your argument. Choosing a good topic from the beginning will help with sources down the road when you need them.  However, good topics are hard to come by, especially when there are so many bad ones to sort through. Good topics can reduce the risk of writing a bad essay.

D2. To write good essays, first choose a good topic.

E1. At an excellent time in the relationship between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Haitians who worked in the cone fields were granted Dominican documentation.

E2. When their relationship was better, the Dominican Republic granted documentation to all Haitians who worked the cone fields.

F1. When we allow them to suffer, we deny our loved ones the compassion we show our pets by helping them end their misery.

F2. If we as a society feel so strongly about putting animals out of their misery, why not our loved ones? It could be said that animals, in this regard, are treated with more compassion than humans.

G1. Although Insite’s most desirable offer is free heroin. Users get the best heroin on the planet only in hopes that they don’t commit crimes amongst the streets of Vancouver.

G2. Insite reduces street crime and disease by providing Vancouver’s addicts free heroin.

H1. Children who are terminally ill may legally kill themselves in Belgium, with parental approval of course. This is due to the Belgium senate approving to extend the availability of euthanasia from adults to children.

H2. Terminally ill adults, and children who have parental approval, may legally kill themselves in Belgium.

I1. Here in the United States, we condemn euthanasia for adults, and even more so for children, no matter how much they are suffering.

I2. Here in the United States, the very thought of an adult, let alone a child, seeking euthanasia is frowned upon, despite what illness they are currently dealing with.

J1. Circus owners rip baby elephants from their mothers, chain and confine them, and “train” them to perform unnatural, but crowd-pleasing tricks by beating them with bull hooks.

J2. Elephants are constantly ripped from their mothers, beaten with bull hooks, and chained in confined areas, only to perform activities that elephants would never perform in their natural environment.

K1. However, our memories lie to us, according to studies conducted by trained psychologists.

K2. However, studies conducted by trained psychologists over the years, provide useful information indicating that human memory isn’t always reliable.

L1. Lying to children not only makes them result in the feeling of being taken advantage of, it makes them become untrustworthy.

L2. When we lie to children, we teach them to distrust us.

M1. A psychologist tested the self-control and trust of preschoolers by asking them to refrain from eating a marshmallow, then tracked them for 40 years.

M2. A psychological study had been put to test nursery children’s self-control and their trust over a forty year period and it started by the presence of a marshmallow.

N1. Most people believe happiness is the greatest thing they can achieve in life, the truth is without meaning a persons happiness can only go so far. The thought of living a shallow life without meaning forever can be extremely unsatisfying. Happiness without meaning is a selfish way to live, only putting oneself first and never having any true sense of what things are worth. Can one really be happy without purpose?

N2. Happiness without purpose is a selfish, unsatisfying way to live.

O1. The iPhone beats Samsung and HTC phones in just one capability category: high price.

O2. Ask yourself if the iPhone can do anything that Samsung or HTC isn’t capable of; what made Apple users buy an iPhone, the high price?

P1. Supervisors administer clean heroin to addicts, which eliminates most of the dangers of the street trade.

P2. Clean heroin is given to them while under supervision, helping eliminate most dangers having to do with heroin addiction, in turn keeping the addicts off the streets.

Q1. Taxpayers pay less buying heroin for addicts than they did for heroin-related crimes.

Q2. Of course, the taxpayers are buying the drugs for the heroin addicts, but the expense of the money they were paying for heroin related crimes was much worse.

R1. In the marshmallow test a child’s will power and self-control are tested when  a marshmallow is given to a child whom is told to wait for a second treat.

R2. The marshmallow experiment, in which a child is given one marshmallow and told to save it in return for a second one, tests the child’s will power and self-control.

S1. The pursuit of happiness has caused people to acquire an unhealthy obsession with their own well being. This obsession with well being causes people to feel unfulfilled with their own lives.

S2. The pursuit of their own well being fulfills no one.

T1. Massive collaboration sets us apart from other primates.

T2. Humans without works of massive collaboration have nothing to set them and other earthly primates apart.

U1. Collaboration has enabled every engineering wonder in history.

U2. Every single feat of wonder, whether it be an engineering or architectural accomplishment, in the ancient and modern world alike has been the conception of work forces of thousands upon hundreds-of-thousands of people.

V1. Every day millions of potential workers log on to the internet to spend time on one or many of the limitless social-media outlets, such as Facebook or Tumblr, spending time that could be used towards the next big thing.

V2. Millions of us already gather for hours on social media outlets where we could collaborate on the next big thing.

W1. So far we’ve been frittering away with cat videos and birthday wishes the chance to achieve a greater human good. Maybe we can do both.

W2. Massive online collaboration is a call to the information age and its generation of humans; a call to do a greater good for humanity as a whole.

Quick In-Class Exercise

In a Reply to this post, list the better sentences by letter and number. For example: A2, B2, C2, D2, E2, . . . W2.