Starting your paper off with a dull first sentence

It’s really easy to start your paper with a boring first sentence. It will take some work to come up with something really interesting that pulls your reader’s attention away from whatever has their mind occupied before they start reading your paper, but it is absolutely worth the work.

A lot of students like to start their paper off with a sentence like this:

This is a truly terrible way to start off a paper where you’re trying to convince your reader to change the way they think or act. Think about it: your sentence says that your topic has been important for a long time, which means that, if that’s true, everyone already knows it’s important. If everyone knows that, then how does this sentence get their attention and convince them to read your paper? The short answer is that it simply doesn’t.

If you want to get your reader to shift their focus away from whatever was on their mind and onto your writing, you need to give them something exciting right at the beginning of your paper. Tell a short, vivid, descriptive story.^[2] Share a startling fact or statistic related to your topic.^[3] Tell a joke that’s relevant to your topic.^[4] There are so many ways to start your paper that are many orders of magnitude better than saying “everyone already knows this topic is important,” so please find one.

Making your paper feel disconnected from everything

One of the most tempting things to do with your argumentative essay is to write as if your opinion on a topic is the only thing that matters or that even exists, but that is a serious mistake to make. When you look at the history of academic inquiry, you will realize that virtually every topic has been studied and discussed and reviewed for at least a few decades now. Of course, as discoveries are made and studies replicated, we expand our understanding and revise our views and improve our knowledge. That’s how science works.

As such, don’t pretend that your own personal views have been constructed in a vacuum and represent the best thinking that humankind has ever produced. No offense, but they probably don’t.^[5] When people put their ideas out there as a public declaration of their opinions, we tend to call those things “manifestos,”^[6] and either they’re not taken seriously or they’re viewed very negatively. You don’t want people to treat your ideas this way.

Instead, you should find the discussions that are already taking place about your chosen topic and find a way to connect your argument to that conversation. Was there a recent article published that relates to your topic? Reference that as a jumping off point for your paper. Did a public figure^[7] say or do something that connects to the issue you’re discussing? Start by pointing that out and build your argument in response. There are all kinds of things that you can connect your argument to so that your reader will see that your ideas and your position are connected to the wider world around you, and that will make your argument seem more timely, more engaging, and therefore, more persuasive.

Not stating your position clearly

Why are you writing this paper?^[8] You’re writing this paper to persuade your readers that your position on a given topic is right and best. How will they believe that your position is right and best if you can’t clearly state what your view is? They won’t, unfortunately.

As you’re working on your introduction, make sure that you include a clear statement of your position. It should fit into the following sentence frame: “In my paper, I am arguing that _____.” If it doesn’t fit there, it’s not a statement of your position. “Utah Tech should build a parking garage” fits into that sentence; “I’m going to talk about parking at Utah Tech” does not.

Your readers should not leave your introduction without finding out exactly what you believe and where you stand. The rest of the paper should be dedicated to supporting what you told them you believe. There’s no other way to set that up. Make sure you state your position—your thesis statement—clearly and directly.

Not including convincing reasons or evidence

The problem here is rarely that students have no evidence to support their argument. Of course, there is the occasional student that tries to support their argument by relying on common sense.^[9] This rarely works though, because common sense frequently makes no sense at all when you look at it from a scientific perspective. One example—many people, when they get a bloody nose, will instinctively lean their head back and pinch the bottom of their nose to stop the blood from coming out. It’s a natural reaction. It’s also, though, a terrible way to treat a bloody nose. Leaning your head back makes the blood run back into your head and down your throat. That gunks up the back of your throat, tastes terrible, and does nothing to stop the actual problem of blood leaking out of your nose. Rather, you should lean forward a bit more and pinch the middle of your nose.^[10] This causes the blood to come down and pool under where it sprang from, and this pooling effect allows the blood to clot and plug the leak, so to speak. Common sense, in this case, did not help us, and it doesn’t help support your position, either.

Instead of common sense, you should make sure that you’ve chosen good convincing evidence to support your ideas. This can sometimes be tricky to judge. What makes evidence good and convincing? Well, if you can think all the way back to the previous phase about the issue-analysis report, we briefly discussed the CRAAP Test^[11] that you could use to evaluate the usefulness of sources for that paper. Well, it applies here as well.

If you recall, in this delightful acronym, the P stands for “purpose,” and it asks you to examine the purpose behind why a source was produced. If that text was written for marketing, financial, or political purposes, it is unlikely to be a good source to use for your paper. Bill Maher’s^[12] opinions about conservative politics should not be used to support your argument, not because he’s not allowed to have or express those views, but rather because he is paid to express views that cause liberal viewers to get agitated about conservatives and stay tuned in to his show. This political and financial incentive means that he is not likely to be presenting fair, neutral, or objective observations on his show. The same can absolutely be said for Matt Walsh^[13] and his views on liberal politics. The political side doesn’t matter—they all push their views for money, so their views shouldn’t be trusted or used to support your position.

What you want to find to support your position and argument is objective information discovered through academic research. If the findings were published in a peer-reviewed journal, it’s really difficult to simply ignore what they say. Their words gain a lot of academic and scientific weight because of the rigorous process that the authors had to go through just to get their article to become part of the academic conversation. Finding solid sources that support your ideas is the best way to lend logical support and credibility to your position, even if Joe Rogan’s^[14] or Jon Stewart’s^[15] words get you more fired up about your particular team.

Relying on logical fallacies to make your argument more persuasive

The more time you spend reading comments on public posts online on social media or news websites, the quicker you come to realize that very few people actually know how to structure an argument and that the majority simply rely on logical fallacies to try and make their points sound more convincing.

A logical fallacy is a failure to employ logic to construct an argument built on reasons, facts, and evidence. Instead, logical fallacies rely on other approaches to try and persuade others to agree with them, such as fear, manipulated emotions, and faulty reasoning, among others. Below is a table containing many of the different types of logical fallacies with a brief explanation and an example. If your curiosity is piqued by the fallacies in this list, feel free to search the Internet for additional examples, explanations, and other resources. Keep in mind that in all of the examples, the ideas presented are not the problem—the problem is the way that the argument is being made or avoided. Stay focused on the construction of the argument and don’t get hung up on the choice of topics or positions represented. All sides of the political spectrum use logical fallacies to support their ideas to the public.