society produces “conformity” by enforcing conventional “names and customs” on the otherwise free (explicitly male and implicitly white) individual.
When I read that “society produces conformity,” it feels like the world around me is constantly telling me who I’m supposed to be. It pushes certain names, labels, and traditions on me, even if they don’t fit who I really am.
“social” pressure is applied to equally amorphous “individuals” who either succumb to that pressure or resist it by “being themselves
society” as a vague force that pressures equally unclear “individuals.” It assumes everyone feels the same pressure and only has two choices: give in or “be themselves.” In reality, social pressure comes from specific sources like friends, family, media, or rules and people respond in many different ways.
There are typically two reasons given for this antipathy. First, the term falsely implies universality (when you say “society,” do you really mean to refer to every single person in the world?)
Writers should name specific groups instead of pretending the whole world agrees.
the arguable thesis makes the reader want to keep reading.
College papers require a thesis that someone could disagree with, and paragraphs that flow logically from one to the next.This is the main difference between high school and college writing. The thesis isn’t just a summary it drives the whole argument and keeps the reader interested. The organic structure makes the essay feel like a real conversation or exploration.
the magic number of three: three reasons why a statement is true.
High school essays often use three main reasons to support the thesis, each getting its own body paragraph.This shows how formulaic high school essays can be. The order of the reasons doesn’t really matter, so it’s predictable and safe but not very creative.
Your professors are looking for a more ambitious and arguable thesis, a nuanced and compelling argument, and real-life evidence for all key points, all in an organically[1] structured paper.
This section explains that a college thesis shouldn’t just state a fact it should be something someone could disagree with. It makes the essay more interesting and gives it a purpose.
so common in student papers—represent the most prevalent misconception about introductions:
Shows that many students waste space with vague intros
every sentence is needed to thoroughly frame the thesis
Emphasizes clarity and purpose in introductions. Thought I like this it makes writing feel focused and interesting.
Training in the five-paragraph theme format seems to have convinced some student writers that beginning with substantive material will be too abrupt for the reader.
This shows a common writing habit: students often begin with weak or unclear introductions because they think a paper needs a “slow start.” It reminds us that strong, clear opening sentences make a paper more interesting and show confidence in your ideas.
Everyone knows that a thorough analysis and persuasive argument needs strong evidence.
This reminds me that just saying stuff isn’t enough in essays. You need facts or quotes to back up your ideas
Recall from prior chapters that writing academic papers is about joining a conversation.
I like this because it makes writing feel less like homework and more like sharing your opinion with others.
Graff and Birkenstein[1] encourage you to think about writing with sources is a “They Say/I Say” process.
This is helpful because it shows how to mix what others think with what I think, so my essay has both evidence and my own ideas.
Some guides advise you to end each paragraph with a specific concluding sentence, in a sense, to treat each paragraph as a kind of mini-essay. But that’s not a widely held convention
This highlights a common misconception about paragraph structure. While some writing guides promote mini-conclusions, academic writing typically values forward momentum over tidy endings. A paragraph's purpose is to advance the argument set by the key sentence, not to wrap itself up like a small essay
punctuation
Calling paragraphs “punctuation” reframes them as structural signals rather than other choices. Like commas or semicolons, they guide how readers process relationships among ideas.
The last sentence of the paragraph should certainly be in your own words
This point stresses authorial control. Ending on a quote can let someone else's voice define your argument’s direction or tone. Finishing with your own phrasing ensures you maintain ownership of the analytical thread and guide the reader toward the next point.
Grading student writing is generally the hardest, most intensive work instructors do.[3] With every assignment they give you, professors assign themselves many, many hours of demanding and tedious work that has to be completed while they are also preparing for each class meeting, advancing their scholarly and creative work, advising students, and serving on committees.
This shows professors spend a lot of time grading, not just giving assignments randomly. Knowing this can help students appreciate their effort and take the work more seriously. It reminds us that assignments aren’t busywork—they matter.
“You don’t write to teachers, you write for them.
Writing for a teacher is hard because you’re trying to explain something you’re still learning to someone who already understands it better than you.
When you write for a teacher you are usually swimming against the stream of natural communication. The natural direction of communication is to explain what you understand to someone who doesn’t understand it. But in writing an essay for a teacher your task is usually to explain what you are still engaged in trying to understand to someone who understands it better.
This point is valuable because it clarifies why students frequently find academic writing to be awkward. Although your reader is already familiar with the subject, you are expected to sound confident about concepts you are still learning. It emphasizes how writing for college can be stressful or perplexing because it isn't communication in the real world. Comprehending this discrepancy enables students to unwind and recognize that the difficulty is inherent in the system rather than a reflection of their aptitude.
Highly privileged people went to these universities as students, but they didn’t really attend classes, write papers, and take exams like college students today. Instead they acted as independent, though novice, scholars: they read everything they could find in their areas of interest, attended lectures that expert scholars gave, and, if they were lucky (and perhaps charming), got some feedback from those scholars on their own work or assisted scholars in theirs
The fact that early university students did not have classes, assignments, or exams like contemporary students may surprise and intrigue a freshman. Rather, they were treated almost like novice scholars, reading, attending lectures by experts, and interacting directly with eminent intellectuals. This demonstrates how the role of students has completely changed over time and stands in stark contrast to the structured coursework of today.
89 percent of employers say that colleges and universities should place more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing.
“Most employers almost 9 out of 10 think colleges should focus more on teaching students how to speak and write clearly.
Research shows that deliberate practice—that is, close focus on improving one’s skills—makes all the difference in how one performs.
This sentence introduces the idea of deliberate practice, highlighting the fact that intentional, focused work—rather than just producing more text—is what leads to better writing. This concept is used by the author to support the idea that students should continue honing their writing abilities in college, even if they already write a lot.
You may have even performed so well in high school that you’re deemed fully competent in college level writing and are now excused from taking a composition course. So why spend yet more time and attention on writing skills?
So even though you may think or feel that you are overly competent in a college level of reading and writing, yet there has never been a perfect paper done. There is no perfect level or writing or reading there is always going to be a paper thats better so therefore there is alwasy room for improving your skills.
What makes a complex line of thinking easy to follow? The tricks of cohesion and coherence, discussed in Chapter 6, are a big help. Williams and Bizup offer another key point. They explain that readers experience writing as clear when the “character” of a sentence is also its grammatical subject
I find this super practical It’s basically teaching that every sentence should show the main actor and action clearly. I can see how using this makes technical writing way easier to read and understand. I need to practice this in my essays to avoid confusing readers.
One approach that often leads to a difficult writing process and a clunky result is the pursuit of “academese”
This is really helpful because it shows that professors don’t want complicated words just to sound smart. Using simple, clear language actually makes your ideas stronger. I sometimes overthink words to sound “fancy,” but this reminds me that clarity is more important than sounding scholarly.
Focusing first or only on sentence-level issues is a troublesome approach.
I like this because it reminds me that worrying too much about fancy sentences can actually hurt your writing. It makes sense that if your overall argument is strong, the sentences almost write themselves. It feels less stressful knowing I can fix sentence stuff after I have a solid plan.
Scholarly journals use a peer-review process to decide which articles merit publication. First, hopeful authors send their article manuscript to the journal editor, a role filled by some prominent scholar in the field. The editor reads over the manuscript and decides whether it seems worthy of peer-review. If it’s outside the interests of the journal or is clearly inadequate, the editor will reject it outright.
This section explains how academic articles get checked by experts before being published important for understanding why professors trust them.Peer-review is like a super intense homework check before an expert can publish an article its basically going through a job interview process to get published.
A step below the well-developed reports and feature articles that make up Tier 2 are the short tidbits that one finds in newspapers and magazines or credible websites. How short is a short news article? Usually, they’re just a couple paragraphs or less, and they’re often reporting on just one thing: an event, an interesting research finding, or a policy change.
This section explains which sources are the most trustworthy in research (Tier 1) and which are least trusted for citation (Tier 4). Freshmen need this to avoid using weak sources in their papers. From Tier 1 = best (used by experts; checked carefully). Tier 2 = still good from places like government agencies or major newspapers. Tier 3 = short news snippets not bad, but not great. Tier 4 = opinions or websites where anyone can write anything like Wikipedia,You can read Tier 4, but you shouldn’t use it in a serious school paper.
Scholarly articles appear in academic journals, which are published multiple times a year in order to share the latest research findings with scholars in the field. They’re usually sponsored by some academic society.
College students need to understand this difference to do proper research. It's a core concept used in almost every college paper.
But Johnson’s deployment of the term solidified the use of an explicit vocabulary of war to refer to a broad social issue. Since that time, we have had wars on “drugs” and “cancer” announced by President Nixon in 1971, the “war against crime” declared by Bill Clinton in June 1994, and, more recently, George W. Bush’s “war on terror.
calling a problem a “war” makes it seem like something we have to fight with force. But issues like poverty or drugs don’t have armies you can’t defeat them like enemies. Using war language can make these problems seem scarier and make people think extreme actions are needed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, who served in World War II as general of the US Army, in his last speech to the nation before stepping down as president, acknowledged that the post–World War II military environment would be different from any in the past because of the emergence of a permanent, economically profitable armaments industry, or “military-industrial complex,
I realized that once the country spends a lot of money on weapons, it becomes harder to stop being at war. It means war can become a business. His warning helps explain why the U.S. often seems to be preparing for or involved in conflicts.
the word “war” is used every day in the English language. It is difficult today to turn on a television, check a news feed, or go to a movie theater anywhere in the United States without encountering a verbal or a visual reference to war.
This stood out to me because it shows that we use war words all the time without noticing. When we say things like “battle,” “attack,” or “enemy,” it makes normal problems sound like fights. That can make people see the world as more dangerous or divided than it really is.
One can sketch out celebrity’s rise to fame. First and foremost it denotes a new form of social status that depends neither on rank nor institutional achievement
The sentence explains that celebrity became a new kind of social standing that isn t based on being born into a powerful family or achieving something official like winning an award or holding a high job. Instead celebrity status comes from public attention.
he examples presented also stress the way in which celebrity is a double-edged term, giving with one hand (well-known) and taking away with the other (for specious reasons).
The sentence means that being a celebrity has both positives and negatives. It’s good because many people know who you are, but it’s bad because you might be famous for reasons that aren’t meaningful or important.
Celebrity comes into English at the beginning of C15 from Latin celebritās meaning “fame,” or “the state of being busy or crowded” (there is also the related French célébrité)
The word celebrity originally didn’t mean a famous person. Long ago, it meant a big ceremony or celebration. Over time, people stopped using those meanings. Eventually the word changed into what we use today—someone who is well-known. Words can change their meanings as people use them differently over hundreds of years.
Different senses for the given keyword are therefore simultaneously available: they are alternatives within the model of the language that the speaker or hearer has built up in his or her mind.
A word can have a bunch of meanings at the same time. In our minds, we keep these different meanings ready, like choices. When we talk or listen, we pick the one that fits best.
Some of a word’s earlier meanings persist into the present; others have become recessive; and others again have disappeared altogether and been replaced by new ones.
Words change over time. Also some old meanings are still used, some are fading away, and some have vanished and been replaced by new meanings. Knowing this helps us understand why people sometimes use the same word in different ways.
Simultaneous but divergent senses associated with ‘keywords’ are significant for contemporary public debate
The phrase says that one word can mean different things to different people at the same time these mixed meanings matter when we talk about important issues, because misunderstandings can cause arguments knowing this helps everyone listen better and share ideas more clearly with others.