Revision can be one of the most important, instructive, and even pleasurable parts of the writing process.

Once you have an idea of the points you will cover in your essay, an outline can help you plan how you will support each one.

Annotating a text can help us engage, understand, assess, and respond, all of which lay a foundation for writing about that text.

Having peers, tutors, friends, or family members read and respond to our papers can help us see what we can improve.

To write a complete first version of a piece of writing, we need to pace ourselves and give ourselves permission to write something we're not satisfied with.

A variety of tricks can help us get started coming up with ideas.

The writing process will help us form our ideas if we take it step by step, reflecting on which strategies we need at each stage.

Describe the stages of the writing process Identify strategies for annotation, brainstorming, outlining, and drafting Choose what to focus on in revision Give constructive feedback on a peer's draft Evaluate and incorporate peer feedback.

The success of an emotional appeal depends on how well the author predicts readers’ likely reactions.

The overall emotional tenor of an argument is called tone. Identifying and describing the tone can give us insight into the author’s attitude and purpose.

Writers can help shape readers’ reactions by choosing words with particular emotional associations.

Emotional appeals need to align with logical reasoning to be legitimate.

The tone can vary throughout an argument as the author moves from point to point.

Powerful examples can help readers connect emotionally to the argument’s claims.

Logic and emotion come together to build powerful arguments and infuse them with a sense of purpose.

Use legitimate emotional appeals to support their own written arguments.

Distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate emotional appeals

Assess the likely effectiveness of an emotional appeal for a particular audience

Identify the ways in which a given argument appeals to emotion through word choice, tone, or powerful examples

Describe the value of emotional appeals in written academic argument

A strong argument will leave no doubt about its precise meaning.

A strong argument will offer trustworthy evidence of the kinds needed to support the particular claims.

A strong argument will accurately summarize any important counterarguments and respond to them.

Once we have assessed many aspects of an argument, we can come up with an overall assessment by reflecting on which strengths and weaknesses are most significant.

A list of common phrases used to praise and critique arguments as discussed in this chapter.

Annotations point out how two writers have structured their assessment essays.

A list of the fallacies, or logical problems discussed in this chapter, by their technical names.

Even if an argument has significant flaws, it may also contain insights worth noting.

To test an argument’s strength, we can identify the assumptions it depends on and determine whether or not they are valid.

If we can find an exception to something in the argument, the exception may help us identify a problem in the reasoning.

College essay assignments in many disciplines ask us to give our own reasoned opinion on the validity of an argument.

Use precise and varied phrases to highlight the argument’s flaws and insights.

Write a complete assessment of an argument’s strengths and weaknesses with a thesis that points to the most crucial ones.

dentify insights in an argument that can contribute to future discussions on the topic.

Check arguments for common problems such as exceptions, faulty evidence, invalid assumptions, and inadequate treatment of counterarguments.

Identify the main claims of a text as well as the reasons that support those claims. Identify any limits, counterarguments, or rebuttals mentioned in an argument. Draw a visual map of the claims, reasons, limits, counterarguments, and rebuttals.

Particularly in humanities courses, your professor may require you to use a certain number of primary sources for your project. In other courses, particularly in the sciences, you may be required to use only primary sources. What are considered primary and secondary sources can vary from discipline to discipline. If you are required to use primary sources for your research project, before getting too deep into your project check with your professor to make sure he or she agrees with your choices. After all, it’s your professor who will be grading your project. A librarian, too, can verify your choices. Just remember to take a copy of your assignment with you when you ask, because the librarian will want to see the original assignment. After all, that’s a primary source!

So some disciplines consider the data to be the primary source, and the journal article that describes and analyzes them is considered a secondary source. However, particularly in the sciences, the original researcher might find it difficult or impossible (he or she might not be allowed) to share the data. So sometimes you have nothing more firsthand than the journal article, which argues for calling it the relevant primary source because it’s the closest thing that exists to the data. Second, even journal articles that announce new research for the first time usually contain more than data. They also typically contain secondary source elements, such as a literature review, bibliography, and sections on data analysis and interpretation. So they can actually be a mix of primary and secondary elements. Even so, in some disciplines, a journal article that announces new research findings for the first time is considered to be, as a whole, a primary source for the researchers using it.

It’s easy to think that it is the format of primary sources that makes them primary. But that’s not all that matters. So when you see lists like the one above of sources that are often used as primary sources, it’s wise to remember that the ones listed are not automatically already primary sources. Firsthand sources get that designation only when researchers actually find their information relevant and use it. For instance: Records that could be relevant to those studying government are created every day by federal, state, county, and city governments as they operate. But until those raw data are actually used by a researcher, they cannot be considered primary sources. Another example: A diary about his flying missions kept by an American helicopter pilot in the Viet Nam War is not a primary source until, say, a researcher uses it in her study of how the war was carried out. But it will never be a primary source for a researcher studying the U.S. public’s reaction to the war because it does not contain information relevant to that study.

Tertiary sources are usually not acceptable as cited sources in college research projects because they are so far from firsthand information. That’s why most professors don’t want you to use Wikipedia as a citable source: the information in Wikipedia is far from original information. Other people have considered it, decided what they think about it, rearranged it, and summarized it–all of which is actually what your professors want you, not another author, to do with information in your research projects.

These sources further repackage the original information because they index, condense, or summarize the original. Typically, by the time tertiary sources are developed, there have been many secondary sources prepared on their subjects, and you can think of tertiary sources as information that comes to us “third-hand.” Tertiary sources are usually publications that you are not intended to read from cover to cover but to dip in and out of for the information you need. You can think of them as a good place for background information to start your research but a bad place to end up. Here are some examples that are often used as tertiary sources:

These sources are translated, repackaged, restated, analyzed, or interpreted original information that is a primary source. Thus, the information comes to us secondhand, or through at least one filter. Here are some examples that are often used as secondary sources:

Noting the relationship between creation and context helps us understand the “big picture” in which information operates and helps us figure out which information we can depend on.

Firsthand information (information in its original form, not translated or published in another form). Secondhand information (a restatement, analysis, or interpretation of original information). Third-hand information (a summary or repackaging of original information, often based on secondary information that has been published).