Sound Writing

So you have a main claim, sub claims, and evidence to support them. Wouldn’t this be enough to make a strong argument? Not quite, because you often need something that connects your evidence to the claim.

For instance, you couldn’t just say, “Caffeine has positive academic benefits for college students” and “Caffeine promotes thinking and awareness” or “Caffeine leads to higher test scores”; in order to make this argument valid, there must be an implicit assumption that “Thinking and awareness and higher test scores are critical to academic success.” Therefore, in developing your argument, it’s helpful to remember that substantiation of the evidence is as important to your argument as the evidence itself.