The Making of Arguments

PLANNING THE ARGUMENT 10. Preparations for the Argument. When you have chosen the subject for your argument there is still much to do before you are ready to write it out. In the first place, you must find out by search and reading what is to be said both for and against the view you are supporting; in the second place, with the facts in mind you must analyze both them and the question to see just what is the point that you are arguing; then, in the third place, you must arrange the material you are going to use so that it will be most effective for your purpose. Each of these steps I shall consider in turn in this chapter. As a practical convenience, each student should start a notebook, in which he can keep together all the notes he makes in the course of his preparations for writing the argument. Number the pages of the notebook, and leave the first two pages blank for a table of contents. A box of cards, such as will be described on page 31, will serve as well as a notebook, and in some ways is more convenient. From time to time, in the course of the chapter I shall mention points that should be entered. For the sake of convenience in exposition I shall use as an example the preparations for an argument in favor of introducing the commission form of government into an imaginary city, Wytown; and each of the directions for the use of the notebook I shall illustrate by entries appropriate to this argument. The argument, let us suppose, is addressed to the citizens of the place, who know the general facts relating to the city and its government. In creating this imaginary city, let us give it about eight thousand inhabitants, and suppose that it is of small area, and that the inhabitants are chiefly operatives in a number of large shoe factories, of American descent, though foreign-born citizens and their offspring are beginning to gain on the others. And further, let us suppose that this imaginary city of Wytown now has a city government with a mayor of limited powers, a small board of aldermen, and a larger city council. The other necessary facts will appear in the introduction to the brief. 11. Reading for the Argument. The first step in preparing for an argument is to find out what has been already written on the general subject, and what facts are available for your purpose. For this purpose you must go to the best library that is within convenient reach. Just how to look for material there I shall discuss a few pages further on; here I shall make some more general suggestions about reading and taking notes. Almost always it pays to give two or three hours to some preliminary reading that will make you see the general scope of the subject, and the points on which there is disagreement. An article in a good encyclopedia or one in a magazine may serve the purpose; or in some cases you can go to the opening chapter or two of a book. If you have already discussed the subject with other people this preliminary reading may not be necessary; but if you start in to read on a new subject without some general idea of its scope you may waste time through not knowing your way and so following false leads. In your reading do not rest satisfied with consulting authorities on your own side only. We shall presently see how important it is to be prepared to meet arguments on the other side; and unless you have read something on that side, you will not know what points you ought to deal with in your refutation. In that event you may leave undisturbed in the minds of your readers points which have all the more significance from your having ignored them. One of the first reasons for wide reading in preparation for an argument is to assure yourself that you have a competent knowledge of the other side as well as of your own. In using your sources keep clearly and constantly in mind the difference between fact and opinion. The opinions of a great scholar and of a farseeing statesman may be based on fact; but not being fact they contain some element of inference, which is never as certain. When we come to the next chapter we shall consider this difference more closely. In the meantime it is worth while to urge the importance of cultivating scruples on the subject and a keen eye for the intrusion of human, and therefore fallible, opinion into statements of fact. A trustworthy author states the facts as facts, with the authorities for them specifically cited; and where he builds his own opinions on the facts he leaves no doubt as to where fact ends and opinion begins. The power to estimate a book or an article on a cursory inspection is of great practical value. The table of contents in a book, and sometimes the index, will give a good idea of its scope; and samples of a few pages at a time, especially on critical points, which can be chosen by means of the index, will show its general attitude and tone. The index, if properly made, will furnish a sure guide to its relevance for the purpose in hand. Half an hour spent in this way, with attention concentrated, will in most cases settle whether the book is worth reading through. An article can be "sized up" in much the same way: if it is at all well written the first paragraphs will give a pretty definite idea of the subject and the scope of the article; and the beginnings, and often the ends, of the paragraphs will show the course which the thought follows. Though such skimming cannot be relied on for a real knowledge of the subject, it is invaluable as a guide for this preliminary reading. 12. Taking Notes. In reading for your argument, as for all scholarly reading, form early your habits of taking thorough and serviceable notes. Nothing is more tantalizing than to remember that you once ran across a highly important fact and then not be able to recall the place in which it is to be found. One of the most convenient ways to take notes for an argument is to write each fact or quotation on a separate card. Cards convenient for the purpose can be had at any college stationer or library-supply bureau. If you use them, have an ample supply of them, so that you will not have to put more than one fact on each. Leave space for a heading at the top which will refer to a specific subheading of your brief, when that is ready. Always add an exact reference to the source—title, name of author, and, in case of a book, place and date of publication, so that if you want more material you can find it without loss of time, and, what is more important, so that you can fortify your use of it by a reference in a footnote. When you find a passage that you think will be worth quoting in the original words, quote with scrupulous and literal accuracy: apart from the authority you gain by so doing, you have no right to make any one else say words he did not say. If you leave out part of the passage, show the omission by dots; and in such a case, if you have to supply words of your own, as for example a noun in place of a pronoun, use square brackets, thus []. On the following page are examples of a convenient form of such notes. RESULTS IN DES MOINES The streets have been kept cleaner than ever before for $35,000. The rates for electric lights have been reduced from $90 to $65. Gas rates have dropped again from $22 to $17. Water rates have dropped from 30" to 20" per 1000 gal. The disreputable district has been cleaned up and bond sharks driven out of business. The Des Moines Plan of City Government, World's Work,Vol. XVIII, P. 11533. PRESIDENT ELIOT'S VIEWS "Now city business is almost wholly administrative and executive and very little concerned with large plans and far-reaching legislation. There is no occasion for two legislative bodies, or even one, in the government of a city.... Now and then a question arises which the will of the whole people properly expressed may best settle; but for the prompt and conclusive expression of that will the initiative and referendum are now well-recognized means." C. W. Eliot, City Government by Fewer Men, World's Work, Vol. XIV p. 9419. Tn making notes, whether for an argument or for general college work, it is convenient, unless you know shorthand, to have a system of signs and abbreviations and of contractions for common words. The simpler shorthand symbols can be pressed into service; and one can follow the practice of stenography, which was also that of the ancient Hebrew writing, of leaving out vowels, for there are few words that cannot be recognized at a glance from their consonants. If you use this system at lectures you can soon come surprisingly near to a verbatim report which will preserve something more than bare facts. In your reading for material do not cultivate habits of economy or parsimony. You should always have a considerable amount of good fact left over, for unless you know a good deal of the region on the outskirts of your argument you will feel cramped and uncertain within it. The effect of having something in reserve is a powerful, though an intangible, asset in an argument; and, on the other hand, the man who has emptied his magazine is in a risky situation. 13. Sources for Facts. In the main, there are two kinds of sources for facts, sources in which the facts have already been collected and digested, and sources where they are still scattered and must be brought together and grouped by the investigator. Obviously there is no sharp or permanent distinction between these two classes. Let us first run through some of the books which are commonly available as sources of either kind, and then come back to the use of them. To find material in books and magazines there are certain well-known guides. To look up books go first to the catalogue of the nearest library. Here in most cases you will find some sort of subject catalogue, in which the subjects are arranged alphabetically; and if you can use the alphabet readily, as by no means all college students can, you can soon get a list of the books that are there available on the subject. On many subjects there are bibliographies, or lists of books, such as those published by the Library of Congress; these will be found in every large library. For articles in magazines and weekly journals, which on most current questions have fresh information, besides a great deal of valuable material on older questions, go to Poole's "Index to Periodical Literature," which is an index both by title and subject to the articles in important English and American magazines from 1802 to 1906, and to "The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature," which began in 1901 and includes more magazines, and which is brought up to date every month. For other material the works listed below will be serviceable; they are the best known of the reference books, and some of them will be found in all libraries and all of them in large libraries. The books on this list by no means exhaust the number of good books of their own kind; they are good examples, and others will ordinarily be found on the same shelves with them. DICTIONARIES THE NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY (MURRAY'S) Unfinished: to have ten volumes, of which nine have now been published. This gives the history of each word for the last seven hundred years,