Stating your claim is just the beginning of your argument. If you want to convince people to agree with you, you must persuade them with factual evidence and logical reasons. Let's look at each of these argument features more closely.
Evidence
Reasons
Evidence consists of the facts or data that you provide to support your claim. Evidence can include:
| common knowledge--things that everybody, or at least everybody in your audience, knows to be true |
| charts, statistics, or numerical data from current, reliable sources |
| expert opinions from specialists in the field, quoted or paraphrased correctly and cited appropriately |
| primary research--an explanation and discussion of your own research findings and how they relate to your topic. |
| anecdotes--stories that illustrate your point and bring your argument to life |
Let's say you're trying to convince your parents to get a pet cat. Your claim might be something like A cat would be a great pet for our family. What factual evidence might you gather to support your claim? In other words, why would a cat be a great pet for your family? List your ideas for evidence that might support this claim. Then click the Answer button to compare your ideas to ours.
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Cats don't need to be walked.Now you have lots of evidence. But how will you organize your evidence into an effective argument? You need to focus the evidence using reasons that will be most persuasive to your audience--in this case, your parents. Do your parents care more about noise or the cost of owning a pet? Are they interested in teaching you responsibility? You can use your knowledge of your audience to choose and arrange your reasons and evidence.
Let's say that your parents have said they don't think a dog would be happy living in an apartment. They also have expressed a concern that you need to be more responsible. With this information in mind, you can organize your evidence under two broad reasons:
Unlike dogs, cats are well suited to living in an apartment.
Having a cat will teach me to be responsible, which is something you want me to be.
Once you've selected the most convincing reasons for your audience, review each piece of evidence you've collected and attach it to the reason it best supports. If there are any gaps in your argument caused by lack of evidence, now is the time to fill them. Click on each reason below to see how one student organized an argument for getting a pet cat.
Claim: A cat would be a great pet for our family.
| Unlike dogs, cats are well suited to living in an apartment. | Cats don't need to go outside for walks. They don't take up much space, and they don't bark. |
| Having a cat will teach me to be responsible, which is something you want me to be. | I will scoop the cat's litter every day. I will give the cat fresh food and water daily. I will brush the cat and trim its claws weekly. |
