We're going to talk today about what makes a claim more or less effective. A colleague of mine about 15 years ago, who is also a teacher of writing. Came up with what he called at the time the 5 Cs of Effective Claims. I don't know if these are actually the words that he had used with those Cs. But, I've kind of of modified them over the years a little bit, or maybe they're the same words, I'm not sure. So, I'll take you through what they mean and then we'll look at some examples. And I'll ask you to weigh in on what you think about those examples. So, Compelling. Is the claim relatively compelling? Is it significant? Obviously, not everything is going to be interesting to every reader out there. But there should be at least a reasonable number of people who will find something interesting and meaningful and compelling about your argument. Certainly, you should find it compelling. If you don't even find it compelling, then probably, you want to to start to make it more Compelling argument. Secondly, is it connected? And connected means in the way I'm using it, is it connected to the work of others? Have you researched what else has been written about this? What the other part of the conversation has been and how you're situating your own work within that scholarly conversation. And is it also connected to the actual occasion for writing? If someone has asked you to write about a particular thing, then are you actually writing about that thing? And then finally, the other version of Connect that I'm talking about here, is your claim. Is your argument connected to the kinds of evidence and the points that you've made throughout the whole project. Sometimes people's claims make one assertion and then they actually end up making a different assertion through out their writing. So you want to have alignment there. Contestable is a good word, but I really want to couch it carefully, because I'll tell you what I don't mean. What I don't mean is that you don't have to have a claim that other people can argue against, I'm not talking about that contestability. It's more, are there other readers, or other scholars who are out there. Who could make some kind of reasonable caveat to your claim? Or who could take it in a different direction of some kind? So is it, kind of the yes, but, right? Could you imagine sort of readers reading your argument and saying yes, but? And maybe that but is something they already know about, right? Yes, but what about this? Or maybe it's a new area of inquiry for them. Yes, But how about if we apply it to this situation? What would happen? So, is it contestable in that way. You want to try as a writer to qualify, What you say, rather than presenting an argument that applies to every single situation in every possible possibility of life. You probably want to qualify your arguments in a way that makes them more contestable in this kind of positive way. Complex. That means, not obvious or simple. And we talked about this with coil, right, the concept that many of us might have heard before we even read coil. That practice makes perfect. So how is it that coil was trying to make his argument more complex right, to build beyond. The idea that practice makes perfect. What was he saying that was different? And I think what he was saying that was different was his concept of mistakes, and that was how he made his argument more complex. And finally clear. And clear means, even at the same time as it's complex, contestable, compelling and connected. Can readers, if they're careful readers and they think about what you're writing. Will they be able to understand what you're saying, and you ultimately do want readers to know what you're saying.
