Since a SOSC essay entails trying to remove doubt by arguing for a specific interpretation of the text, articles, or class material, what I didn’t understand was that my use of “evidently” inadvertently created the space for my reader to doubt my claims. By saying “evidently,” I was actually doing the opposite of what I intended.
What matters to a reader is not that evidence is categorized as “evident” or “clear”, but rather, what, exactly, about the connection between the evidence and claim makes the claim believable. Since the same piece of evidence could yield different claims, the writer needs to explain, in their own words, why and how the evidence supports a particular claim, which is known as the reasoning. The reasoning isn’t in and of itself evident or taken for granted by the reader. Reasoning needs to be articulated by the writer and believed by the reader.
When writing argumentative essays, the goal is to assuage a reader’s doubt. A claim is inherently doubtable, contextual, and arguable; a reader should be able to read any claim and think, “Hmm I could see that, but I need more evidence to be convinced.” It is the writer’s job to provide evidence and explain how this evidence supports the claim with reasoning, thus making the claims believable.
As a writer, a strategy to articulate the reasoning is to think of the answers to these questions: If the evidence, then why, logically, does the claim follow? How is the evidence supporting a particular claim? If the reasoning is solid, the reader will understand the connection between the evidence and claims as being clear, without being told “This is clear.” Additionally, if only some sentences are labeled as evident, it gives the reader room to question whether the other sentences are also evident.
The same goes for similar introductory phrases, such as “It is obvious that…” or “It is interesting that…”. Instead of writing “It is interesting that Hobbes talks about the commonwealth,” think more about why it is interesting that Hobbes discusses the commonwealth. How does the commonwealth relate to the other ideas and concepts in the text? What is important about it? The reader cares more about the content of what makes it interesting versus the simple fact that it is interesting. Additionally, words like interesting are quite general, so context is needed to understand why, exactly, the sentence that follows is interesting.
Another example is “It is noteworthy that…” or “it is important to note that…,” such as, “It is important to note that for Durkheim, religion is social.” If it wasn’t important to note, it wouldn’t have been mentioned by Durkheim and it wouldn’t be in the paper. Why is it important to note? What about the context of the ideas makes it important and worth mentioning?
Often, our first impressions can be useful for starting an essay — if something is clear or obvious to us, we can then make it clear or obvious in the paper. Additionally, it is common – and even expected! – to write general sentences about the relationships between ideas first, then fill in with more specificity later. So, it is certainly not wrong to write these statements in a first draft. As you add in more reasoning, consider editing out these statements in a final draft, so what remains is how and why something is evident, clear, obvious, interesting, or noteworthy – not just that it is.