ction is even greater in an argument than in an
exposition.

In the second place, use your paragraphing for all that it is worth, and
that is a great deal. The success of any explanation or argument springs
from the way in which it takes a mass of facts apart, and rearranges
them simply and perspicuously; and there is no device of composition
which helps so much towards clearness as good paragraphing. Accordingly
when you come to make your final draft, make certain that each paragraph
has unity. If you have any doubts see if you can sum up the paragraph
into a single simple sentence. Then look at the beginnings of the
paragraphs to see whether you have made it easy for your readers to know
what each one is about. Macaulay's style is on the whole clearer and
more effective for a general audience than that of any other writer in
English; and his habit of beginning each paragraph with a very definite
announcement of its subject is almost a mannerism. Incidentally there is
no better rough test of the unity of your paragraphs than thus to give
them something of the nature of a title in the first sentence. Often,
too, at the end of an important paragraph it is worth while to sum up
its essence in pithy form. Mankind in general is lazy about thinking,
and more than ready to accept an argument which is easy to remember and
repeat. The end of a paragraph is the place for a catchword.

In the third place, bind the sentences in your paragraphs together. When
one is building up a first draft, and picking facts from a variety of
sources, it is inevitable that the result shall be somewhat disjointed.
In working over the first draft, really work it over, and work it
together. Make all the sentences point the same way. Pronouns are the
most effective connectives that we have; therefore recast your
sentences so that there will be as little change of subject as possible.
Then use the explicit connectives in as much variety as you can. It is
not likely that you will make your paragraphs too closely knit for the
average reader.

In the fourth place, bind your argument together as a whole by
connectives at the beginnings of the paragraphs and by brief summarizing
paragraphs. In the present generation of schoolboys a good many have
groaned over Burke's speech "On Conciliation with America"; but if the
first time that one of these sufferers must make an argument in real
earnest, he will go back to Burke for some of the devices used to bind