Revising Examples: Strengthening Logic and Details

If you have a good point and you have good reasons for making that point, then using the rest of a paragraph to demonstrate--or illustrate--that point becomes a key to your paragraph being fully supported and unified.

If you had the comment "Details" or "Examples" or "Illustrate" or something similar, that is a place where you lacked the showing of your point. You need to work on an appropriate example that has concrete details. 

For the memoir, the examples are fairly easy. Concrete details come from the source. Go to a specific page and quote, paraphrase, or summarize a passage; then, make sure to use the ( ) at the end to show citation. Make sure, too, to start those sentences with "signal phrases."

For essays in which you are the primary source...where does the "I" experience your points? For instance, if you state your topic sentence point as, "I learned from the quote how to be a stronger father," then your examples must be about things you do as a father that show how you've become a stronger father. Show some example of when you were not as good, and an example of when you were better. Why? That point implies that there was a before and an after, and I am NOT ALLOWED to simply just make the point and move on with life. That paragraph must illustrate the point. PRE. PRE. PRE.

When you must invent the examples:

• Personal anecdotes becomes important examples
• Creative examples that reference popular culture, history, or some other place that you find relevant to the thesis point, if not more directly the topic sentence's point in a body paragraph.

 

Examples:

• If I'm writing about the dangers in with using the wrong language in my neighborhood--I have to describe a moment in time when somebody said the wrong thing and give the result.  

• If I tell somebody that language is a barrier, I must describe a real or fake person or persons who has had a specific moment where language was a barrier.