Description

This is a pdf copy of the best book I’ve ever seen on developing an argument. It’s short and easy to read, and will help anyone think more logically and structure their thinking.I found this on the Internet a while back but it’s since been taken down. The original scanner/proofreader is unknown.**********PrefaceThis book is a brief introduction to the art of writing and assessing arguments. It sticks to the bare essentials. I have found that students and writers often need just such a list of reminders and rules, not lengthy introductory explanations. Thus, unlike most textbooks in argumentative writing or “informal Logic,” this book is organized around specific rules, illustrated and explained soundly but above all briefly. It is not a textbook but a rulebook.Instructors too, I have found, often wish to assign such a rulebook, a treatment which students can consult and understand on their own which therefore does not intrude on class time. Here again it is important to be brief -the point is to help students get on with writing a paper or with assessing arguments- but the rules must be stated with enough explanation that an instructor can simply refer a student to “rule 13” or “rule 23” rather than writing an entire explanation in the margins of each student’s paper. Brief but self-sufficient: that is the fine line I have tried tofollow.This rulebook can also be used in a course that gives explicit attention to arguments. It will need to be supplemented with exercises and with more examples, but there are many texts already available which consist largely or wholly of such exercises and examples. Those texts, however, also need to be supplemented- with what this rulebook offers: simple rules for putting good arguments together. Too many students come out of “informal logic” courses knowing only how to shoot down (or at least at) selected fallacies. Too often they are unable to explain what is actually wrong, or to launch an argument of their own. Informal logic can do better: this book is one attempt to suggest how.