Unit: Reading to Write
Reading to Write
College-level writing focuses on analyzing and evaluating as opposed to summarizing. For example, we would not be writing merely to describe a poem or restate a theory in anthropology, but to explain whether (or not) and why we think the poet’s use of language is effective and why we believe (or not) that there is adequate evidence for the theory.
The focus of college-level writing needs to inform our approach to reading. If our task were merely to describe a novel or restate an interpretation of an election, we could read passively, just taking in information so that we can repeat it. However, given that our goal is to analyze and evaluate, we must read actively, and that means we must constantly ask questions. The sorts of questions we raise will differ depending upon the work. The queries at the heart of “close readings” of literary texts differ from those at the core of “critical readings” of research. That said, in either case, our attentive reading results in questions, which then lead to re-readings and more and deeper levels of questions. These deeper questions drive our analysis of the work, while our answers to them lead to our assessment of the work.
Unit: Reading to Write
Close Reading
In “A Short Guide to Close Reading for Literary Analysis,” the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center, describes “close reading” as “a process of finding as much information as you can in order to form as many questions as you can.” http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CloseReading.html If we are relatively new to literary analysis, we may wonder what sort of information we should be trying to find. No worries. The University of Portland’s “A Beginner’s Guide to Close Reading,” gets us started with a list of ten “Things to Look for in Close Reading” (for example, word choice, tone, imagery) http://www.up.edu/showimage/show.aspx?file=12087. Moving from information to interrogation, Professor Wheeler at Carson-Newman University provides examples of the kinds of questions we might ask in his “Close Reading of a Literary Passage.” https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/reading_lit.html. Finally, Harvard and the University of Wisconsin-Madison provide illustrations of applying close reading to texts: in the case of Harvard, a prose passage by Loren Eisley; in the case of Madison, a poem by Robert Frost): http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-do-close-reading http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CloseReading.html
Unit: Reading to Write
Critical Reading
After posing the question, “What does it mean to interpret a text critically?” SUNY Empire State College offers the following answer, “It means being a discerning reader who: questions what you read; thinks about what the author wants you to believe and works to convince you; decides whether the author’s views are worthy of agreement.” https://www.esc.edu/online-writing-center/resources/critical-reading-writing/general-reading/critical-reading/
If we are feeling at all shaky about our powers of discernment, we might be asking, “What are the sorts of questions discerning readers raise?” The University of Washington helps us out here with some questions based on an adaptation of J.K. Beyer’s “Critically Analyzing an Academic Article or Book” https://depts.washington.edu/pswrite/Handouts/Critical AnalysisPapers.pdf. SUNY Empire State provides complementary guidance in the form of worksheets, each with its own set of questions: Authority of the Writer; Logic of The Writer’s Argument; Ways in Which the Writer Gets Your Interest; Writer’s Use of Language and Style; Ideology that Informs the Text. .” https://www.esc.edu/online-writing-center/resources/critical-reading-writing/general-reading/critical-reading/
Unit: Reading to Write
Taking Notes
Whether our work involves close readings or critical readings, we will want to jot down questions and ideas as we work our way through a text. Active reading is hard work and we do not want to lose track of our insights. Since careful reading generates questions, one approach to note taking is to organize our reflections under question and sub-question headings, leaving plenty of space beneath each question for relevant observations and reflections. As we continue recording questions and reflections, we may discover our thesis statement and the outline of our paper.
Our note taking will be most efficient, if we take the time to document our sources, using the style our professor requires (see “Acknowledging Sources” under “Writing to Understand” below). And, we also double check to make sure that any quotations in our notes are exact; avoid inadvertent plagiarism by providing our own summaries and paraphrases of the material (see “Avoiding Plagiarism” below under “Revising.)
Unit: Researching to Write
Researching to Write
Writing often involves research. Before we can begin writing about the impact of Twitter in the 2016 Presidential election, the symbolism of bullfighting in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, or whatever topic our professor may assign, we need to get at the relevant information. However, as the advent of fake news stories clearly illustrates, identifying/finding reliable sources in crucial.
Unit: Revising
Revising
Writing is a process; proofreading and revision are vital aspects of that process. We do not proofread and revise if we have time; we set aside time to do so. When we do, we invariably find ways to improve our work significantly. That is why many writing-intensive courses require multiple drafts of a paper.
Unit: Writing in Five Paragraphs
Writing in Five Paragraphs
The first habit in Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is “to begin with the end in mind.” In the case of an essay or paper, our end is a composition consisting of three parts: an introductory paragraph, body paragraphs and a concluding paragraph. (See the University of Virginia’s “Basic Essay Format” https://www.uvu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/basicessayformat.pdf for an excellent overview.)
Our paper will always have an introductory paragraph and a concluding paragraph, but the number of body paragraphs may vary. The “Five-Paragraph Essay,” a popular format for essays and short papers, has three body paragraphs along with an introduction and conclusion. Each paragraph type: introduction, body and conclusion, has a different role.
Unit: Writing to Demonstrate Understanding
Writing to Demonstrate Understanding
With a little time and effort, each one of us could memorize a Shakespearean sonnet. Not so when it comes to writing one. With a lot more time and effort, we could memorize the periodic table of elements. However, cutting-edge research in chemistry is an altogether different matter. On one highly regarded and widely used classification of knowledge, “Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy,” there are six levels of learning, ranging from remembering to creating. As described in “Action Words for Bloom’s Taxonomy” (© 2014 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System), they are:
Remembering, Level 1, Recalling previously learned information
Understanding, Level 2, Explaining ideas or concepts
Applying, Level 3, Applying knowledge to actual situations
Analyzing, Level 4, Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships
Evaluating, Level 5, Justifying a decision or course of action
Creating, Level 6, Generating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing things
Unit: Researching to Write
Considering the Source
We need a set of standards for evaluating the reliability and appropriateness of resources for college-level writing. Many universities recommend the so-called CRAAP test, originally developed at the Miriam Library at the State University of California, Chico. The letters in the CRAAP acronym refer to the five areas of the test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. To see if a given source is appropriate for our scholarly purposes, we answer the questions associated with each heading. So, for example, under the heading of Currency, the California State University, Chico, lists the following: “When was the information published or posted?”; “Has the information been revised or updated?”; “Does your topic require current information, or will older sources work as well?”; “Are the links functional?”
https://www.csuchico.edu/lins/handouts/eval_websites.pdf
For accessing the CRAAP test, we can do no better than going to the original source, by clicking the above link. For a video overview of the test and its importance, the University of Mary Washington’s Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies provides:
Unit: Revising
Reading Aloud
A great way to tell if our writing flows smoothly is to read it aloud. If a phrase sounds odd to us or we find ourselves stumbling over a sentence, then revision is in order. Further, following the advice of the Purdue Online Writing Lab https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/, we may find it helpful to read our work aloud a friend and solicit feedback and/or listen to a friend read our work.
If, when reading our essay aloud, we find that our prose seems a bit “flabby” or “meanders” in some places, The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center provides a helpful corrective: “How to Write Clear, Concise, and Direct Sentences” http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Clear,_Concise,_and_Direct_Sentences.pdf
If we notice places in our essay where we seem to be moving too quickly and there are abrupt shifts, then we need to provide some transitions to help our reader follow the flow of our argument. Here the University of Virginia Writing Center’s “Transitions” is a helpful resource, https://www.uvu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/transitions.pdf
A great way to tell if our writing flows smoothly is to read it aloud. If a phrase sounds odd to us or we find ourselves stumbling over a sentence, then revision is in order. Further, following the advice of the Purdue Online Writing Lab https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/, we may find it helpful to read our work aloud a friend and solicit feedback and/or listen to a friend read our work.
If, when reading our essay aloud, we find that our prose seems a bit “flabby” or “meanders” in some places, The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center provides a helpful corrective: “How to Write Clear, Concise, and Direct Sentences” http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Clear,_Concise,_and_Direct_Sentences.pdf
If we notice places in our essay where we seem to be moving too quickly and there are abrupt shifts, then we need to provide some transitions to help our reader follow the flow of our argument. Here the University of Virginia Writing Center’s “Transitions” is a helpful resource, https://www.uvu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/transitions.pdf
Unit: Writing in Five Paragraphs
Introduction
When we land on a webpage that does not capture our interest, we move on in a matter of seconds. We can expect our would-be readers to do the same, if we do not get their attention right away. Doing so is the goal of the essay’s first sentence, the so-called “hook.”
Compare the following two sentences:
This year the Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan.
Bob Dylan did not show up to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The first sentence is ho-hum. Unless we are already interested in the Nobel Prize or Bob Dylan, we will not read on. The second sentence may leave us wondering, “What’s up with Dylan? Was he being rude? Was he trying to make a point? If so, what was it? Why did the Nobel Committee give the prize in literature to someone known primarily as a songwriter? Was the committee trying to make a point? If so, what was it?”
Assuming that the second sentence hooks some readers, what then? Where do we go from here? The next step is to provide some background information, for example, noting other honors Dylan has received, for example, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Officier de la Legion d’honnuer, and other recipients of the Noble Prize in Literature.
We complete the introductory paragraph with the all-important thesis statement. Here we state our position and the support we will be offering for it, for example:
Bob Dylan’s refusal to show up for the Nobel Prize evidences a deep humility, a feeling of unworthiness, foreshadowed in his reactions to receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Officier de la Legion d’honnuer, and comments about previous recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature.
For guidance on crafting an effective thesis statement, please see page 7 of www.cambridge.org/download_file/586172/0/
Unit: Writing to Demonstrate Understanding
The Use and Misuse of Quotations
Simply quoting a passage does not demonstrate our understanding of it or the larger work it comes from. In terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, it is a level one activity, the lowest level of learning. That does not mean that we should never quote. It does mean that when we quote we should do so sparingly and for a good reason, for example, to explain our interpretation of a text, a level two activity or to provide support for our assessment, a level five activity. (For the proper use of single and double quotation marks and block quotations, The University of Wisconsin Colleges provides a nice summary: http://uwc.edu/students/academic-support/owl/quotation-marks)
Unit: Researching to Write
Conducting Online Research
If we have ready access to the internet, in a matter of moments we can do a Google search and find an abundance of sources. And, we could use the CRAAP test to evaluate them. The trouble is that we cannot possibly apply the CRAAP test to all of the sources that could pop up when we do a Google search. Suppose our professor assigns an essay on the symbolism of bullfighting in Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises and we get started by typing the name of the novel into Google and searching. The result would be 7 million links. The reason millions of links pop up is that if we type in The Sun Also Rises, but do not put that title in quotation marks, then our search engine looks for any phrases with “sun,” “also,” and “rises.” However, these phrases could contain other words as well. For example, if there were an internet site with the sentence, “Picasso paints sun rises but also moon rises” the site would come up as one of our results.
To limit our results to just the words we want in the order we want them, we need to use quotation marks, that is, search for “The Sun Also Rises.” Searching with quotation marks, our results drop from 7 million to 557,000, a considerable reduction but still a wildly unmanageable number of results. We need then to be even more specific in our search.
Since our topic concerns symbolism in Hemingway’s novel, we can add the word “symbolism” to our search to reduce the results even further. Putting both symbolism and The Sun Also Rises in quotation marks, and joining them with and, that is, searching with “The Sun Also Rises” AND “Symbolism” reduces our results by more than 200,000, but still leaving us with an impossibly large number of sites, 321,000.
If we are ever going to arrive at a manageable number of relevant internet sites, we need to be increasingly specific. Searching with “The Sun Also Rises” AND “Symbolism” AND “Bullfighting” drops the number of sites down to 26,000; searching with “The Sun Also Rises” AND “Symbolism” AND “Bullfighting” AND “Critical Discussion” reduces our total number of sites to 240. So, by using quotation marks, AND, and adding search words, we have gone from 7 million results to 240. That is good but not good enough.
To get from good to good enough, we need to begin with a search engine that presorts sites so that many of the ones that would fail the CRAAP test never show up in the first place. If we switch from the Google search engine to the Google Scholar search engine (we can find it easily enough by searching for Google Scholar in the Google search engine) and repeat the above search pattern the difference in results in dramatic. An initial search of The Sun Also Rises in Google Scholar gives us 456,000 as opposed to 7 million initial results. Searching with quotations marks: “The Sun Also Rises,” yields 10,000 results instead of 557,000. Searching with “The Sun Also Rises” AND “Symbolism” gives us 1,450 sites in Google Scholar, as opposed to 321,000 in in Google. A search with “The Sun Also Rises” AND “Symbolism” AND “Bullfighting” in Google Scholar give us 233 sites as opposed to 26,000 in Google. Finally, searching with “The Sun Also Rises” AND “Symbolism” AND “Bullfighting” AND “Critical Discussion” in Google Scholar gives us 12 results instead of the 240 with the general Google search engine.
The moral from the above comparison is that where and how we search matters a great deal. General search engines are too general. We want to begin our search with search engines that have done a lot of presorting for us. Google Scholar is but one of these. For an annotated list entitled “100 Time-Saving Search Engines for Serious Scholars (Revised)” see http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/07/100-time-saving-search-engines-serious-scholars-revised/ For tips on how to search efficiently, using AND, OR, NOT (so-called Boolean operators), the following sites are helpful: “Database Search Tips” Boolean operators” http://libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=175963&p=1158594 and https://library.uaf.edu/ls101-boolean
Unit: Revising
Sentence and Paragraph Breaks
Here is a sentence from a well-known novel:
He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath.
http://www.victorianlondon.org/books/tale-02.htm
At 79 words and more than four lines, even with a semi colon break after the first 20 words, this sentence taxes the reader. We may forgive Charles Dickens long sentences like these in The Tale of Two Cities because literary styles change and Dickens is a great author. However, our readers will not forgive us if our sentences seem interminable. Readers get lost in long sentences, sometimes because the writers themselves got lost. If we keep our sentences shorter than two lines, we will find it easier to order our thoughts and our readers will find it easier to follow our thinking. As a rule of thumb, a sentence longer than two lines is too long.
Long paragraphs, like long sentences, can put off our readers. If our essay has paragraphs that run more than a page or take up most of a page, one look at them may cause our readers, like the horses on Dickens’ hill, to call it quits. A shorter paragraph—perhaps five sentences—is more inviting and apt to be easier to understand.
Unit: Writing in Five Paragraphs
Body Paragraphs
In the body of our essay, we follow up on the thesis statement. In the 5-paragraph format, we would devote three paragraphs to advancing our thesis, beginning each one with a topic sentence stating the paragraph’s main idea. Given the above example of a thesis statement, regarding Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize in literature, our three topic sentences might be:
Examining Bob Dylan’s response to the Presidential Medal of Freedom, we see signs of deep humility, anticipating his reaction to the Nobel Prize.
Dylan’s behavior, when receiving the Officier de la Legion d’honnuer, evidences discomfort over the honor, presaging his response to the Nobel award.
Bob Dylan’s remarks about previous winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature show that he views himself unworthy of that honor, thereby foreshadowing his response to the award.
Unit: Writing to Demonstrate Understanding
Definitions and Illustrations
Every academic subject has specialized vocabulary and sometimes we will need to offer definitions of these terms. Trying to paraphrase very brief definitions can result in awkward prose and loss of meaning. In such instances, quoting the definition is our best option. However, if we merely quote we have not shown that we understand the definition. To move beyond Bloom’s level one, we can provide some original examples of the concept defined: a level three activity.
Unit: Revising
Correcting Grammar
We may find it hard to spot grammatical errors in our work if we do not already have a good grasp of the rules of grammar. Using our computer’s grammar check is a good place to start but we need to use it wisely and remember that such checks are not foolproof and that our goal is to understand and master the rules of grammar.
We can improve our knowledge of grammar and correct our work by using a checklist, a list of the most common grammatical mistakes and the ways to address them. A document form the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center, “Twelve Common Errors: A Student Self-Editing Guide,” is a superb resource: https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/PDF/twelve_common_errors_uwmadison_writingcenter_rev_sept2012.pdf
The University of Wisconsin Colleges’ list of 11 word-choice errors is helpful supplement: http://uwc.edu/students/academic-support/owl/word-choice-errors
Unit: Writing in Five Paragraphs
Conclusion
In our introductory paragraph, we hooked our readers, announced our topic, provided some background information and ended with a thesis statement. In our body paragraphs, we developed that thesis. Now we take a backward and then a forward look. Looking back, we note how together the paragraphs in the body of our paper back up our thesis. For example,
Bob Dylan’s awe and respect of previous Noble laureates, along with his embarrassment and sense of unworthiness when receiving lesser honors, evidence a humble man who would shy away from the Noble Prize ceremony.
Looking forward, we suggest where the discussion might go from here. For example,
Much more remains to be said about Dylan’s humility, not least his approach to songwriting.
Unit: Writing to Demonstrate Understanding
Summary and Restatement/Descriptive Versus Analytic Writing
Merely summarizing or restating material from assigned readings and/or sources does not take us beyond the second level of understanding in Bloom’s taxonomy. As such, it does not show that we have a deep understanding of the material we are drawing from. That does not mean that we should never summarize or restate content from the assigned text and/or our resources. What it does mean is that most of our writing should go beyond summary and restatement. As a rule of thumb, if more than a third of our paper consists of merely summarizing or restating what we have read, we have devoted too much space providing background information.
Some call summarizing and restating descriptive writing and contrast with critical or analytic writing. The University of Leicester’s “What is critical writing” gets at the heart of the distinction between descriptive writing (summary and restatement) and critical writing in the composition of a research paper.
With descriptive writing you are not developing argument; you are merely setting the background within which an argument can be developed. You are representing the situation as it stands, without presenting any analysis or discussion. . .
With critical writing you are participating in the academic debate. This is more challenging and risky. You need to weigh up the evidence and arguments of others, and to contribute your own. You will need to:
- consider the quality of the evidence you have read;
- identify key positive and negative aspects you can comment upon;
- assess their relevance and usefulness to the debate that you are engaging in your assignment; and
- identify how best they can be woven into the argument that you are developing.
For a more detailed comparison of the contrast between descriptive and critical writing, the two-column contrast given at http://www.learnhigher.ac.uk/learning-at-university/critical-thinking-and-reflection/whats-the-difference-between-description-and-critical-analysis/ is superb.
Unit: Revising
Correcting Spelling
We may find it hard to spot grammatical errors in our work if we do not already have a good grasp of the rules of grammar. Using our computer’s grammar check is a good place to start but we need to use it wisely and remember that such checks are not foolproof and that our goal is to understand and master the rules of grammar.
We can improve our knowledge of grammar and correct our work by using a checklist, a list of the most common grammatical mistakes and the ways to address them. A document form the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center, “Twelve Common Errors: A Student Self-Editing Guide,” is a superb resource: https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/PDF/twelve_common_errors_uwmadison_writingcenter_rev_sept2012.pdf
The University of Wisconsin Colleges’ list of 11 word-choice errors is helpful supplement: http://uwc.edu/students/academic-support/owl/word-choice-errors
Unit: Writing to Demonstrate Understanding
Acknowledging Sources
Some valuables are tangible: a Martin guitar, a ruby ring, an old engraving. In the scholarly world, valuables are intangible; they come in the form of ideas: data from research, original insights, especially clear explanations and illustrations of difficult concepts and theories, and the like. On the one hand, no scholar wishes to have their ideas ignored. On the other hand, no academic wishes to have someone use their ideas, without receiving acknowledgement as their source.
Whenever we use—not just an entire sentence or more—but also specific words and/or phrase(s) from an author, we need to put the words in quotation marks and note their source. Whenever we are relying on the ideas of others—not just the conclusions they have reached—but also their arguments, steps and/or research, we need to acknowledge the source(s) of the ideas we are using. Plagiarism, the failure to document our sources, is a serious matter and the penalties for it can be quite stiff.
There are different styles of documentation, for example, MLA (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association), and Chicago. Before we begin working on our paper, we should check to see what style of documentation our professor requires, so that we can capture sources information in the proper format, while we are doing our research. The writing centers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Utah Valley State provide information on the difference between various documentation styles and proper formatting in each style, http://www.writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Documentation.html https://www.uvu.edu/library/guides/citations.html
Unit: Revising
Avoiding Plagiarism
Good intentions are not always good enough for avoiding plagiarism. Even if we mean well, we may engage in plagiarism, from carelessness or misunderstanding. Careless plagiarism sometimes occurs if, while writing our paper, we include information we have cut and pasted from an internet source—using it as “placeholder,” intending to come back later and paraphrase it. The best way to avoid this is to keep all material we have cut and pasted from the internet out of our draft in the first place and never cut and paste material from the internet—for our notes for example—without also including the source link with it.
Unintentional plagiarism may occur if our good-faith effort to paraphrase source material falls short. It is important to recognize that changing a word or two, deleting a phrase, or combining several phrases from different parts of a work is not a successful paraphrase for we are still relying primarily on someone else’s wording. (For guidance on how to paraphrase and the difference between successful and unsuccessful paraphrases, the material in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s “The Writer’s Handbook” is very helpful http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QuotingSources.html ) We also need to keep in mind that when we have adequately paraphrased a source, we still need to credit the author for their original insights.
Unit: Revising
Checking Citations
Documenting our sources in the proper format (cf. “Acknowledging Sources” above) can be tricky. It is always wise to make sure that we are using the citation style assigned by the professor and that we have applied it correctly.
Unit: Revising
Writing Labs
Many schools have writing labs that offer assistance with proofreading and revision. Some labs provide these services via email and Skype, and so distance and travel time need not be barriers. Taking the time to have the writing-lab staff review our work, can result in substantially improved revision.
Even if personal feedback from a writing lab is not an option, we can nonetheless benefit from the excellent, open-educational resources Online Writing Labs (“OWLs”) provide. These include:
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center’s “The Writer’s Handbook,” http://www.writing.wisc.edu/Handbook
Utah Valley’s Writing Center’s Handouts: https://www.uvu.edu/writingcenter/handouts/index.html
The Purdue University Online Writing Lab’s “General Writing Resources,” https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/section/1/
Unit: Revising
The Path to Continual Improvement
Writing is personal; everyone’s writing has strengths and areas needing improvement. If we keep a record of our successes, then we have a place to turn when we feel discouraged and need a boost. It is a fact that we remember negative feedback more than positive and so it is important to capture the positive comments we receive and keep them on our radar screen. Focusing only on areas in need of improvement can be demoralizing and leave us with a distorted view of our writing. If we work very hard on a paper, receive some negative comments and a grade of 75%, we are apt to forget that our score of 75% indicates that the vast majority of our work was spot-on. Of course, we do want to learn from our mistakes, but we also need to take care less we obsess over them to the point that we forget about our strengths.
One way to keep up our morale and improve our writing is to compile a summary of feedback on all of our writing projects in a single place. In the example below, the title of the summary file is “Better to Best” and consists of two sections, “Encouraging Comments” and “Getting Better.” Although most of the information we capture will come directly from professor feedback on our work, it is also helpful to include some of our own notes. In this regard, see “reminder” under the essay on “Aristotle’s Four Cases” in the “Encouraging Feedback” section below. Note as well the links included in the “Better to Best” section. Including them makes it easy for us to go directly to the writing points we wish to review and so more likely that we will take the time to do so.