4. Clarification and Elaboration
Use: clarifying complex ideas and complex quotes
In 1837, a piece in The Mother's Magazine by Abigail and Samuel
Whittelsey contained the phrase, "They both literally slept in Jesus",
and in 1894 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote, in The Memoirs of Sherlock
Holmes, that Sherlock's room "was literally ankle-deep with
congratulatory telegrams” … The point is that even if it was fun and
surprising to force a "literally" where another word should go back in
the 1800s, it's getting a bit old now.
(Gill, 2013)
5. Emphasis
Use: drawing attention to specific things or ideas
“He [Guillaume Boucard] is a very talented and hardworking player, and
just as importantly, a very good teammate,” said head coach Tim
Kendrick.
(Malloy, 2019)
6. Organization
Use: route maps, transitions between ideas,
conclusions, and as a midway point in long, complex
articles.
Quebec quickly stepped up to the plate and asked for $1.9 billion for
having harmonized its tax regime years earlier. To add to the confusion,
Martin, having just argued that the federal Liberals were living up to
their commitments, proceeded to apologize for his ‘mistake’ in thinking
the GST could be replaced. Martin’s apology, in turn, put pressure on
Shelia Copps to live up to her pledge to quit is the GST was not
replaced…
(MacKinnon, 2003, p. 188)
7. Significance
Use: explaining why your argument matters.
From the north of England to South Australia, 2017 has proved to the
year that large-scale battery storage came of age, smashing cost and
scale barriers and breaking into the public consciousness. This is
important because storing energy is seen as a crucial complement to
the renewable revolution sweeping the world.
(Rice-Oxley, 2017)
8. Titles
Use: informing reader of the text’s content
“Empires of the Mind: Autobiography and Anti-Imperialism in the Work
of J.G. Ballard”
9. Naysayers and Objections
Use: anticipating and defusing common objections to
your argument
Some say, for instance, that non-Western people who wear jeans and
Indigenous people who speak English are taking from dominant
cultures, too. But marginalized groups don’t have the power to decide
if they’d prefer to stick with their customs or try on the dominant
culture’s traditions just for fun.
(Johnson, 2015)
10. Activity
Use the following list to
help you identify the
types of commentary
used in this excerpt from
Jonathan Safran Foer’s
“Against Meat.”
• Clarification and
elaboration
• Emphasis
• Naysayers and
objections
• Significance
According to reports by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the U.N. and others,
factory farming has made animal agriculture the
No. 1 contributor to global warming (it is
significantly more destructive than
transportation alone). Eating factory-farmed
animals—which is to say virtually every piece of
meat sold in supermarkets and prepared in
restaurants—is almost certainly the single worst
thing that humans do to the environment. To
acknowledge that these things matter is not
sentimental. It is a confrontation with the facts
about animals and ourselves. We know these
things matter. (Foer)
11. • Clarification and elaboration
• Emphasis
• Organization
• Naysayers and objections
• Significance
According to reports by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the U.N. and
others, factory farming has made animal
agriculture the No. 1 contributor to global
warming (it is significantly more
destructive than transportation alone).
Eating factory-farmed animals—which is to
say virtually every piece of meat sold in
supermarkets and prepared in
restaurants—is almost certainly the single
worst thing that humans do to the
environment. To acknowledge that these
things matter is not sentimental. It is a
confrontation with the facts about animals
and ourselves. We know these things
matter. (Foer)
12. References
Slide 2: Graff, G. & Birkenstein, C. (2018). They say / I say: The moves that
matter in academic writing. New York, NY: Norton.
Slide 4: Gill, M. (2013, Aug. 13). Have we literally broken the English
language? The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/13/literally-
broken-english-language-definition
Slide 5: Malloy, J. (2019, March 31). Boucard named NBL’s Canadian of the
year. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.pe.ca/sports/other-sports/boucard-named-nbls-
canadian-of-the-year-296335/
13. Slide 6: MacKinnon, J. (2003). Minding the public purse: The fiscal crisis,
political trade-offs, and Canada’s future. Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen’s
University Press.
Slide 7: Rice-Oxley, M. (2017, Dec. 26). Annus mirabilis: All the things
that went right in 2017. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/26/2017-
annus-mirabilis-all-the-things-that-went-right
Slide 9: Johnson, M. Z. (2015). What’s wrong with cultural
appropriation? These 9 answers reveal its harm. Retrieved from
https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/
14. Slide 10: Foer, J. S. (2009, Oct. 7) Against meat. The New York Times.
Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/magazine/11foer-
t.html?action=click&contentCollection=Magazine&module=RelatedCov
erage®ion=EndOfArticle&pgtype=article
16. Academic Titles
“‘Going Mad Is Their Only Way of Staying Sane’:
Norbert Elias and the Civilized Violence of J.G.
Ballard”
“Empires of the Mind: Autobiography and Anti-
Imperialism in the Work of J. G. Ballard”
“The Modern World is an Enormous Fiction: J.G.
Ballard and the Millennium”
17. • Titles are another form of metacommentary, and perhaps one of the
most important: they’re the first thing you reader sees and provide a
valuable opportunity to quickly inform your reader what your paper is
about.
• Academic titles are almost always in two parts. The first part is
generally catchy and contains the hook that will grab the reader's
interest. The second part following the colon has two components:
topic keywords and focus keywords.
• For our papers, the focus keywords will be the titles of the works
you’re writing about.
18. “Empires of the Mind: Autobiography and Anti-Imperialism in the Work of J.G. Ballard”
Title Subtitle
Hook Topic Keywords Focus Keywords
