Chapter 16

The book title, everything is an argument, is a fact and to make your argument valid, you must have strong evidence to be convincing to the readers. One of the group evidence you can use is called firsthand, which includes observations, interviews, experiments and more. It is a way to show your evidence based on something you have done. Another type of evidence is called secondhand, where the information is gotten from somewhere else and you use it to support your argument. It could be from a film, the library, online and other places where somebody else did the "dirty" work researching the information.

Evidence varies towards different types of writing, some writing would depend on a certain kind of evidence. Suppose an author who is about to write a book based on a tough childhood, s/he would probably use the firsthand approach, writing about his or her own personal experience. When it comes to a science article, the writer would possibly choose evidence from experiments to support its article.

Before you can start deciding on which type of evidence you will use, you must think of the type of readers you will have. Imagine a reader that bought a book expecting it to be based on a personal childhood struggles, however the evidence presented in the book is entirely about surveys of how scientists believe that there is a gene influence towards lost childhoods. The reader would possibly feel that her or his expectation of the book was not met.

I believe that personal experience inside the firsthand evidence and research is important to my academic writing, it places powerful impact in my writing. I feel when people use their personal stories; using the right words and the form of saying it on a piece of paper can amaze people. One might argue, but I feel that if the author does not state their opinion or feelings (personal stories) into their writing, the paper might be dull. It does not have to be stated obviously but it could be mentioned in a subtle way.

It is weird because after reading chapter sixteen in everything is an argument book; I felt it showed that we could not write anything without supporting our ideas. We, the people, are always demanding to know the proof for everything to make it believable. This is why we are using the blue book to understand the fundamentals of what the society wants us to write in our paper.