CRITERION 7: FOCUS (typical feedback: problems with organization, titles, transitions, direction, losing the thread, where are you going?, redundancy, anything related to focus)
To download my handout on Focus in pdf, click here.

Given the fact that an argumentative academic essay in the humanities must make use of every single word, sentence, and paragraph in order to execute the logical defense of a complex thesis,  

and given the fact that such an essay’s length should be exactly equal to the length demanded by the complexity of its thesis, 

there is no room for any extraneous material in your essay.  Just as every statement your essay makes must be necessarily true, every component of your essay — each word, each sentence, each paragraph — must be deployed in proving something that follows from it.  

Any material in your essay that is not necessary in proving a subsequent point will distract the reader from your argument, compromising its focus.  Focus problems will ruin the logical flow of the argument (see the Rigor page), make the writing shallow (see the Depth page) and hard to understand (see the Clarity page).

USE LOGICAL, NOT ASSOCIATIVE, LINKS.  The force that links sentence to sentence, and paragraph to paragraph, should almost always be logical (e.g. “if a and b are true, then c is true; evidence shows that d is true; if c and d are true, then e is true”), not associative (“a is true and b is also true and c, a related true point, is also interesting).  If you can’t identify the inclusion of material with one of the seven items on the Rigor page, then you should probably cut it. 

SEQUENCE SHOULD MATTER.  If any components of your essay could be reordered without compromising the essay’s logical structure, it is likely that you need to strengthen your rigor and/or focus. Each of your sentences communicates a fully formed thought in your argument.  That means that nearly every sentence must rely logically in some way on the sentences that come before it, and in turn must be relied on logically by the sentences that come after it.  Each of your paragraphs, comprised of those sentences, represents a major point/node in your argument.  That means that every paragraph must rely logically in some way on the paragraphs that come before it, and in turn must be relied on logically by the paragraphs that come after it.  If any element in your paper neither depends on what comes before it, nor is depended on for what comes after, then you should probably cut it.

EDITING HURTS.  If any component of your short essay could be just as easily removed without causing the whole logical structure to tilt, then you must remove it!  Kill your darlings.  Things that get cut may have been essential in the process of getting to your product, but have no room in the product.  

If that means your essay will be under length, then it means your thesis is insufficiently deep (see Depth handout): fix the thesis rather than padding it with extra material (which never helps, and often does real harm).  If that means that the reader might not see something that you find really interesting, or that you worked really hard on, so be it: put it in a footnote, maybe, but that material does not belong in the final cut. 

LOGIC IS A STREAM, NOT A FLOOD.  Prove your points with as little evidence as is necessary.  Anything beyond that — especially unnecessary summary or context, the re-affirmation of a point a different critic has already proven sufficiently, or the repetition of a point you have already presented (except where you are reframing the point as a premise to a new conclusion, using signposts to make clear that is what you are doing) — is redundant.  If it is redundant, then you should probably cut it.

ALWAYS MAKE YOUR DIRECTION CLEAR.  Often, in undergraduate writing, the underlying logic that weaves sentences together (i.e. that shows how a sentence depends on what comes before it and sets up what comes after it) is unclear or obscured.  Sometimes writers even try to hide the main points of their argument to earn a big “reveal”—that is never a good idea for a paper.  It is certainly possible to overdo signposting, but err on the side of caution: use ample signposts and show your work painstakingly (see Clarity page) so that your reader never has to wonder “where you’re going with this.”  Use paragraph breaks wisely: each new, distinctive point gets its own paragraph, forcing you to think through each point in sufficient depth.  Take care, too, to frame your innovations—that is, use signal phrases (see Innovation page) to show where you depart from prior discussions; use strategic paragraph breaks, too, to give proper airtime to the most crucial departures.