Write for the Reader: A Practical Lesson in Academic Argument

A research draft can be clear to its author and still leave its intended readers wondering why they should continue. In this lecture, University of Chicago writing program director Larry McEnerney argues that effective academic writing must help a particular community understand something it already wants to understand. The work is to make its value visible, then give readers reasons to reconsider a position—not merely display what the author knows.

He calls the course advanced rather than remedial. By “expert writer” he means someone with expertise in the subject, not necessarily someone who has mastered writing. Templates can serve frequent, routine memos, he says; difficult research demands closer attention to specific readers. His strong claims describe his teaching model for professional academic writing, not a rule for every kind of communication.

Writing is a tool for discovering an idea as well as presenting it. McEnerney recalls being told to finish thinking before writing and to submit an outline as proof. He wrote the paper first and the outline afterward. His point is not to discard outlines or notes: both can help. It is that complex thinking often develops through drafting.

The draft records a path of discovery. The reader follows a different path, looking through the text for a reason to change an understanding of the world. McEnerney sketches these as intersecting axes. When the writer's sequence interferes with the reader's, he says, the reader slows down or rereads, misunderstands, becomes frustrated and may stop. A participant observes that people persevere when they need the paper; if they do not need it, they can leave.

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A teacher assessing an assignment has a professional reason to read it and see what the student understands. McEnerney contrasts that situation with colleagues, journal readers and funders who choose to read because the work may matter to their own questions. This is a teaching contrast, not a claim that every teacher or professional reader behaves identically.

Clarity, organization and persuasion remain important, but, in his account, a clear and orderly text can still be useless to its audience. Ask which journal or group is being addressed, what its members are trying to understand, and what they may doubt. The same work can be valuable to one community and irrelevant to another. A standardized, generic reader is a poor substitute for that investigation.

McEnerney asks the class to compare two imagined biology proposals. Both concern a theoretical expectation, observations and a model; the second makes the relationship between them visible. A participant says it explains why the work matters. The lecturer directs attention to language such as “nonetheless,” “however,” “inconsistent” and “anomaly”: an accepted account and reported observations do not sit comfortably together, so a proposed investigation has a reason to exist. The source's scientific terminology is uncertain; the exercise is a comparison of presentation, not a verified biology finding or a funding experiment.

When a reader says the first proposal does not seem important, its author might respond by explaining more. McEnerney warns that this can answer the wrong question. A teacher may want a demonstration of understanding; an expert reader also asks why the claim deserves attention and why it should be believed. Explanation has a role, but in his model it works within an established reason to care and an emerging argument.

He replaces “Why do you think that?” with “Why should I think that?” He describes informed challenge as an academic ideal, while acknowledging that the ideal is often violated. His example of someone asking directions illustrates a different reading situation: a person seeking information need not approach the answer as a professional critic.

Counting the people in the room could produce a fact nobody knew, McEnerney says, but that alone gives an audience no reason to read a paper. He also recounts a researcher discovering old travel journals and being told that their originality did not by itself establish their significance to her committee. The lesson is to connect material to a question a community cares about, not to reject original research.

He draws knowledge as a conversation carried by people through time, rather than an indefinitely growing pile of correct facts. On his account, communities admit, revise and discard ideas. He also acknowledges the power and historical exclusion involved when particular people decide what counts. This is his interpretation of academic practice, not an independently established definition of knowledge.

A text need not promise permanence. He recalls a philosopher who kept revising a book for fear of errors found centuries later. McEnerney's answer was that work in a drawer cannot move a conversation forward. The point is not to abandon care; it is to judge completion against a contribution to an ongoing discussion rather than an impossible guarantee of lasting perfection.

McEnerney suggests a repeatable exercise: each week spend 15 minutes marking words in published work in your field that signal value. Keep a list, then inspect your own opening during revision. Some signals name the community and its shared understanding, such as “widely accepted” or “reported.” Others mark tension, such as “but,” “although,” “inconsistent” or “anomaly.” He says a wording change can sometimes help quickly, but is not always magic.

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A participant calls these “flow words.” McEnerney agrees that transitions and flow are useful, but asks what the words actually do. “And” may add another point; “but” can expose a conflict with what readers already believe. The connective does not create a meaningful problem by itself: the relationship it signals must matter to the audience. Learn the function of a field's language rather than sprinkling in a fixed quota of words.

A participant objects that journal editors may be the very people whose work is being challenged. McEnerney accepts the risk. His proposed approach is to recognize prior contributions, identify a specific limitation and offer an argument for the revision. Insulting a field's leaders is different from showing where an established account needs work. He makes a sweeping claim that every article in a journal challenges someone; treat that as his rhetorical assertion, not a verified survey.

He also recognizes a second risk: simply announcing another contribution may leave readers indifferent. His program explicitly teaches writers to understand powerful people and work within the community's conventions. He acknowledges the ethical tension between that advice and cultivating an independent voice, as well as the unequal risks of challenging authority. His aim is to help writers navigate those conditions, not to resolve the ethical issue.

This advice concerns the function of an academic article. McEnerney explicitly says language has many functions: speaking honestly about one's beliefs or comforting a friend can have different purposes. Writing to change a reader's thinking does not require lying, nor does writing for personal reflection become illegitimate.

The lecturer contrasts a familiar “martini glass” structure—broad background, a narrow thesis, then a broad conclusion—with an opening organized around a problem and its proposed solution. The problem belongs in something the readers care about, though it need not affect them personally. A funder may care about an education problem even if their own family is not experiencing it. Academic readers may want better understanding; other readers may want a practical problem fixed.

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He sketches two features of a useful problem. First, show instability: a contradiction, tension, anomaly or challenge in an existing account. Second, often show the cost of leaving it unresolved or the benefit of resolving it. Not every inconsistency matters. Explain what a community cannot understand or do if it persists, or what improves if it is resolved. Only then can readers recognize your thesis as a response to that problem.

Look at the target journal's actual introductions for its language of cost and benefit. McEnerney notes that a journal may use both, or show no consistent preference. His model is a diagnostic for a particular audience, not a compulsory sentence formula.

A student asks about the paragraph covering other papers. McEnerney says a doctoral student's difficulty may be uncertainty about who is reading: a teacher may use the review to assess mastery, while a professional review can establish credibility, acknowledge others and clarify what is being challenged. He even accepts a participant's observation that recognizing others can serve their egos.

Instead of a chronological list—one author said this, another said that—bring claims into relation. One result may complicate an earlier account; a third may deepen the tension. Then explain the consequence for the community's present work. The review moves the argument forward by making the problem more precise, not just by demonstrating how much the writer has read.

In a history example, McEnerney describes an opening that first establishes the importance of events to historical narrative and then asks what happens when “event” is rarely examined as a theoretical category. What looks like background becomes problem construction when the next sentence exposes the tension. For some readers, an unexamined category used throughout their field is consequential; for others, that gap may not be compelling.

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His puzzle analogy warns against assuming every missing piece matters merely because it is missing. A gap can work, he explicitly says, but an author should show its significance rather than rely on novelty. In discussing the same opening, he identifies different communities—including narrative historians and historical sociologists—with different relationships to the issue. Interdisciplinary writing is hard partly because audiences may define both problems and convincing arguments differently.

He points to another introduction in which economists use a chart they regard as wrong to construct a problem. A chart can therefore be part of the question being posed, not only an illustration of a result. He also notes the example's respectful language toward prior work.

The final example concerns an article on Mexican history. McEnerney describes its opening as presenting an interpretation, showing that it challenges an established view, and then stating the alternative argument. Its footnote credits seminar discussion and later readers with helping clarify significance, uncertainty and controversy. The lecture also mentions local rent tables as the underlying research material.

McEnerney infers that the author may have discovered the larger issue late in a long process; the exact sequence and duration are his speculation, not established by the footnote. His practical point returns to the first diagram: the question discovered late in research can belong near the beginning of the article. Draft to think, seek informed readers, identify the problem their feedback reveals, and revise the presentation so that readers can see the stakes before they encounter the full evidence.