I remember the basic essay plan our English teacher had cajoled us to adopt in High School (which I graduated from almost nineteen years ago, frighteningly enou

I remember the basic essay plan our English teacher had cajoled us to adopt in High School (which I graduated from almost nineteen years ago, frighteningly enough, at the tail-end of the typographical era of text). 1. Introduction: Tell us what you're going to say. 2. Body: List your facts, create a sub-list of those facts that you are going to argue from, argue from them, undermine yourself by introducing the facts you weren't going to argue from and explore how adopting those changes your conclusion, explain why you chose to exclude those other facts to begin with and thus invalidate the counter-argument (while have shown yourself to be receptive to it). 3. Conclusion: Tell us what you said, and tell us how one could go about settling controversies that arise between yourself and somebody else who reached a different conclusion.