3 ms·

Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of discovery as the author. That path of discovery is one of the main points of the essay, a

Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of discovery as the author. That path of discovery is one of the main points of the essay, as the author clearly generalizes that experience to broader situations. It's easier for a reader to see more applications if they felt that discovery instead of just being told about it. Guiding readers along a discovery path is an effective rhetorical technique. (It is also the structure of a lot of comedy and mysteries. Which should indicate that we tend to like the technique in what we read, watch and hear.)

gwbas1c 8y ago
> Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of discovery as the author. I almost stopped reading. To put it quite bluntly, if she had put "the point" one line further, I was going to close the browser. The drama in the author's life was so unrelated to the problem that it really distracted from the point. Without the preemie and the move, it could have easily been, "the school year ended, my son went to camp, we went on vacation, and sometime during the summer I noticed that my son stopped licking his hands." Or, it could have been, "my son spent the summer in the hospital and stopped licking his hands while he was in treatment." My point is that the whole incident with the move and the premie is so fundamentally unrelated to the point, that it detracts from the strength of the article itself. Her son didn't stop licking his hands because of the stress of the situation, he stopped licking his hands because it was summer and the heat wasn't running.
- inimino 8y ago
  > I almost stopped reading. It seems the article wasn't for you. > fundamentally unrelated to the point The point (I got) was that life became overwhelmingly busy in other ways, freeing the author from obsessing over the hand-licking behavior, which sometime during this period went away on its own, almost unnoticed. Generally, when an author includes a ton of irrelevant details, it's possible that they need advice on writing well, and it's possible that the details are actually relevant to a point which you may have overlooked.

gwbas1c 8y ago

> Structured in the way it is, the reader is lead along the same path of discovery as the author. I almost stopped reading. To put it quite bluntly, if she had put "the point" one line further, I was going to close the browser. The drama in the author's life was so unrelated to the problem that it really distracted from the point. Without the preemie and the move, it could have easily been, "the school year ended, my son went to camp, we went on vacation, and sometime during the summer I noticed that my son stopped licking his hands." Or, it could have been, "my son spent the summer in the hospital and stopped licking his hands while he was in treatment." My point is that the whole incident with the move and the premie is so fundamentally unrelated to the point, that it detracts from the strength of the article itself. Her son didn't stop licking his hands because of the stress of the situation, he stopped licking his hands because it was summer and the heat wasn't running.

inimino 8y ago
> I almost stopped reading. It seems the article wasn't for you. > fundamentally unrelated to the point The point (I got) was that life became overwhelmingly busy in other ways, freeing the author from obsessing over the hand-licking behavior, which sometime during this period went away on its own, almost unnoticed. Generally, when an author includes a ton of irrelevant details, it's possible that they need advice on writing well, and it's possible that the details are actually relevant to a point which you may have overlooked.