It's complex. Writing disciplines thought, and thought disciplines writing. The two must progress hand in hand. Analytical writing is a method for achieving gr

It's complex. Writing disciplines thought, and thought disciplines writing. The two must progress hand in hand. Analytical writing is a method for achieving greater intellectual honesty. It includes the habit of giving evidence for assertions, of clearing up ambiguity, of putting causes before consequences, of replacing hand-waving with concrete facts. And so on. But it's not failsafe. "The Xorbians are foreign interlopers, so we must hunt them down and kill them" is analytical writing. I think it would pass some of the more basic tests described in the Atlantic article. But it doesn't necessarily tell the truth, and this failing may be down to a want of ethics. By contrast, "What do I think about the Xorbian issue? Live and let live" is not analytical writing. But it may be truer and more valuable. Judicial and deliberative rhetoric in Greece demanded a backbone of analysis. But it wasn't by any means the whole of rhetoric. Well, as stated, it's complex. One could write books...