The more distinct an idea you can implant in your
readers' minds of the course you are going to follow in your argument,
the more likely they will be to follow it. Since the success of your
argument hangs on carrying them with you on the main issues, let them
know beforehand just what those issues are, and in such a way that they
can hold them with a minimum of effort. The value of a clear and, as it
were, maplike introduction is even greater in an argument than in an
exposition.
In the second place, use your paragraphing for all that it is worth, and
that is a great deal. The success of any explanation or argument springs
from the way in which it takes a mass of facts apart, and rearranges
them simply and perspicuously; and there is no device of composition
which helps so much towards clearness as good paragraphing. Accordingly
when you come to make your final draft, make certain that each paragraph
has unity. If you have any doubts see if you can sum up the paragraph
into a single simple sentence. Then look at the beginnings of the
paragraphs to see whether you have made it easy for your readers to know
what each one is about. Macaulay's style is on the whole clearer and
more effective for a general audience than that of any other writer in
English; and his habit of beginning each paragraph with a very definite
announcement of its subject is almost a mannerism.
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