Unscrambling Claim and Evidence Sentences

Now let’s practice unscrambling passages taken from humorist Sarah Vowell’s book Take the Cannoli. You will read a scrambled passage and then put the sentences in correct order based on the different types of reasoning. In the first passage, you will practice organizing sentences for inductive reasoning. The second passage deals with deductive reasoning. Remember that the most important point—the claim—comes last in inductive reasoning and follows the sentences of support—reasons or evidence. When writers have something controversial to say, they will often put the most controversial statement after their reasons to persuade their readers to agree with them because it’s a gentler approach than putting it first. To help you get started, the claim is highlighted below.

image of Elvis Presley

Source: Elvis Presley in “Jailhouse Rock,” Library of Congress, Wikimedia Commons


Image of Frank Sinatra

Source: Frank Sinatra at Girl’s Town Ball 1960, National Archives and Records Administration, Wikimedia Commons

Passage 1: Inductive Order

  1. His complicated, love-him/hate-him persona and his twisting, turning road map of a voice are nearly as large as America itself.
  2. And so in my bible, Frank Sinatra is not Revelation; he’s Genesis, where pop starts.
  3. Apart from Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra is the most towering musical figure this century, and this country, have produced.
  4. Frank Sinatra is the first punk.
  5. Which is why one Sinatra fan can decide he’s the end of an era and another can argue he's where it all begins. (Yes, this is a sentence fragment. Many writers use them to emphasize points they are making.)

Type in your answer using your notes. When you are finished, check your understanding. To help you get started, the claim is highlighted in yellow. Now rewrite the passage in “Inductive order.”

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Sample Response:

Apart from Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra is the most towering musical figure this century, and this country, have produced. His complicated, love-him/hate-him persona and his twisting, turning road map of a voice are nearly as large as America itself. Which is why one Sinatra fan can decide he's the end of an era and another can argue he’s where it all begins. And so in my bible, Frank Sinatra is not Revelation; he’s Genesis, where pop starts. Frank Sinatra is the first punk.

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A helpful hint: Notice sentence lengths. Shorter sentences tend to carry the main points in a passage. Which is the shortest sentence in this passage?

Did you guess that the last sentence is Vowell’s claim or thesis statement? She knows many music fans will likely disagree with her so she builds to the most emphatic, controversial statement, hoping people will understand why she makes the claim that “Frank Sinatra is the first punk.”

Using the same book by Vowell, arrange the sentences below in deductive order. Remember that the most important point—the claim—comes first in deductive reasoning followed by the sentences of support—the reasons or evidence. When writers want to use a direct approach for their audience, they will often put the claim first.

Passage 2: Deductive Order

  1. One of the reasons I knew I wasn’t God’s gift to music was that I went to school with him—the living, breathing personification of entertainment—Jon Wilson.
  2. He knew all the crowd-pleasing keyboard favorites.
  3. Jon Wilson could play the piano.
  4. Kids would come up to him and request the Charlie Brown theme song or Van Halen’s “Jump” so often I’m surprised he didn’t roll a baby grand with an empty milk carton on top into the junior high cafeteria and play for tips during lunch.
  5. Like REALLY. PLAY. THE PIANO.

Type in your answer using your notes. When you are finished, check your understanding.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

One of the reasons I knew I wasn’t God’s gift to music was that I went to school with him—the living, breathing personification of entertainment—Jon Wilson. Jon Wilson could play the piano. Like REALLY. PLAY. THE PIANO. He knew all the crowd-pleasing keyboard favorites. Kids would come up to him and request the Charlie Brown theme song or Van Halen’s “Jump” so often I’m surprised he didn’t roll a baby grand with an empty milk carton on top into the junior high cafeteria and play for tips during lunch.

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Did you correctly put the paragraphs in their original order? If not, then examine each claim sentence and see how it sums up the evidence Vowell provides. What difference would it make if she had reversed the order in each of the two passages—the first one as deductive, the second as inductive?

Type in your answer using your notes. When you are finished, check your understanding.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

When you switch the two passages, the first one becomes deductive and the second inductive. This swap changes the effects of the passages. In a deductive passage, we know early on what the passage is about because the claim comes first. In an inductive passage, there is an element of suspense because you read all the statements before you get to the main point of the passage. By switching these two passages, we would find out at the beginning that Frank Sinatra is an early punk, and we wouldn’t know that the second passage was actually about the writer until we got to the end.

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