The Persuasive Use of Numerical Facts in "The New Abolitionism" by Christopher Hayes

Crystal's feedback:

"Excellent job with identifying the focus of your essay; you make it clear that you felt Hayes persuasively uses numerical facts. However, that aspect would be best framed in a tighter, more detailed thesis statement; your current thesis statement only addresses the takeaway--that Hayes successfully sways the general audience. On the organization overall, your intro paragraph should ideally not include a quotation; instead, that would best be integrated into the body paragraph as evidence of your broad point, accompanied by an explanation of how it relates to your main point. The intro, in general, should mainly contain the background info to set up your thesis statement and then end with the thesis as a road map for your essay. You do wisely use a quote as support in your body paragraph, but its use would be strengthened with a little explanation after it; you want to end body paragraphs with a "so what?" element that explains why the things you just discussed in the paragraph support your topic sentence of the paragraph and your thesis. In your concluding paragraph, you also want to only summarize and synthesize what you discuss in the body of the paper; new information shouldn't be introduced. You might consider rearranging some of the details to ensure that’s the case. Finally, there are several things that could be cleaned up with a good edit: numerous punctuation errors (missing commas, comma splices); first-person pronouns used in an editorial sense ("us," "our," etc.), which should be avoided in most academic essays; and MLA formatting mishaps (missing page numbers, if available, title for Work Cited page, format of Work Cited entry). Addressing the above aspects would improve your paper and allow you to really highlight the great points you make about Hayes' use of numerical facts and your good overall diction."

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