How Do I Use Evidence?

1. Make sure your evidence is appropriate to the paper you are writing.
2. Make sure the evidence does, in fact, support your argument or your claims.
3. Tell your reader why this evidence supports your argument/claims.
4. Make sure you have an appropriate amount of evidence.

Analysis is your opportunity to contextualize and explain the evidence for your reader. Your analysis might tell the reader why the evidence is important, what it means, or how it connects to other ideas in your writing. Note that analysis often leads to synthesis, an extension and more complicated form of analysis.

Critical thinking means being able to make good arguments. Arguments are claims backed by reasons that are supported by evidence. Reasons are statements of support for claims, making those claims something more than mere assertions. …

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1. Identify the conclusion and the premises.
2. Put the argument in standard form.
3. Decide if the argument is deductive or non-deductive.
4. Determine whether the argument succeeds logically.
5. If the argument succeeds logically, assess whether the premises are true.

One evaluates arguments by assessing their quality, i.e., how good they are as arguments. An argument’s purpose is to compel a listener to believe the conclusion on the basis of the reasons given in support. To be a good argument, it must supply agreeable reasons that make the conclusion seem clearly true.

Examples of deductive logic:

• All men are mortal. Joe is a man. Therefore Joe is mortal.
• Bachelors are unmarried men. Bill is unmarried. Therefore, Bill is a bachelor.
• To get a Bachelor’s degree at Utah Sate University, a student must have 120 credits. Sally has more than 130 credits.

Probably the best advice for anyone trying to identify arguments is to look for the premises first. Some common premise indicator words are because, since, and given that. An explanation tells us why or how something is the case, but an argument gives us reasons for believing that something is the case.

The two important question that one need to ask themselves in deductive reasoning are: Do the premises provide enough logical support for the conclusion? Are the premises true?

Often a moral premise in a moral argument is implicit. The best approach to identifying the implicit premises is to treat moral arguments as deductive. Your job then is to supply plausible premises that will make the argument valid.

Definition: An argument is a group of statements some of which, the premises, are offered in support of another statement, the conclusion.

A premise is a statement in an argument that provides reason or support for the conclusion. There can be one or many premises in a single argument. A conclusion is a statement in an argument that indicates of what the arguer is trying to convince the reader/listener.

A conclusion indicator is a word or phrase that indicates that the statement it’s attached to is a conclusion. Typically, conclusion indicators immediately precede the conclusion, but occasionally, they will be found in the middle and sometimes even at the end!

Common conclusion indicators include:

• So.
• Therefore.
• Thus.
• Consequently.
• This proves.
• As a result.
• This suggests that.
• We can conclude.

In argument, evidence refers to facts, documentation or testimony used to strengthen a claim, support an argument or reach a conclusion. The evidence isn’t the same as proof.