Interpret complex or detailed evidence before you offer it - Drafting your report - Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, 7th edition - Kate L. Turabian 2007

Interpret complex or detailed evidence before you offer it
Drafting your report
Part I. Research and writing: from planning to production

By this point, you may be so sure that your evidence supports your reasons that you'll think readers can't miss its relevance. But evidence never speaks for itself, especially not a long quotation, an image, a table or chart, and so on. You must speak for it by introducing it with a sentence stating what you want your readers to get out of it.

For example, it's hard to see how the quoted lines in this next passage support the introductory sentence:

When Hamlet comes up behind his stepfather Claudius at prayer, he coolly and logically thinks about whether to kill him on the spot.claim

Now might I do it [kill him] pat, now he is praying:

And now I'll do't; and so he goes to heaven;

And so am I reveng'd . . .

[But this] villain kills my father; and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.

Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.evidence

Nothing in those lines obviously refers to cool rationality. Compare this:

When Hamlet comes up behind his stepfather Claudius at prayer, he coolly and logically thinks about whether to kill him on the spot.claim First he wants to kill Claudius immediately, but then he pauses to think: If he kills Claudius while he is praying, he sends his soul to heaven. But he wants Claudius damned to hell, so he coolly decides to kill him later:reason

Now might I do it [kill him] pat, now he is praying:

And now I'll do't; and so he goes to heaven;

And so am I reveng'd . . .

[But this] villain kills my father; and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send to heaven.

Why, this is hire and salary, not revenge.evidence

That kind of explanatory introduction is even more important when you present quantitative evidence in a table or figure (see 8.3.1).