​ The biggest mistake students make when it comes to writing is believing that,

unlike every other skill they’re learning, writing doesn’t have rules and structure that,
when understood, improve the student’s performance dramatically. In fact, students
often view writing as purely creative, where sounding good or smart is the only thing
that matters. This unfortunate belief is the reason I myself struggled so much with
writing in high school, and why I won’t allow y’all to do the same.
​ The primary purpose of writing is communication. A person writes to
communicate with others (or with themselves in the case of a journal). Because of this,
writing has a clear metric for whether it’s good or bad writing. Now, communication is
not the only important thing about writing, but it’s the only necessary thing about
writing. If your writing makes no sense and doesn’t get across the message you wanted
to convey, then it is bad writing.1
​ So how do we avoid bad writing? Well, the simple answer is, prioritize
communication above all else. Do everything you can to make your writing easy to
follow and understand, and build off of that foundation. In order to do this, we have to
begin by making your writing sound dull and repetitive.

PART 1: The Basics

​ Dull and repetitive writing is not fun, it’s not entertaining, and it doesn’t hold the
reader’s attention very well, so it’s not where we want our writing journey to end, but
it’s exactly where we need to begin. The structure I’ve been teaching you is ACE. This
stands for ASSERTION, CITATION, and EXPLANATION. This structure is simple and
easy to follow, but it takes practice to master.
​ If you’re interested in why this structure is so effective, I will have another doc
for that soon, but, for this doc, we’ll narrow our focus exclusively to how ACE works.
​ The structure begins with ASSERTION. An assertion is a claim or statement
made about reality. It can be anything ranging from: “Goku would beat Superman” to
“we need to move to rank choice voting” to “This is how you make a sandwich” or

1
I know some of you may retort by bringing up poetry or more surreal writing, but, even in those cases,
there is still a feeling or idea that’s trying to be communicated.
even “I don’t enjoy school.” All of these are possible assertions because they make
claims about reality that can be further supported or expanded on.
​ At your age, most of your writing begins with a prompt. These prompts are your
guide to what you’re meant to write about and how you should write about it. When
writing for a prompt, your top priority should always be making sure you
addressed/answered the prompt. When it comes to writing, limitation is everything. If
your writing isn’t focused around the prompt, then, regardless of how good it is, it’s
failed to complete its primary task.
​ So, when beginning your writing, read the prompt thoroughly and make sure
you understand what it’s asking. For our purposes here, we’ll start by using the
following example prompt:

In a well written paragraph, answer the following prompt. What is one thing you’d
change about school? Why?

​ This is a simple prompt, so it’s perfect for showing how to craft an ASSERTION.
Reading the prompt, we can quickly see a few things:
●​ This is asking for the student’s personal opinion
●​ This is asking for the student to justify that opinion
●​ This should be written as one paragraph
​ With these things in mind, we can begin crafting our ASSERTION. Since this is a
personal opinion, the student won’t need to do any initial research when forming their
ASSERTION. Once they’ve identified something they want to see changed about school,
they should start their assertion.

​ One thing that I want to change about school is for the teachers to be made to wear silly
hats…

​ Notice that, while it sounds boring, it clearly answers the first part of the prompt
to the point where, even if someone didn’t know what the prompt you were answering
was, they could easily figure it out. But, we’re not done yet. This is only the first part of
the prompt. We still haven’t answered the “why” part. Even if the prompt doesn’t
specifically ask “why,” it’s usually a safe bet to assume that the “why” is implied and
include it anyway. The “why” should be what you plan to discuss for the remainder of
the paragraph/prompt.

​ One thing that I want to change about school is for teachers to be made to wear silly hats
because it would make students feel less intimidated when a teacher is mad at them since all they
can think about is the teacher’s silly hat.

​ And there you have it! A complete ASSERTION answering the prompt. You may
look at that and say, “Wow, that’s really long! Why do they need to say why it makes
students feel less intimidated? Isn’t that repetitive?”
​ The reason we make our ASSERTIONS so long and seemingly repetitive at first is
to practice that communication. Being overly clear about your ASSERTION is always
better than not being clear enough. So, at least for now, we’re going to be more cautious
and over explain.
​ Now that we have a clear ASSERTION, it’s time to move on to the next step,
CITATION. CITATION is the stage where you support your answer with some form of
evidence. What that evidence is and the form it takes depends on the prompt and the
style of writing. Since our example prompt is asking for a student’s personal opinion,
the CITATION will likely be something personal to the student as well, though it
doesn’t have to be. Let’s go over some possible CITATIONS for this prompt:
●​ Personal anecdote
○​ This is the most basic kind of evidence. You, the writer, are telling
the reader that, due to your own personal experiences, you believe
your ASSERTION to be true. Be sure that your personal anecdote is
squarely focused on the prompt because it’s very easy to get off
track.
 ○​ In the 2nd grade, I got yelled at by my teacher, Mrs. Hamilton, because I
drew a picture of snowmen farting and burping. I didn’t see this as
something bad, and so it took me off guard when my teacher took me into
the hallway and yelled at me. I wanted to cry because I didn’t understand
why she was angry. Nothing about her appearance made me feel safe and
comfortable, and this memory still haunts me to this day.
○​ Notice, for the example above, that, while relevant, there’s still a
piece missing. We’ll get to that piece in the final section.
●​ Outside sources
○​ Outside sources can be a range of things
■​ Academic journals
■​ News articles
■​ Quotes from relevant people
■​ Statistics
■​ Studies
■​ Historical/Topical anecdotes
■​ Any relevant published text on the topic
○​ The benefit of these is that it tells the reader that your opinion isn’t
just something you believe, but it’s supported by the wider world.
While “just trust me” is compelling among friends, it’s frowned
upon in writing.
○​ Be sure that, when using an outside source, you take some time to
tell your reader why this source is credible/relevant.
○​ According to The Encyclopedia of Teachers, the primary resource used by
the Federal Department of Education, “79% of teachers are rated a 6 or
above on the teacher intimidation index by their students” and, according
to The Encyclopedia of Clowns, a Harvard based Clown database,
“incorporating silly hats into routines decreases the likelihood of
frightening small children by 64%”
 ○​ Notice how we used two sources for the CITATION here. If we had
just used one, we would only have information supporting half of
our answer. It’s not just enough to establish that teachers are
intimidating, but we’d also need to establish that silly hats would
lower that intimidation.
●​ Internal Sources
○​ This is going to become more relevant when we begin discussing
analytical writing, but I figured I’d mention it here.
○​ This is the source that’s provided or mentioned by the prompt.
○​ When the prompt asks you to compare two texts or analyze a text,
your source should be from that text or texts.

Now we move into the final section, EXPLANATION. This is where the
MAJORITY OF YOUR WRITING SHOULD BE. The purpose of the EXPLANATION
section is to explain how your CITATION supports your ASSERTION.
​ To do an EXPLANATION section properly, you have to have a clear ASSERTION
and a CITATION section that addresses every point made in your ASSERTION. If
you’re missing either of those two things, you won’t have a proper EXPLANATION
section.
​ When explaining your evidence, you want to make sure that everything said is
directly taken from your CITATION section/evidence. This is where students get off
track most easily. No new information should be added in this section.
​ This leads a lot of students to ask, “then what do I write about?” If you can’t add
new information, and you’ve already stated your evidence, then what else is there to
do?
​ The answer ties back to what I said in the opening, the purpose of writing is
communication. Your CITATION/evidence may make sense to you, but that doesn’t
mean your reader understands it. This is why you have to EXPLAIN everything you
say.
​ If this is all confusing, let’s make it easier and use some of our examples from
earlier.

ASSERTION: One thing that I want to change about school is for teachers to be made to wear
silly hats because it would make students feel less intimidated when a teacher is mad at them
since they can think about the teacher’s silly hat and not how scary the teacher is.

CITATION: In the 2nd grade, I got yelled at by my teacher, Mrs. Hamilton, because I drew a
picture of snowmen farting and burping. I didn’t see this as something bad, and so it took me off
guard when my teacher took me into the hallway and yelled at me. I wanted to cry because I
didn’t understand why she was angry. Nothing about her appearance made me feel safe and
comfortable, and this memory still haunts me to this day.

So now, we need to explain how this example CITATION connects back to our
example ASSERTION.
●​ Our example ASSERTION states that the change needed in school is to
mandate teachers wearing silly hats so that they don’t intimidate students.
●​ Our example CITATION tells a story of the writer feeling unnecessarily
intimidated by a teacher.
●​ So our EXPLANATION needs to explain how these two things are
connected.
○​ As a second grader, I was very small and weak compared to my much
taller teacher which is why I felt so intimidated. Since I didn’t know what
I’d done to deserve being yelled at, my first instinct was to see if I could
piece together why she’d gotten so upset with me. The problem is, when
she brought me out into the hall, she yelled instead of calmly explaining
what I’d done wrong. This makes sense as she was very angry, but it
didn’t make it easy for me to understand what I’d done wrong which
means I wasn’t able to learn any lesson from it. Instead of learning a
lesson, I was just intimidated and afraid, but, if she’d been wearing a silly
 hat, I would have been less intimidated and better able to listen to what
she had to say. This is why teachers should be made to wear silly hats, so
that students never get so intimidated that they can’t listen anymore.
●​ Notice that this explanation addresses everything brought up in the
CITATION section
○​ The age and size difference that caused the intimidation
○​ The confusion as to why the teacher was angry
○​ The intimidation making it hard to fix the confusion
○​ And, finally, how it could have been easily fixed with the addition
of a silly hat.
●​ This still might feel a little vague and hard to follow, so, let’s walk through
step by step how we’d take our second example CITATION section and
use it to craft an EXPLANATION section.
●​ Step one, compare your citation section to your assertion
○​ One thing that I want to change about school is for teachers to be made to
wear silly hats because it would make students feel less intimidated when
a teacher is mad at them since they can think about the teacher’s silly hat
and not how scary the teacher is.
○​ According to The Encyclopedia of Teachers, the primary resource used by
the Federal Department of Education, “79% of teachers are rated a 6 or
above on the teacher intimidation index by their students” and, according
to The Encyclopedia of Clowns, a Harvard based Clown database,
“incorporating silly hats into routines decreases the likelihood of
frightening small children by 64%”
●​ Which pieces of evidence match up with which parts of our assertion?
○​ Make students feel less intimidated matches up with 79% of teachers are
rated a 6 or above on the teacher intimidation index by their students”
○​ They can think about the teacher’s silly hat and not how scary the teacher
is matches up with incorporating silly hats into routines decreases the
likelihood of frightening small children by 64%
●​ Now, looking at the sources, what parts of it do we need to elaborate (or
discuss further)?
○​ What is the teacher intimidation index?
○​ Why does the statistic “79% of teachers are rated 6 or above” support
that students are intimidated by their teachers?
○​ How does information about clowns relate to teachers?
○​ How do these two statistics support the idea that teachers should
be mandated to wear silly hats to decrease student intimidation?
●​ You may look at the above questions and say, “those answers are obvious
and including them would just sound dull and repetitive” but that’s the
point of this exercise. The best writers are the ones who don’t assume their
reader just “gets it” but who go out of their way to ensure that the reader
WILL get it.
●​ So let’s answer each of the above questions
○​ The teacher intimidation index is a scale where “1” represents
teachers who are not intimidating at all and “10” represents
teachers who only intimidate students, and a “5” on this scale
would be the average expected level of intimidation. These ratings
come from student surveys.
○​ The fact that 79% of teachers scored a 6 or higher on this scale
means that over three quarters of teachers are more intimidating
than the average expected level of intimidation, showing that
students find well over half their teachers to be intimidating
beyond the expected level of intimidation.
○​ Even though clowns are not identical with teachers and serve a
different function–entertaining rather than educating–they are still
working with a similar audience.
○​ If clowns can reduce their intimidation level by 64% simply by
wearing a silly hat, and teachers are, on average, above the
expected level of intimidation, then teachers could utilize silly hats
 to, like the clowns, lower their overall intimidation toward students
to align more with expected intimidation levels.
●​ Put this all together and you get:
○​ According to The Encyclopedia of Teachers, the primary resource used by
the Federal Department of Education, “79% of teachers are rated a 6 or
above on the teacher intimidation index by their students” and, according
to The Encyclopedia of Clowns, a Harvard based Clown database,
“incorporating silly hats into routines decreases the likelihood of
frightening small children by 64%”
○​ For those unaware, the teacher intimidation index is a scale on which
teachers are rated by students on a scale of one to ten where one represents
teachers who aren’t intimidating at all, and ten represents teachers who
are only intimidating. A five on the index means a teacher meets the
expected level of intimidation. So, the fact that “79%” of teachers are
above the expected level of intimidation means that teachers intimidate
students, on average, more than what should be expected. This is
unfortunate for students who don’t wish to be overly intimidated and so,
to fix this, silly hats should be implemented to lower teacher intimidation.
While clowns and teachers have different goals, clowns to entertain and
teachers to educate, they still have a similar audience, children. With silly
hats being shown to decrease child fright by “64%”, it’s not unreasonable
to imagine it’d have the same effect if worn by teachers as they’re also
dealing with children. So, in order to lower teacher intimidation levels to
match the expected level, silly hats should be incorporated.
●​ Now, if you look at that and think “that’s way too much!” then, I’m sorry,
but that’s the expectation.
●​ The reason it needs to be this detailed is simple, you need to learn to fully
explain your evidence. At this stage in your writing, the concepts you’re
writing about are usually not overly complex so most people would
naturally understand it without it being explained. This, however, will not
 always be the case. As you graduate to higher levels of education, you’ll
be asked to explain more and more complex topics. These topics will not
be easily understood by your audience and will require a more thorough
explanation. If you’re not able to provide that thorough explanation,
regardless of how well you understand the concept, you’ll likely still fail.
●​ So, we’re starting off by practicing how to thoroughly explain simple
concepts to prepare y’all for when you’re asked to explain more complex
concepts.

Part 2: Analytical Writing

​ Alright! So, now that we’ve established the basics, it’s time to get a bit more
complicated. Freshmen English is your introduction to a form of writing likely new to
you: Analytical Writing.
​ Analytical writing differs from other forms of writing because its primary focus
isn’t on expressing your own views but rather expressing and explaining the views of
others. Most analytical writing prompts will either provide for you–or ask you to pull
from–texts to form and support your assertion.2 When completing analytical writing
prompts, the student should always keep in mind that their answer MUST come from
the text and that, if they make any statement at all, it must be supported by the text or
by another valid source. This is true in all forms of writing, but it’s especially important
in analysis. It’s easy to start rambling if you don’t keep your writing focused on the text
you’re analyzing.
​ The easiest way to explain analytical writing is through examples, and so, just
like before, I’m going to give y’all an example prompt and then we’re going to break
down how’d we’d respond to it.

2
You’ll notice that, for this section, I’ve stopped putting assertion, citation, and explanation in all
caps. This is because it’s annoying, and I hope that, at this point, you can figure out which one
we’re discussing.
In a well written paragraph, analyze the following passage and answer the following
question: How does the author use metaphor to support the overall theme of the
passage?

​ His hands were tight closed as if his nerve were something tangible that someone in the
darkness was trying to tear from his grip. The softness of the earth had given him an idea. He
stepped back from the quicksand a dozen feet or so and, like some huge prehistoric beaver, he
began to dig.
Rainsford had dug himself in in France when a second's delay meant death. That had
been a placid pastime compared to his digging now. The pit grew deeper; when it was above his
shoulders, he climbed out and from some hard saplings cut stakes and sharpened them to a fine
point. These stakes he planted in the bottom of the pit with the points sticking up. With flying
fingers he wove a rough carpet of weeds and branches and with it he covered the mouth of the pit.
Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a
lightning-charred tree.

Now that we have our prompt and passage, let’s begin with crafting our
assertion. The prompt asks for the following:
●​ A metaphor
●​ The overall theme of the passage
●​ How the metaphor connects to the overall theme
​ Just like before, we need to provide all three of these things in our assertion for it
to have fully answered the question. First, let me start by showing y’all an incorrect
answer:
​ The author uses a brilliant metaphor to establish the overall theme of the passage in a
brilliant and compelling way.
​
​ That was painful to type… So, what’s wrong with it? Well… first and foremost it
doesn’t answer the question at all. The question asked how the author uses metaphor to
support their theme, yet the answer mentions neither a metaphor or theme…
​ “But it did!” You might say, “it mentioned both of them directly!” And, if by that,
you mean that it used the words mentioned in the prompt then you’d be correct! But
just using the words doesn’t answer the question.
​ Imagine if your friend asked “Where do you want to go grab food?” and you
responded, “Yeah! I’d like to go get food!” Your friend would likely point out that,
despite using the same words they’d used in the question,