Where to Acknowledge and Respond

In learning to incorporate acknowledgments and responses into written arguments, writers can struggle with deciding where best to address possible objections or alternatives. This is in part because of the nature of written arguments. In a spoken argument or conversation, you address alternatives and objections when the person you are speaking with voices them, but in written arguments, this can be more tricky. However, the way you address these interruptions in conversation can act as a model for writing. In written as in spoken arguments, the best places to acknowledge and respond to alternatives and objections are the moments when they are likely to occur to your audience. Ideally, getting feedback from others (a friend, a TA, a writing center tutor) can help you decide where to acknowledge and respond: you can simply ask them where they object or can think of alternatives. However, if you don't have time to get outside feedback, or are still having trouble, the following guidelines may help you decide where to acknowledge and respond.
  • If an objection or alternative bears significantly on your main claim, it may be best to address it in the problem statement in your statement of the status quo; this is especially true if there is one main objection or alternative you are writing to disprove or contradict. For example, this paragraph introduces research results that revise a commonly held assumption:
    Scientists have long assumed that using insecticides that kill immediately is the best way to control parasite populations, and most insecticides for use on crops are designed accordingly, but my research on this project has shown that slow-acting types of insecticide control these populations more effectively.
  • If an objection or alternative applies to the subject of your argument, but is not one that you want to focus on throughout the argument, you can mention it quickly in your stable context (before establishing the status quo, which should in most cases be an alternative or objection that you do plan to address at greater length). In this example, the “nature versus nurture” debate is a red herring that the author knows readers familiar with this issue will expect him to address:
    Psychologists and psychobiologists generally take different sides in the "nature versus nurture" debate, but whichever side one takes, most doctors acknowledge that in adolescents with behavioral problems, by the time they or their parents seek treatment, both aspects play a role in these problems [stable context]. While significant pressure exists from various quarters to treat these children with drugs [status quo], many cognitive behavioral therapists believe that progress with both types of problem can often be made without medication [destabilizing condition].
  • If an objection or alternative will occur to your reader once they understand the context for your argument or once you have proposed a solution or offered your main claim, you may want to address it in the paragraph immediately following your problem statement. To use the example above, if your main claim is:
    Too often, because of pressure from school authorities, treating adolescents with prescription drugs is the default response to behavioral problems, and as a result, psychostimulants such as Prozac and Ritalin are seriously overprescribed in these cases.

    then the following paragraph might acknowledge the advantages of these drugs, but then reiterate the author's main claim:
    While this paper will argue that viable alternatives to psychostimulants exist, this is not to say that these drugs are not appropriate treatment in some or even many cases. Prescription drugs such as Prozac and Ritalin have been found to treat problems such as ADD, ADHD, and hyperactivity effectively in many cases, to the satisfaction of parents and children. However, while I do not claim that these drugs are ineffective, I will argue that cognitive behavioral therapy can be just as successful, if not more so. In addition, cognitive behavioral therapy does not pose the risk of dangerous physical and emotional side effects that psychostimulants do, or carry the long-term financial costs of these increasingly expensive medications.
  • If an objection or alternative will occur to your reader in response to a reason supporting your main claim or to a piece of evidence, it can generally be addressed where that reason or piece of evidence goes. For example, look at the following excerpt from a paper on the effect of pre-election polls on the election:
    The popular website fivethirtyeight.com, which compiles aggregates of poll numbers to create composite polls, showed across-the-board gains for democrats in swing states in the month before the 2006 election. Although critics accused fivethirtyeight.com of skewing its aggregate results by refusing to look at polls that tended to favor republicans, the site's predications turned out to be significantly closer to the actual results than many of the other major polls. As a result, I would argue that the criteria fivethirtyeight.com uses to decide which outside polls it will accept data from (which the site's author, Nate Silver, published in great detail in response to the accusations) may actually be more sound than that of other pollsters. I accordingly have paid more attention to fivethirtyeight.com's results than those of other polls that don't publish their methods. In this case, fivethirtyeight.com found that . . .
  • If there are several clear alternatives to your solution, you may want to structure your whole argument as a point-by-point analysis of the other alternatives, followed by an explanation of your own solution:
    With school systems failing across the country, several suggestions have been made to ensure that hardworking high-school students will be able to prepare for college. Some educators have suggested that charter schools are the best solution [alternative]. However, charter schools have historically struggled to . . . Opponents of charter schools have suggested that increasing teacher salaries and offering bonuses to teachers who work in poorer urban schools will equalize the quality of education [alternative]. This solution presupposes that . . . Some schools propose to do away with, or at least de-emphasize, teaching that is aimed at passing standardized tests and achieving high SAT scores [alternative]. While this option may be a necessary part of improving our schools, it is not a plan in itself . . . Many parents want to see these schools offering more dual-enrollment and AP options for bright students [solution]. If implemented correctly, this option will be the most effective preparation for the college environment . . .
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