As we saw in the illustration, you cannot count on persuading anyone with your reasoning alone. You must support your
reasons with
evidence—facts that your readers accept as true and relevant. Sometimes writers believe that their reasons should be sufficient for readers, but arguments without evidence rarely succeed. So you’ll have to learn to provide evidence to support your reasons, which means you’ll have to know how to tell the difference between reasons and evidence
for your particular readers.
What to Look For
The following paragraphs explains how a sit-in held by university students and faculty contributes to a campaign to persuade the university to provide a living wage for all of its employees. As you read the paragraph, consider the following questions:
- What reasons do the students offer to justify their decision to engage in a sit-in?
- What evidence do the students offer to support these reasons?
- Does the evidence actually support the reasons?
Drag reasons to the box labeled "Reasons" and drag evidence to the box labeled "Evidence". Then decide whether you think the evidence supports the reason. You'll get a brief explanation when each column is complete.
A)
This sentence gives two related reasons. These are reasons for sitting in because they are the reasons behind the entire campaign.
These sentences offer several bits of numerical data that, if true, are hard facts: the lowest wage is $6.50 per hour, this wage is below the federal poverty line, more than 1,000 workers earn this wage, and many of them work as many as 90 hours per week. The last sentence also offers a bit of factual information about the experience of low-paid workers: that they struggle economically.
We are sitting in because the university’s wage-and-benefits policy threatens the economic survival and violates the human dignity of its contract employees.
Today, over 1,000 university workers are paid wages as low as $6.50 per hour without health benefits.
This is a wage that puts a parent with one child below the federal poverty line.
The people who clean our buildings, cook our meals, and guard our dorms routinely work as many as 90 hours per week, and still struggle to support themselves and their families.
Does this evidence appear to be factual?
The evidence does seem to be factual and relevant support, for the idea that the policy threatens the economic survival of contract employees. It supports the claim about human dignity less directly, but it is somewhat relevant to that reason as well.
Does the reason give readers a good reason to accept the claim?
The idea that the university’s wage-and-benefits policy threatens the economic survival and violates the human dignity of its contract employees
provides two reasons, economic and ethical, in support of providing a living wage.
B)
The first sentence gives one reason for escalating the campaign from peaceful protest to civil disobedience: dialogue with the administration has not worked. The second sentence does not give facts about how the protestors exhausted every avenue; it only restates that their dialogue did not work. Evidence that the protestors in fact have exhausted every avenue would include the facts of whom they talked with, how many times, and what the administration actually said to them.
We are sitting in because we exhausted every avenue of dialogue with the administration to change this inhumane policy.
Every meeting has been met only with closed minds and produced only a litany of administrative refusals even to consider a living-wage policy.
Does the evidence support the reason?
Since there is no evidence, this reason has no support. Readers have to take it on faith.
C)
This sentence gives another reason for escalating the campaign from peaceful protest to civil disobedience: all other forms of peaceful protest also failed. The students believe that if all peaceful approaches fail, they are justified to escalate their protest to the non-violent, but illegal, step of sitting in on university offices.
Readers disagree on whether these sentences offer evidence or just an explanation of the reason. This is a summary list of events, with no specific details. If a reader is familiar with the events described, he would be inclined to accept this summary list as factual information that does not need supporting details. But a skeptical reader might think that this list just expands on the reason without offering any concrete facts, leading him to ask a number of questions: How many op-eds, teach-ins, radio and TV spots, conferences? In what publications? How many people attended the teach-ins? How many alumni signed on? Were the radio spots in prime time or the middle of the night?
We are sitting in because, when dialogue failed, we exhausted every other peaceful approach.
We have written op-eds, we have sponsored teach-ins, we have collected student, faculty, and parent petitions, and we have organized alumni/ae to refuse to donate to the university.
We have spoken on both local and national television and radio, and we have spoken at conferences on labor and economic affairs.
Does this evidence support the reason?
The evidence does seem to be factual and relevant support for the idea that the students exhausted, if not every, then at least many or a reasonable number of avenues of dialogue with the administration regarding the policy.
