Argumentation · Lesson 1 of 2

The structure of an argument

Claim, evidence, reasoning. The missing one is almost always the reasoning.

6 min read · Free — no account needed to read

An argument worth making has three visible parts. The claim: what you are asserting. The evidence: what supports it. The reasoning: why that evidence supports that claim rather than some other one.

The third part is the one people skip, and it is where most arguments actually fail. Evidence does not speak for itself — the same figure can support opposite conclusions depending on what you take it to mean.

Writing the three separately is uncomfortable in a good way. It is very common to discover that you have a claim and some evidence and no reasoning connecting them at all.

See it happen

"We should stop running ads — we got three customers from six months of them."

The read that arrives on its own

Three in six months is terrible. Agreed, stop.

The same situation, with this idea

Claim: stop the ads. Evidence: three customers in six months. Reasoning: …missing. It needs "and that is below what the same spend returns elsewhere" — plus what those three are worth, which nobody has said.

What changed

The claim and the evidence were both there and the join between them was not. That is the missing piece in most arguments, including the persuasive ones.

The takeaway

Claim, evidence, reasoning. The missing one is almost always the reasoning.

Easy to take the wrong way

Adding more evidence when the reasoning is what is missing. A second number does not connect the first one to the conclusion.

Try this

Write your strongest professional opinion in those three parts, on three lines.