Cloth: 978-0-226-06567-0 | Paper: 978-0-226-06568-7 | Electronic: 978-0-226-06569-4
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226065694.001.0001
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This title is no longer available from this publisher at this time. To let the publisher know you are interested in the title, please email bv-help@uchicago.edu.ABOUT THIS BOOK
Like its predecessor, this new edition reflects the way researchers actually work: in a complex circuit of thinking, writing, revising, and rethinking. It shows how each part of this process influences the others and how a successful research report is an orchestrated conversation between a researcher and a reader. Along with many other topics, The Craft of Research explains how to build an argument that motivates readers to accept a claim; how to anticipate the reservations of thoughtful yet critical readers and to respond to them appropriately; and how to create introductions and conclusions that answer that most demanding question, "So what?"
Celebrated by reviewers for its logic and clarity, this popular book retains its five-part structure. Part 1 provides an orientation to the research process and begins the discussion of what motivates researchers and their readers. Part 2 focuses on finding a topic, planning the project, and locating appropriate sources. This section is brought up to date with new information on the role of the Internet in research, including how to find and evaluate sources, avoid their misuse, and test their reliability.
Part 3 explains the art of making an argument and supporting it. The authors have extensively revised this section to present the structure of an argument in clearer and more accessible terms than in the first edition. New distinctions are made among reasons, evidence, and reports of evidence. The concepts of qualifications and rebuttals are recast as acknowledgment and response. Part 4 covers drafting and revising, and offers new information on the visual representation of data. Part 5 concludes the book with an updated discussion of the ethics of research, as well as an expanded bibliography that includes many electronic sources.
The new edition retains the accessibility, insights, and directness that have made The Craft of Research an indispensable guide for anyone doing research, from students in high school through advanced graduate study to businesspeople and government employees. The authors demonstrate convincingly that researching and reporting skills can be learned and used by all who undertake research projects.
New to this edition:
Extensive coverage of how to do research on the internet, including how to evaluate and test the reliability of sources
New information on the visual representation of data
Expanded bibliography with many electronic sources
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Gregory G. Colomb is a professor of the English language and literature at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Designs on Truth: The Poetics of the Augustan Mock-Epic.
Joseph M. Williams is a professor emeritus in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Together Colomb and Williams have written The Craft of Argument.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
I RESEARCH, RESEARCHERS, AND READERS PROLOGUE: STARTING A RESEARCH PROJECT
PROLUGE: STARTING A REASERACH PROJECT
1 Thinking in Print: The Uses of Research, Public and Private
1.1 What Is Research?
1.2 Why Write It Up?
1.3 Why a Formal Report?
1.4 Conclusion
2.1 Creating Roles for Writers and Readers
2.2 Creating a Relationship with Your Reader: Your Role
2.3 Creating the Other Half of the Relationship: The Reader's Role
2.4 Writing in Groups
2.5 Managing the Unavoidable Problem of Inexperience
Quick Tip: A Checklist for Understanding Your Readers
II ASKING QUESTIONS, FINDING ANSWERS
PROLOGUE: PLANNING YOUR PROJECT
3 From Topics to Questions
3.1 From an Interest to a Topic
3.2 From a Broad Topic to a Focused One
3.3 From a Focused Topic to Questions
3.4 From a Merely Interesting Question to Its Wider Significance
Quick Tip: Finding Topics
4 From Questions to Problems
4.1 Problems, Problems, Problems
4.2 The Common Structure of Problems
4.3 Finding a Good Research Problem
4.4 Summary: The Problem of the Problem
Quick Tip: Disagreeing with Your Sources
5 From Problems to Sources
5.1 Screening Sources for Reliability
5.2 Locating Printed and Recorded Sources
5.3 Finding Sources on the Internet
5.4 Gathering Data Directly from People
5.6 What You Find
6 Using Sources
6.1 Three Uses for Sources
6.2 Reading Generously but Critically
6.3 Preserving What You Find
6.4 Getting Help
Quick Tip: Speedy Reading
III MAKING A CLAIM AND SUPPORTING IT
PROLOGUE: PULLING TOGETHER YOUR ARGUMENT
7.1 Argument and Conversation
7.2 Basing Claims on Reasons
7.3 Basing Reasons on Evidence
7.4 Acknowledging and Responding to Alternatives
7.5 Warranting the Relevance of Reasons
7.6 Building Complex Arguments Out of Simple Ones
7.7 Arguments and Your Ethos
Quick Tip: Designing Arguments Not for Yourself but for Your Readers: Two Common Pitfalls
8.1 What Kind of Claim?
8.2 Evaluating Your Claim
Quick Tip: Qualifying Claims to Enhance Your Credibility
9.1 Using Reasons to Plan Your Argument
9.2 The Slippery Distinction between Reasons and Evidence
9.3 Evidence vs. Reports of Evidence
9.4 Selecting the Right Form for Reporting Evidence
9.5 Reliable Evidence
Quick Tip: Showing the Relevance of Evidence
10 Acknowledgments and Responses
10.1 Questioning Your Argument
10.2 Finding Alternatives to Your Argument
10.3 Deciding What to Acknowledge
10.4 Responses as Subordinate Arguments
Quick Tip: The Vocabulary of Acknowledgment and Response
11 Warrants
11.1 How Warrants Work
11.3 Knowing When to State a Warrant
11.4 Testing Your Warrants
11.5 Challenging the Warrants of Others
Quick Tip: Some Strategies for Challenging Warrants
IV PREPARING TO DRAFT, DRAFTING, AND REVISING
PROLOGUE: PLANNING AGAIN
Quick Tip: Outlining
12.1 Preliminaries to Drafting
12.2 Planning: Four Traps to Avoid
12.3 A Plan for Drafting
12.4 The Pitfall to Avoid at All Costs: Plagiarism
12.5 The Next Step
Quick Tip: Using Quotation and Paraphrase
13 Revising Your Organization and Argument
13.2 Analyzing and Revising Your Overall Organization
13.3 Revising Your Argument
13.4 The Last Step
Quick Tip: Titles and Abstracts
14.1 The Three Elements of an Introduction
14.2 Establishing Common Ground
14.3 Stating Your Problem
14.4 Stating Your Response
14.5 Fast or Slow?
14.6 Organizing the Whole Introduction
14.7 Conclusions
Quick Tip: Opening and Closing Words
15 Communicating Evidence Visually
15.2 Tables vs. Figures
15.3 Constructing Tables
15.4 Constructing Figures
15.5 Visual Communication and Ethics
15.6 Using Graphics as an Aid to Thinking
16.1 Judging Style
16.2 A First Principle: Stories and Grammar
16.3 A Second Principle: Old Before New
16.4 Choosing between Active and Passive
16.5 A Final Principle: Complexity Last
16.6 Spit and Polish
Quick Tip: The Quickest Revision
V SOME LAST CONSIDERATIONS
The Ethics of Research
A Postscript for Teachers
An Appendix on Finding Sources
General Sources
Special Sources
A Note on Some of Our Sources
Index