Evidence at the Level of the Sentence

What counts as evidence

Evidence in this essay is a piece of language, not a piece of plot. "Wren takes a spoon before she leaves" is an event; the reader of your essay has just read it. "The passage gives the spoon a whole sentence of its own, after three sentences that each carried four clauses" is language, and it is yours to explain.

Four kinds of evidence are almost always available in a prose passage:

• Diction — one word that is stronger, flatter, older or more clinical than the thing it names.
• Syntax — what the sentence puts first, what it delays, what it leaves without a verb.
• Rhythm — length against length; the short sentence after the long ones.
• Selected detail — what the passage bothers to notice, and, harder to see, what it refuses to notice.

Quote short, quote inside your own sentence

A quotation longer than about ten words is usually a sign that you have not decided what in it matters. Embed three or four words inside a sentence of your own so that the grammar of your sentence is doing the pointing.

Commentary is the link, not the translation

The commonest failure is not the absence of commentary but the wrong kind. Translation restates the quotation in different words: "41. 42. 43." shows she is counting. Commentary explains the effect of a choice and then ties it to the claim: the numbers are given three sentences and no verb, so the prose performs the one activity that lets her walk through the house without looking at it.

A serviceable test: cross out the quotation. If your commentary still says something, it was never about the quotation. Cross out your commentary. If the quotation alone makes the point, you have written nothing.