People who think critically use writing as a tool for both communicating important ideas and for learning. Writing deepens our understanding of concepts and helps clarify relationships among ideas. Skilled thinkers consistently write in a such a way that is clear, precise, accurate, relevant, deep, broad, logical and significant. We consistently learn to write and write to learn. George Orwell famously argued that clear writing signifies clear thinking. You won’t have one without the other. Writing, quite frankly, is an important tool for learning ideas deeply and permanently. This is why you are encouraged to keep a reading (writing) journal of some sort in order to reflect upon the significant texts you read. I still keep multiple reading journals and often write brief reviews of the books that I read, either in a moleskine or on an e-platform. In reviews you organize your thoughts about what you read, work out questions, and relate the ideas in the text to your own life. Essentially, you EXPLICATE the text.

When you explicate a text, you unfold its meaning, elaborate the thesis, provide relevant examples for what the author means, and create metaphors and analogies to help in the explanation of the author’s idea. Let’s start with four imperatives for explicating a text well, each of which requires substantial writing skills to answer effectively:

• State the basic point of the author in a simple sentence.
• Elaborate the essential point more fully. (In other words…)
• Clarify, ANALYZE, and expand upon the author’s ideas. Provide examples of the authors ideas to show your points. Assess the implications of the ideas, i.e. write about the consequences of the idea(s) under scrutiny.
• Ground the author, the ideas, and the text in historical context. What was happening in the historical world of the author that influenced the text? How did historical context affect the author’s ideas? What provoked the author’s writing?. This is especially important for historical documents.
• Create an analogy or metaphor to help clarify the author’s meaning. This takes some thought but coming up with an instructive metaphor can distinguish excellent from merely good.

Proficiency hangs upon accurately translating an author’s thoughts into our own words and engaging with them analytically. An explication is in many ways like extended paraphrasing. A successful paraphrase captures the essential meaning of the original text, it must make intelligible the meaning of the original text. So when you are explicating, you MUST first bring to the fore the core meaning of the text with which you are working.

Hence, if we read the following in a text: “democracy is rule by the people”, our paraphrase of it might read, Democracy exists only to the extent that political power is somehow shared amongst citizens. This means that all people within the state should have relatively equal power and equal input in determining what laws are enacted. The paraphrase helps open up the text because it uncovers nuance and complexity of idea. Just stating that ‘people rule in a democratic system’ is NOT sufficient as it fails to convey any real thoughtful understanding of the original. In this case it just shifts subject in the sentence.

So, if you were to explicate (simplistically) the following excerpt of the Declaration of Independence, it might look something like this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Statement of the thesis: All peoples of the world have a right to remove any government that no longer serves the interest of its subjects (“the people”) and establish a new government if and when certain fundamental human rights are systematically violated.

Elaboration of thesis: Periodically, people are governed in a such a way as to oppress or exploit them and violate their so-called natural rights. When that occurs, the former ruler has de facto and de jure abdicated his/her authority over those people. If certain extraordinary conditions of abuse have been long endured, the oppressed have a revolutionary right, given to them by God, to set up their own government to rule in a way they see fit.

Clarification/Exemplification/Specification of the thesis/Historical Context: The British Parliament had carried out a number of legal measures, the Stamp Act and Townsend Acts, against the American colonies that unfairly (at least according to those in agreement with the Declaration) burdened the American population and ultimately led to the introduction of British troops to Boston and open warfare against a civilian population in 1770. Because the government in London seemed to serve the interests of the American population no longer, patriots declared the old government invalid and opted for separation and independence in 1776. Similar situations occurred in both France in 1789 and in Russia in 1917.

As part of the exemplification you might also include major questions that the text generates. In this case, for example, who ARE the people anyway? Who did Jefferson think ‘the people’ were? Who were NOT the people’?

Implications : In the short term the Declaration provided a clear statement of why the colonies were breaking away from Britain. It helped unify the 13 colonies under shared principles and gave moral justification for armed resistance. Jefferson’s articulation of natural rights (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) also was the cornerstone of U.S. political culture, influencing the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The Declaration became a founding document of American identity, invoked in speeches by Lincoln, suffragists, civil rights leaders, and others.it established enduring ideals of liberty and equality that shaped U.S. democracy and inspired global struggles for freedom—while also exposing contradictions that would define much of American history. For example, it was repurposed in debates over slavery (e.g., Frederick Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”) and later over civil rights.

Illustration of thesis by analogy: Imagine society as a group of tenants renting an apartment building:

Consider Natural Rights as the Apartment complex: Each tenant has certain basic things that come with being human—like light, air, and a roof over their head. These are not given by the landlord but are theirs by nature of living there. The landlord (like government) is hired to manage the building, fix the pipes, keep the lights on, make sure the roof doesn’t leak. His authority comes from the tenants’ consent They pay rent, they sign the lease, and that’s what gives him the right to manage the property. If the landlord neglects repairs, steals from the tenants, or actively harms them, he’s breaking the deal by mismanagement and abuse. The tenants may tolerate minor issues (a squeaky door, a late repair), because moving is costly and disruptive, but if the landlord embarks on a long pattern of abuse, perhaps shutting off the heat, locking tenants in their apartments, raising rents unfairly, ignoring all responsibilities, then it becomes clear that he behaves as a tyrant. At this point, the tenants have not only the right but the duty to break the lease, remove him, and find a new landlord who will respect their rights and ensure their safety and happiness.