Chapter 10 of “They Say/I Say”
• Author Background
o Authors Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
o Their audience is anyone looking to improve their own academic writing skills or are looking to teach others how to right
o The purpose of the whole book is to give everyone equal opportunity to be able to write good quality texts even if they don’t intuitively know how
• Chapter 10 “The Art of Metacommentary”
o Purpose of chapter is to emphasis the importance of explaining you points father after you make them
o Focuses on explaining what metacommentay is and why it is useful
• What is Metacommentary
o It is a way of furthering your points to tell your readers how they should or should not be viewing your information
o Explains the meaning of your big point or main text
o Use it to backup claims and explicitly tell the reader how to interpret the information they were just given
o Title and subtitles are some of the most important metacommentary that gets overlooked very often
• Why do we need it?
o Even if your main text is very clear, the audience can still take it the wrong way
You could lose the reader in a complex argument that needs more explanation
Readers could miss the big picture
Readers could not understand the significance
o If your paper needs to be longer, it adds length and depth
o Could help you think of more ideas and better points hen trying to explain something further
Makes you analyze your topic more and see new angles