An example — the word comes from the Latin exemplum, “one thing chosen from among many” — is a typical instance that illustrates a whole type or kind. Giving examples to support a generalization is probably the most often used means of development. This example, from In Search of Excellence (New York: Harper and Row, 1982) by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., explains the success of America’s top corporations:

Although he’s not a company, our favorite illustration of closeness to the customer is car salesman Joe Girard. He sold more new cars and trucks, each year, for eleven years running, than any other human being. In fact, in a typical year, Joe sold more than twice as many units as whoever was in second place. In explaining his secret of success, Joe said: “I sent out over thirteen thousand cards every month.”

Why start with Joe? Because his magic is the magic of IBM and many of the rest of the excellent companies. It is simply service, overpowering service, especially after-sales service. Joe noted, “There’s one thing that I do that a lot of salesmen don’t, and that’s believe the sale really begins after the sale — not before. … The customer ain’t out the door, and my son has made up a thank-you note.” Joe would intercede personally, a year later, with the service manager on behalf of his customer. Meanwhile he would keep the communications flowing.

Notice how Peters and Waterman focus on the specific, Joe Girard. They don’t write corporation employees or even car salespeople. Instead, they zero in on one particular man to make the point come alive.

This ladder of abstraction moves from the general — America’s top corporations — to a specific person — Joe Girard. The specific example of Joe Girard makes closeness to the customer concrete to readers: he is someone readers can relate to. To check the level of specificity in a paragraph or an outline, draw a ladder of abstraction for it. Do the same to restrict a broad subject to a topic for a short essay. If you haven’t climbed to the fourth or fifth level, you are probably too general and need to add specifics.

An example doesn’t have to be a specific individual. Sometimes you can create a picture of something unfamiliar or give an abstraction a personality. In this paragraph from Prisoners of Silence: Breaking the Bonds of Adult Illiteracy in the United States (New York: Continuum, 1980), Jonathan Kozol makes real the plight of illiterate people in our health care system:

Illiterates live, in more than literal ways, an uninsured existence. They cannot understand the written details on a health insurance form. They cannot read waivers that they sign preceding surgical procedures. Several women I have known in Boston have entered a slum hospital with the intention of obtaining a tubal ligation and have emerged a few days later after having been subjected to a hysterectomy. Unaware of their rights, incognizant of jargon, intimidated by the unfamiliar air of fear and atmosphere of ether that so many of us find oppressive in the confines even of the most attractive and expensive medical facilities, they have signed their names to documents they could not read and which nobody, in the hectic situation that prevails so often in those overcrowded hospitals that serve the urban poor, had ever bothered to explain.

An example isn’t a trivial doodad you add to a paragraph for decoration; it is what holds your readers’ attention and makes an idea concrete and tangible. To give plenty of examples is one of the writer’s chief tasks, and you can generate more at any point in the writing process. Begin with your experience, even with an unfamiliar topic, or try conversing with others, reading, digging in the library, or browsing on the Web.