Creating a structure

organize criteria

Like other arguments, evaluations have distinct parts that can be arranged into patterns or structures.

Choose a simple structure when your criteria and categories are predictable. A straightforward review might announce its subject and claim, list criteria of evaluation, present evidence to show whether the subject meets those standards, and draw conclusions. Here’s one version of that pattern with the criteria discussed all at once, at the opening of the piece:

And here’s a template with the criteria of evaluation introduced one at a time:

You might find structures this formulaic in job-performance reviews at work or in consumer magazines. Once a pattern is established for assessing computers, paint sprayers, video games, or even teachers (consider those forms you fill in at the end of the term), it can be repeated for each new subject and results can be compared.

Yet what works for hardware and tech products is less convincing when applied to music, books, political policies, or societal behaviors that are more than the sum of their parts. Imagine a film critic whose every review marched through the same predictable set of criteria: acting, directing, writing, cinematography, and special effects. When a subject can’t (or shouldn’t) be reviewed via simple categories, you decide which of its aspects and elements deserve attention. (shape your work)

Choose a focal point. You could, in fact, organize an entire review around one or more shrewd insights, and many reviewers do. The trick is to support any stellar perception with clear and specific evidence. Consider, for example, how Lisa Schwarzbaum ties her claim that the first Hunger Games movie is a “muscular, honorable, unflinching translation” of the book to her portrait of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss. Or look carefully at Jordyn Brown’s scathing portrait of cell phone users: You’ll discover that what holds her satire together is a fear that too many people are missing important aspects of their lives. Brown dramatizes that problem by beginning and ending the paper at a birthday party that she and a dozen friends are just barely attending:

This dinner was supposed to be a festive gathering to celebrate our good friend Stacey’s birthday. But no one mingled or celebrated, not even Stacey. Everyone seemed to be somewhere else. They had all wandered off to Google-town, Twitter-ville, and Texting-My-Boyfriend City, and I was left there alone at the Cheesecake Factory. . . . Twelve people preferred phone activities to talking to each other and me over three-tiered red velvet cheesecake. Seriously, people. Put those phones down. You’re not thinking clearly.

Compare and contrast. Another obvious way to organize an evaluation is to examine differences. (use comparison and contrast) Strengths and weaknesses stand out especially well when similar subjects are examined critically. When Automobile columnist Jamie Kitman, for example, wants to make a tongue-in-cheek case that the best American police car is one that looks most intimidating, he first has to explain his odd criterion of evaluation:

Here [in the United States], police cars aren’t meant to make us feel all fuzzy but to instill powerful sensations of fear. . . . At their best, police cars look strong, stout, capable, and most of all, mean. To the extent that they make bad people feel scared, they make those of us who ought to feel safe (because we have done nothing wrong) feel safer, while still feeling scared.

After that, it’s a simple matter of comparing candidates. He dismisses Ford Tauruses and Explorers because they “don’t scare enough, even with light bars on top and armed with police-academy graduates inside.” GM police cruisers are even less able to terrify the citizenry: They have “the scare factor of unspoiled rice pudding.” Fortunately, he has found a winner, a model already described in the column as “malevolent” and looking “pissed off, angry, and unreasonable”:

That leaves the Dodge Charger, America’s indisputable reigning champion cop car, to reign longer. It’s the distilled automotive essence of every TV cop who ever drove a car, from Broderick Crawford on, all rolled into one angry, authoritarian appliance. No wonder countless agencies across the country favor Chargers. They’re not kidding around, and you might as well know it.

Kitman’s comparison is fun, but it makes sense — scary sense — especially when visual evidence is attached.