The results of your analysis will be strongly influenced by your interpretive question, interpretive framework, and sources of evidence. You can increase the odds that your readers will accept your conclusions if you help them understand your choices.

Introduction. Rather than launching immediately into your interpretation, begin by introducing readers to your subject and explaining its significance. Provide enough information about your subject — in the form of a summary or description of a text, an overview of a trend, or a report of a recent event — to help readers understand your focus and follow your line of thinking. Another useful strategy is to start by offering some context about the conversation you’ve decided to join. Consider, for example, how Sito Negron begins his analysis of recent events in Juárez.

A story about Juárez made the rounds in El Paso last summer. Surrounded by guards, a well-dressed, impeccably polite man enters a restaurant. He apologizes as the guards round up cell phones and cameras. No one is allowed to get up as the man sits and eats. When he leaves, he apologizes again and pays the tab for everyone. The man is said to be Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, head of the Sinaloa cartel.

This is an urban legend. No one who tells it was there. I’ve heard it several times from people who said a friend of a friend heard it from a firsthand source. Also, the story has likely been told elsewhere about other outlaws. Versions of this story were probably told in Al Capone’s Chicago.

Here’s something that is true: Last year in Juárez, more than 1,300 people were murdered. . . .

Conclusion. Because analytical essays so often begin with a question, interpreters frequently withhold the thesis statement (the answer) until the end — after they’ve given readers sufficient reasons to accept their conclusions as reasonable. You might also wrap up your analysis by contemplating the implications of your interpretation, raising a related question for readers to ponder (as Ali Bizzul does in her final draft), or speculating about the future, as Nick Bilton does in his blog post.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once said that in traditional societies, the young learn from the old. But in modern societies, the old can also learn from the young. Here’s hoping that politeness never goes out of fashion, but that time-wasting forms of communication do.

You can learn more about using your introduction and conclusion to frame the results of your analysis in Chapter 16.

Organization. The organization of your essay can also help frame your analysis, because it will affect the order in which you present your reasons and evidence. Your choice of organizing pattern should take into account your purposes and your readers’ needs and interests. For instance, if you are reporting the results of a trend analysis, you might want to use chronological order as your organizing pattern. If, by contrast, you are conducting a causal analysis, you might use the cause-and-effect organizing pattern. Creating an outline or a map can also help you organize your thoughts, especially if your assignment calls for a relatively long essay, if you are combining interpretive frameworks, or if you expect to present a lot of reasons or evidence to support your interpretive claim. You can read more about organizing patterns and outlines in Chapter 15.