Different Standards for What Counts as Grounds

• Different readers expect different kinds of grounds for different kinds of claims. What counts as grounds varies and depends on context and on what readers have come to expect:

  • In scientific and technical writing, typical kinds of grounds might include experimental data, statistical analyses, or reviews of previous research.

  • In social science, nursing, or business writing, typical kinds of grounds might include case studies, interviews, survey data, or focus groups.

  • In humanities writing, typical kinds of grounds might include direct use of textual authorities, close reading and analysis, reflection, or narrative.

  • In legal writing, typical grounds include citation to sources of law (cases, statutes, etc.), logical analysis, analogy and disanalogy, and a lot of arguing over the story told by the facts.

• All of those kinds of grounds can be used across disciplines and writing occasions. They are not the exclusive property or way of supporting arguments belonging to particular writers. So you might read humanistic writing that uses statistical analysis and medical writing that uses narrative. But fundamentally, when writers ask readers to make a journey from where they are now over to where the writer is inviting them to be, the grounds are capable of being understood and tested using the STAR questions.