7.A Claims That Require a Defense (LAN-1.B)

An essay needs something to prove, and you can only prove what someone could doubt. Plenty of sentences about a text are true but settle nothing: they report what happens, or count how often something occurs. Those are facts, and facts don't need defending, they need verifying. A claim is different. It takes a position on how to read something, and a reasonable, careful reader could take the opposite position and expect to be answered.

To test a sentence, ask what a reasonable reader could say against it. If you can picture a real objection, one that would require you to bring in evidence and reasoning to answer, you have a claim. If the only possible response is 'yes, that's what happens,' you have a fact wearing a claim's clothes. This test matters most at the start of planning, before you commit paragraphs to a sentence that can't carry an argument.

This sits right before the question of evidence and commentary, because the claim decides what evidence counts. A fact needs one citation to confirm it. A claim needs evidence chosen on purpose, and commentary that explains why that evidence supports your reading over the obvious alternative. Watch the middle ground too: a claim can be technically arguable but so thin that a single quotation ends the discussion. That's not a strong claim, just a short one. The fix is the same move either way: push the claim toward what a thing means, what it costs, or how it works, not just that it exists.