The purpose of this writing assignment is to examine the impact of electronic cigarettes, which is a relatively new product and industry. You may want to make claims about how e-cigarettes are impacting society through legislative actions at various levels of government or workplace policies. You may also want to examine claims about e-cigarettes' health benefits and/or risks for users and others.
You will first provide an INTRODUCTION. Next, in your ANALYSIS, you will identify five (5) claims about how e-cigarettes are changing society and/or impacting the health of consumers and others. These claims should be fairly general, but each claim should be sufficiently different/unique from the other claims.

To support each of the five (5) claims, you will provide two (2) pieces of data-driven evidence. In other words, you need to provide evidence to prove your five (5) claims are true. The gradersand I won't just take your word for it, and neither will others who read your writing in your future career. We will also NOT accept "expert" opinions without supporting data.

For each piece of evidence, you will need to describe the CONTEXT for the data. Did the evidence come from census data, a report, a white paper, a published research study, etc.? What was the purpose of the report/study? To ensure credibility, describe who/what gathered the data, wrote the report, or did the study. Describe why the source is credible. What are the author's credentials? Explain whether the source has any biases or conflicts of interest the reader should know about.

You will also need to INTERPRET each piece of evidence to explain its relevance to the specific claim you are making. Evidence does NOT stand on its own nor speak for itself. The writer must connect the dots, so to speak, between the evidence and the point you are attempting to make. You connect the dots by interpreting the evidence, which is one of the ways you add value to this topic. Also, use each piece of evidence only once.

Finally, in the SUMMARY, you will summarize your findings and provide some additional information to conclude the topic and wrap up the writing assignment.

This outline will be the foundation for two more writing assignments. A low score on this draft means you will have to work MUCH harder on the next draft. Thus, please do everything possible to maximize your score on the Persuasive DETAILED Outline.
For the next draft, you will paraphrase your direct quotes into an essay format. The INTRODUCTION will be about 1 - 1.5 pages long (with double spacing), the ANALYSIS will be about 5 - 6 pages long, and the SUMMARY will be about one (1) page or less.

WORKS CITED PAGE and DEDUCTIONS

In addition to providing parenthetical citations after EVERY direct quote in your outline, you will need to provide a Works Cited page that lists ALL of the sources you used. You MUST effectively use a minimum of ten (10) sources without overusing any particular source. Many articles are available to you on Blackboard through the "Writing Assignments" page. Don't focus just on the "easy" articles. While some of the articles may be more challenging to read, these articles will help deepen your analysis. You may also find and use other articles, as long as they are from credible sources.

If you fail to use at least ten (10) sources, you will receive a deduction of 10 points per article under 10 sources. Also, you will receive a 5-point deduction for EVERY missing parenthetical citation and a 2-point deduction for EVERY incorrect parenthetical citation.Please see the folder available on Blackboard's "Writing Assignments" page for instructions on how to use the MLA citation style.