Alastair Norcross, “Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases” 

Overview of the Article: You will be providing your reader with an overview of the issue that your author is addressing. This should involve maybe one to three paragraphs (or so)—it depends upon the article, your approach to the article, and your prose style. There is no mechanical algorithm to compute the appropriate length.

Part of this will be giving your reader a clear indication of the scope of the topic 

your author addresses. For example, suppose an author were writing about the 

prejudicial effect on juries of witness identifications in rape trials. It would not be 

adequate to say that the author is talking about law, or criminal law, or rape 

trials, or prejudicing juries, or witness identifications, or the prejudicial effects of 

witness identification on juries. All of those descriptors are too vague

or general. Take some care to identify the scope of the topic your author is addressing.

From there, you should describe your author’s major views or conclusions on this 

issue, and try to characterize how he arrives at these conclusions. The latter 

should include a description of your author’s general argumentative strategy.

You are to explain these things to your reader as if he has never read your Target Article or any other materials that you draw upon.