It is hard to improve on the book's guidance in clear argumentative writing. You may (with a little forcing) boil that guidance down to one overwhelming characteristic of clear writing and one fundamental practical tip.

1. The characteristic: More than anything else it needs, clear writing needs a goal. An essay must have a point, a purpose, a thesis, and it must always work toward demonstrating that thesis. It would not hurt to think of an essay as a machine for producing its conclusion. Make sure all the parts are there to bring about the conclusion, and that they're all in the right place.
2. The tip: No practical tip can serve you better than the constant reminder to revise. Practice can ruin many other activities: Start throwing a ball or playing a guitar with the wrong motions, and long practice will instill bad habits along with the good ones. Writing, by comparison, almost never gets worse with practice. Anyone who keeps at it will find the sentences coming out more easily and sounding more natural; the points will go together more logically.

In addition, it may help to suggest one exercise that speeds the way to effective argumentative writing: the précis or summary of someone else's essay. The best objects of practice are newspaper editorials and opinion columns. (See "Additional exercises" for an example.) Editorials are short and they aim at defending a point, so they provide excellent material. But the demands of reaching a wide audience and persuading readers generate certain features of editorials that you will not want in your essay. Editorials commonly don't begin with a statement of their position; they tend to dwell on some of their arguments more than on others, even repeating points within an argument; and they very often make additional comments en route to defending their main point.

When giving a précis of an editorial, you have the benefit of beginning with already existing claims and the reasons for them. Rather than worry about that part of the job, you can concentrate on assembling the parts into a tightly reasoned essay. You may not agree with the editorial's conclusion or arguments, but that only means you have the opportunity to present a view with some detachment.

Begin by identifying the editorial's conclusion. Next, identify those arguments or factual claims that directly support the conclusion. Identify the argumentative passages that reply to existing or possible objections to the conclusion. Finally, identify and discard the sections that either repeat points or digress to tangential issues.

Once you are clear on the parts of the editorial's argument, you can reassemble them into your own essay. State the conclusion first. Follow that with the considerations that support the conclusion, beginning with the strongest and proceeding until they have all been stated. Then take up the replies to objections: Name the possible objections to the editorial's conclusion, and outline the responses to them.

You will probably wind up with an essay that looks very different from the original editorial, though it argues for the same point. If you have done the précis properly, it will give readers the same arguments that they would have gotten from reading the editorial: It will be as if they had read the original.

A précis sounds too simple for a college student to write. The work of actually producing one should convince you otherwise. After finishing three or four, you will notice a marked improvement in both your skills of organization and your willingness to sit down to write an argumentative essay.