"So what?"

In a blog post about the “So what?” question, Lorie Blinde addresses specific ways to consider what that question answers:

Three other ways to phrase the so what question are as follows: What is significant about your claim*? How does this enrich [your reader’s] understanding? What are the implications** of your claim? In each case, the reader is asking the writer to . . . connect the paper’s idea to a larger conversation in which both the writer and the reader are stakeholders.

*A claim is the position stated in the thesis, the point that the writer is supporting.

** To imply is to “strongly suggest truth or the existence of something not expressly stated” while an implication is a “conclusion that can be drawn from something even though that conclusion is not explicitly stated” (“Imply”; “Implication”).

Blinde, Lorie. “The ‘So What?’ Question.” Writing Power: Energized Communication, 22 Apr. 2008, http://blog.writingpower.net/2008/04/22/the-so-what-question/.