I agree that Hogan’s actions resulted in grievous injury to Winters.
Conclusion (But / concur with me)
Hogan's actions should not be wholly condemned.
Evidence
Hogan mistakenly believed Winters to be the robber who had been plaguing this area of town the last few months.
Evaluate
This is a chaotic Whenever we do Main Conclusion, we remind ourselves that 90% of the time the conclusion will be the First Sentence or attached to a but / yet / however pivot word.
The first three sentences of this paragraph do sound like the author's opinionated voice, but they all sound like concessions, not conclusions.
When authors say things like, , they conceding certain things are true, before pivoting into their real argument.
If I want to argue that Lebron is better than Kobe, I might say,
When we see the magical pivot "But", we lean in thinking, is this the conclusion?
And it is. The first half of the final sentence is the conclusion. It's just that this final sentence has an absurdly difficult-to-understand structure. It takes a simple premise / conclusion combo, like , and makes it sound really weird:
In asking you to concur with me that the kids should bring their heavy jackets I emphasize again that it's going to get really cold.
The author is acknowledging that Hogan badly and knowingly hurt Winters, which normally would be reprehensible. But Hogan wasn't trying to maim an innocent man. Hogan thought Winters was the robber who had been terrorizing the area recently, and because of that, the author is concluding that we should have some mercy on Hogan.
Goal
The author's conclusion is "Let's not wholly condemn Hogan's actions". What could an equivalent rephrasing sound like?
- Hogan's actions weren't totally terrible - Hogan deserves a little leniency in our judgment