textual evidence
Passage-based support claims
Textual evidence is specific words, phrases, or passages from a text used to support an argument or interpretation.
The term belongs primarily to academic and educational contexts, where students learn to cite textual evidence rather than make unsupported claims: The essay lacks textual evidence for its central argument.
Good textual evidence is quoted directly or paraphrased accurately, with clear connection to the point being made.
- quotationCited passage or price
- direct quoteExact reproduction of speech
- block quoteIndented passage from elsewhere
- paraphraseRestatement in new words
- footnoteCitation at page bottom
works cited · literary analysis · close reading · substantiation · hermeneutics · legal reasoning · validation · argumentation · relevance · primary source · citation · contextualization · excerpt · character analysis · reliability · corroboration · summary · supporting details
- Literature Studiesliterary analysis, literary theory, close reading, literary canon, literary movements
- authorshipauthorship, author bio, byline, attributed, credited
- text analysisbigram, trigram, tokenization, writing style, word frequency
- English LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Bronte, Chaucer
- reading skillsvocabulary, literacy skills, decoding, grammar, fluency
- English classnoun, grammar, verb, writing, adjective
textual evidenceoral evidence
Spoken proof in court
verbal testimony · physical evidence · material evidence · photographic evidence · visual evidence
textual evidenceopinion
Subjective personal belief
conjecture · speculation · guesswork · gut feeling · inference
textual evidencefabricated evidence
Proof that was invented
anecdotal evidence · false evidence · word of mouth · rumor · gossip