Hi Erika, That is an excellent question! It is true that there are many different ways to use ‘why, how, and what’ for a certain piece of information. So what is the ‘right’ question? The answer is, by inferring the likely connection of ideas or details. Generally, good information is detailed and one idea connects and narrows to the next. While you are right that the reader could ask, “how does the author explain the paragraph” or “how is this idea presented in this paragraph?”, these questions would make for very general non-related answers to the actual information in the paragraph. A simple way to approach it is, find a point, a clear ‘what’. Once you have this think of the most likely ‘why…’ and then the most likely ‘how…’ which follows.
