How to interpret implicit meaning

welcome back to another history skills video today we're looking at how to identify the implicit meaning of historical sources it's important to know that all historical sources provide information about the past and that we need to use this information as evidence in assessment items like essays therefore the ability to find and explain information in historical sources is an important skill to develop to help you with this during this video i'll explain what implicit information is show you how to find it and give you examples to follow so what is implicit information implicit information is information that is not explicitly stated using exact words in source implicit means not clearly stated or not specifically said rather than stating something directly when providing implicit information sources give you enough clues so that you can reach conclusion by yourself without the author having to say it in exact words for example imagine sauce said the sky was dark and puddles of water covered the ground while thunder rumbled in the distance in this source you could easily conclude that the implicit meaning is that there was stormy weather what is important to realize is that the source never explicitly said it was stormy instead it provides enough clues by saying puddles thunder and the sky was dark for you to reach that conclusion without ever needing to be stated explicitly so how do you identify implicit meaning in order to find the implicit meaning of the source you need to demonstrate two things firstly you need to clearly state what point the author is making without ever using the exact words in the source secondly you need to state the clues within the text that led you to the conclusion about the overall message of the source in order to achieve these two things follow these steps step one read the source two or three times reading your source once is often not enough as you can miss some important clues the first time around therefore reading source two or three times allows you to find all the clues you need for the next step for example imagine we had short source that said alexios won more battles captured more prisoners earned more prestige and paid his soldiers more money than anyone else at the time even though this is very short source it is still beneficial to read it more than once to develop complete understanding of what is being said step 2 state clearly what you believe the main message of the source was that was never explicitly stated in the source in our example from before after reading it number of times we can conclude that the source was implying that alexius was the best general of his age even though this was never actually set in the source step 3 go back over the source and highlight the key phrases used by the author that you would use as clues to draw your conclusion about the implicit message in the example about alexius where we concluded that the implicit message was that alexius was the best general of his age we can point to the phrases which state that he won more battles captured more prisoners earned more prestige and paid his soldiers more money than anyone else as our evidence and step 4 write short paragraph that explains what you believe the implicit message of the source is and explain how the clues from the text led you to that conclusion for our example we could say the source implied that alexius was the best general of his age this is evident when it states that he won more battles captured more prisoners earned more prestige and paid his soldiers more money than anyone else now that you know what implicit information is in historical sources and how to find it hope that you feel more confident in your studies if you need further explanations examples and advice please visit the history skills website and i'll see you next time you