Essay writing tips
An essay written for a university course serves two main purposes. The first and most obvious is pedagogical: researching a topic and writing about it is an excellent way of learning. The second is for evaluation: an essay enables an instructor to assess a student’s ability to explain the subject in a lucid and cogent way, to integrate the different types of material covered, to analyze events or themes, and to place them in a comprehensible order.
University studies require writing many essays. Although developing good essay-writing skills is important, it need not be an arduous task. Here are a few basic principles and rules to keep in mind:
- An essay should have an evident structure. Open your essay with an introduction that states the problem you wish to explore, or the question you plan to answer. Examine the most important facets of the topic, and discuss the issues that have been (or ought to be) the subject of scholarly debate. Develop your own argument, and present your evidence in the body of the essay. When your exposition and argument are complete and well-presented, end your work with a conclusion that summarizes the problem or question and states your judgment or answer.
- An essay should convey the key elements of an argument, and the evidence supporting that intellectual position. Your essay should contain a logically expressed point of view (perhaps more than one) supported by evidence that is appropriately documented with citations accompanied by a references and works consulted list, or a bibliography, at the end of the essay, and should lead to a conclusion that appears natural and persuasive in light of the evidence that you present. Your discussion and analysis of the material must be balanced and judicious, taking opposing arguments into account, and recognizing where the available information is insufficient or inconclusive.
- An essay must be based on adequate and appropriate reading and reflection, and must always acknowledge intellectual indebtedness through proper citations. An instructor is always reading a student’s paper with an eye toward determining whether or not the student comprehends the material discussed. Since they often read hundreds of papers a year, instructors can easily tell when a student does not understand what they are talking about. Make sure that you fully understand your subject matter before you sit down to write, because a large portion of your evaluation will be based on whether you have covered the topic correctly and completely. A superior essay should also show evidence of individual thought: Originality will be valued highly by the marker, provided, of course, that the case is properly argued and not merely eccentric. When you draw on other’s thoughts, it is essential that you acknowledge that you are doing so and cite your source. For this course, choose either the APA or MLA citation format (more on this below), and follow it consistently. Academic plagiarism is a very serious offense, and it makes for a devastating way to embark on your career (especially if you do so in an _ethics_course!).
Your grade will reflect how well you have met these standards. In attempting to achieve these goals, you will develop and practice several intellectual skills that will prove invaluable to you throughout your university career:
- The ability to synthesize information from a variety of sources
- The ability to analyze the significance of primary-source material
- The ability to make appropriate use of secondary-source material (for example, summarizing the research that has been done on a topic and placing it in context and noting similarities to, and differences from, other writers’ presentations)
- The habit of documenting, carefully and honestly, the sources of your information and ideas
- The ability to develop a cogent, balanced, and well-supported argument
The mechanics of essay construction
There is no single model that you must follow to write a good essay. Thoughtful, creative, and well-argued essays may be organized in various ways. However, here are some detailed guidelines that, if you follow them carefully and sensibly, should go a long way toward ensuring that your essay is satisfactory in its form and structure. If you need help with the mechanics of constructing essays, the following suggestions will help you to organize and write your assignments:
Organization: writing an outline
Adopting a logical and organized approach is the surest way to write a successful essay. Most people find it useful to first construct an outline of the main components of their paper, and then follow this outline when writing the text. The time you take to draft an outline is usually time very well spent. The process of drafting your outline will help you both in defining your thesis and in writing an initial statement of organization. The statement of organization is a short passage that follows your thesis statement and explains how you will analyze the topic and present your arguments. It helps you clarify how you will prove and document your ideas, and it serves your reader as a conceptual map of the structure of your paper. The outline and the statement of organization are thus usually written at the same time.
An essay (whether long or short) is composed of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Of course, the body of the essay will be much longer than either the introduction or the conclusion, and will normally contain several different topics and discussions. Your outline should reflect this, detailing these various sections.
Your essay outline may look like this:
Introduction
- Interesting opening sentence (background, something to interest and entice the reader)
- Thesis statement (the central theme of the paper and/or the key conclusion that you are endeavouring to prove)
- Statement of organization (the order and structure of the arguments/claims that you will make to justify your interpretation, something to help your reader best understand the path ahead)
Body
Section I
- Statement of a main idea supporting your thesis or key conclusion
- Supporting evidence for your main idea or key conclusion (premises, examples, data, and so on)
- Summary of your main idea, argument, or key conclusion
- Link to Section 2 (if necessary)
Section 2 (more sections are only necessary if your essay thesis requires them)
- Statement of a main idea supporting your thesis or key conclusion
- Supporting evidence for your main idea or key conclusion (premises, examples, data, and so on)
- Summary of your main idea, argument, or key conclusion
- Link to Section 3 (if necessary)
And so on.
Conclusion
- Reiteration of the initial problem or question at issue
- Summary of your analysis and key arguments/claims/conclusions (including all of the main topics that you covered)
- Overall conclusion based on evidence presented
With a complete and thoughtful outline, writing your essay will simply be a matter of fitting the research you have done into the pattern that you have made. Just follow your outline, making sure that the progression of information is logical, and that your arguments are well-supported by evidence and analysis.
Editing
In writing your final draft, the quality of language and the logic of your argument should be your main concerns: By the final draft, there should be no factual, grammatical, or spelling errors. Producing your final draft is therefore mainly a matter of thoroughly editing your penultimate draft. It involves careful copyediting.
There are two types of editing. The first, often called substantive editing, is for sense: Read each sentence, making certain that it is complete (has a subject, a verb, and if necessary, an object), and that the preceding and following sentences are linked and logical. Examine each section of your essay for clarity and coherence. You might ask yourself the following questions:
- Introduction: Is it interesting? Is the thesis statement clear? Does it define the exact subject and express a point of view? Does the statement of organization cover all of the topics? Do you explain to the reader where your essay will lead them?
- Body: Does each paragraph cover a different point? Is it relevant to the thesis? Does it have a topic sentence? Are details present, and do they support the topic sentence and in turn the thesis? Are proper references provided indicating your sources? Are your terms clear and concise, and where necessary, explained?
- Conclusion: Does it restate the thesis? Does it provide a summary of the material? Does it present a clear, valid conclusion?
The second type of editing is copyediting, and is effectively done line-by-line, from the end to the beginning of the document. As you copyedit, you check spelling, typing, thoroughness of citation, consistency of capitalization, and so on. This step is a crucial one in the preparation of essays, because many small, annoying errors can be as damaging to the sense and impact of your essay as a few large, obvious ones. A word of warning: Good copy-editing is a difficult task for an author, because one tends to see what one expects rather than what is actually there. A different pair of eyes, coming fresh to the text, will normally pick up typographical errors that you have missed simply because you are too familiar with your own work to notice them. Hence, if you can find someone else to help you copyedit your final draft, you will almost certainly end up with a cleaner, more error-free, manuscript. An alternative, but second best, strategy is to put your final draft away for a couple of days before attempting to copyedit the essay yourself. Even if time pressure precludes this option and you have nobody available to help you, it is important that you do your best to copyedit your paper. Copyediting is the last stage of the essay-writing process. It will be very evident to your reader if you have not taken the trouble to finish the job properly.
One final important note: Insofar as you can, when you are editing your paper, try to read it from the perspective of someone who is interested in the subject at hand, but who may not be familiar with all of the important nuances and details. Of course, your tutor is in fact familiar with such details, but they will be reading your paper with an eye toward determining whether you are familiar with them. If you just assume that important points are already understood and do not require mentioning or explaining, your tutor will have no choice but to assume that you do not know or understand these important points. Remember: Your tutor cannot read your mind; they can only read what is in your paper. So make sure to thoroughly explain key points. In this way your tutor can determine whether you fully understand your subject.
Note: Please refer to the Resources: General, Research, and Writing page for more excellent links and information on writing academic papers.
References and works consulted list or bibliography
The last step in essay preparation is the production of your “references and works consulted” list (APA style) or “bibliography” (MLA style), a separate listing of all of the works that you actually used in the process of writing your essay, including books and articles that you read but did not quote from, as well as works you quoted or cited, and then referenced, in the text of your essay. The list should follow APA or MLA style—the references listed below will give you more information on these styles. As well, for APA style, see the references lists in several units of the Study Guide.
Below are some websites that provide guidance about referencing rules and styles:
Purdue OWL’s Research and Citation Resources
Concordia University, How to Cite …
A note about referencing the course’s study guide
The copyright information for our online Study Guide can be found through the “Copyright and Credits” link on the course home page. On that page, under “Credits,” you will see that our course author (and author of the Study Guide) is Chris McTavish. Style manuals may vary on dealing with this sort of source, but here is a suggestion for referencing the Study Guide in a Works Cited page or Footnote (depending upon your citation style): cite “McTavish, C.” as author. You will also want to include the other bibliographic info (2020, PHIL 337 Study Guide, Unit 3, Athabasca University). For an in-text citation you could use something like (McTavish, Unit 5, 2020), so long as the citation style you employ in your Works Cited/References page explains the full and proper source of the reference. As indicated above, select your preferred style of referencing and stick to it consistently and with academic integrity.
The write site
Athabasca University’s Write Site will help you in writing formal essay assignments. It provides guidance about the writing process, essay organization, sentences, grammar, mechanics, style, vocabulary and spelling, and research writing. It also gives information about documentation and plagiarism, detailing how to format, cite, and reference your papers. You can submit an essay assignment to the Write Site to receive feedback about the writing components (organization, mechanics, grammar, and style) of an essay assignment before you submit it to your tutor for marking. The Write Site does _not_provide comments on the factual accuracy or general academic content of your essay.
Note: Should you require further tips on study skills and techniques, please go to AU’s Support Services: Learning Tools .