A guide to essay writing

Peter Milnes, 1995. Ed. Ross Woods, 2015

Critical Thinking

The humanities require a high order of critical thinking. It is not enough to simply describe or recall something in detail. It is necessary to analyze, compare and contrast, and synthesize the information.

This can be represented:

Synthesize (Higher order): Use all stages below to create options, develop an argument, suggest future trends
Compare or connect: Compare or connect important details
Analyze: Find out what is important
Describe (Lower order): What is

Good essay writing synthesizes accurate, factual and detailed description, careful analysis and thoughtful comparison or connections so that readers are not left to form their own opinions. Readers are taken through arguments, explanations and supporting evidence to strong conclusions.

Avoid mistakes. Some students try to synthesize without going through the lower three stages of description, analysis and comparison. Others include a lot of description without any higher order processes.

Essay outline

Three parts are essential to an essay:

1. Introduction

Define the question. Re-write it in your own words.
Say why this essay important
Define key words and phrases
Define the measures (analytical tool/s) against which analysis will be made
Give a plan that shows the direction your essay will take.
Give a thesis sentence, that is, state the conclusion you will try to demonstrate.

2. Body

Each paragraph should be one point of your argument.

In each paragraph:

In one sentence, state the main point you are making in this paragraph.
Explain or clarify the thesis sentence.
Give evidence to prove your thesis sentence. These can be examples, statistics, case studies, quotations.
In a long paragraph, make you might need to re-state your thesis sentence.
Check that this paragraph relates to the question or thesis.

3. Conclusion

Restate your thesis sentence you gave in the introduction.
Summarize your main points.
Suggest future trends, and suggest further research areas.
Do not introduce any new ideas in your conclusion that should have been included above.

Referencing

Referencing allows you to use other people’s words, ideas or information to support your argument, but you must give a reference whenever you do so. Directs quote (word-for-word) must be either in quotation marks (if short), or separated and indented (if long.

Failure to reference is called plagiarism. It is a kind of stealing and cheating, because it is claiming someone else’s ideas as one’s own).

Do not reference general knowledge that does not need to have a specific source, e.g. World War II occurred between 1939 and 1945; Captain Cook reached Australia in 1770; Perth is the capital city of Western Australia.

How to reference using a computer:

Place the cursor at the end of the quotation.
Go to Insert and click on Footnote
Type the author's and page number (If using an Internet site, type in the address) or if you are making additional explanatory statements simply type them in.
Click back on to the page where you are typing. The computer will automatically number the footnotes and place them at the bottom of each page.

Bibliography

A bibliography is a list of books and sources with the full details of each one. The details must be complete enough for a reader to find the exact source you used. Sources are listed in alphabetical order of the author. A bibligraphy includes only sources used in the essay. Do not list any others.

Referencing differs slightly according to the kind of source.

A full publication	Author (date) Title (underlined or in italics), publisher, place.
Article	Author (date) Title of article in Editor’s name (ed) (date) Title (underlined or in italics), publisher, place.
Internet	Web Address (as close as possible to the citation, date)
Newspaper	Name of the Newspaper underlined or in italics (date), page (Authorship & "title" if included)

Ten commandments for writing

Summarized from Strunk & White, Essentials of Style

Students can improve their writing styles by following ten suggestions. N.B. These suggestions do not apply in some situations.

1. Use the positive form and avoid indirect forms.

Avoid hesitating and noncommittal language. For example, He was not very often on time. should be He was often late.

2. Omit needless words.

Replace wordy phrases with a single word:

At that point in time → then
By means of → by
For the reason that → because
In order to → to
For the purpose of → to
In relation to → concerning
A member of the student body → a student

Some words are glue words and other words are working words. Like a fine piece of furniture, use a minimum of glue. For example:

Weak	Improved
In many instances, insofar as the jurors are concerned, the jury instructions are not understandable because they are too poorly written.	Jury instructions are often too poorly written for jurors to understand.
The Taming of the Shrew is rather weak in spots. Shakespeare does not portray Katherine as a very admirable character, nor does Bianca remain long in memory as an important character in Shakespeare's works.	The women in The Taming of the Shrew are unattractive. Katharine is disagreeable, and Bianca insignificant.

3. Avoid repetition.

Repeating an idea tires readers, and repeating words close to each other detracts from the effectiveness of the word.

4. Use one tense.

Frequent shifting between the present, past and future confuses the reader about the time when events occurred.

5. Avoid superlatives, overstatement and opinion without evidence.

These put readers on guard so that they lose confidence in your judgment. Sometimes just one of these can spoil an entire essay.

6. Avoid abbreviations and double talk.

The use of abbreviations can confuse your reader. For example, ABC can mean either the Australian Broadcasting Commission or the American Broadcasting Company. Similarly, doubletalk such as downsizing quickly becomes synonymous with firing employees and becomes confusing.

7. Avoid slang, breezy, affected and offbeat manners.

Many new words and phrases fail to survive while others grow stale and dated. Words such as uptight, ripoff, dude, vibes will become words of the past (e.g. groovy) and are more appropriate for conversation rather than written composition that can be read years later.

8. Avoid the personal pronoun.

Put yourself in the background so that readers focus upon the substance of the writing. For example, It is hot today. is stronger than I think it is hot today. The inclusion of the first person I detracts from the authority of the statement.

9. Numbers.

Always write out the number at the beginning of a sentence and when making a list (e.g. Two dogs, three cats and five mice.). Otherwise, write the numbers one to ten and use numerals for 11 and over.

The standard US form for dates is November 11, 1918. (The standard form in England and Australia is different: 11 November 1918.)

10. Revise and rewrite.

Few writers can write without flaws. By rereading and rewriting you can eliminate error, tighten your argument and achieve a far better result.