Tips on Essay Writing
I.
Introduction: this should be a lucid overview of your paper, glancing on all your major points. Try to avoid the tendency to make enormous over-generalizations here. You want to draw the reader in, but you need not make things up to do. At the end of this paragraph, should be your thesis, which clearly and explicitly will say what the point of your paper is.
II.
The Body. This is where you lay out the points that add up to your thesis.
Paragraph: use as many as you need to make your point.
Topic Sentence: says what’s coming up in the paragraph.
Evidence--this is super-important, for in historical work, you need three things:
1.) Introduction of document: who wrote it, when, for what purpose (very imp.). This is where you bring in context , which gives the reader an idea of how much of a grain of salts/he needs when evaluating the evidence.
2.) Presentation of document: cite figures, use a good quotation, or summarize main point with sufficient details. And don’t forget to document!
3.) Analysis of document: so what does this evidence tell you about its context or about the history of this time period? This part is crucial, because from this analysis, you build the larger points (the paragraphs), which ultimately point to your thesis.
III. The Conclusion: now you are trying to convince your reader as clearly as possible why your point is logical. Throughout the course of the paper you were demonstrating that your analysis is right. Now, you are going to wrap up by weaving your major points together into a nice little tapestry and that concludes with a definite answer to a historical question.
IV. Method: Read over the secondary materials, but try as much as possible to work from the documents upward. That is, keep in mind that those essays are just the opinions of other historians. So in a way, you are in a sort of dialogue with them. Thus, construct your narrative and use them to supplement their views. Often, people want to let these other historians construct the writing for them (and, of course, if you do not read the language, this can be necessary). However, when you have sources at your disposal (as on these essays), you need to think for yourself and let others’ opinions help, not frame, yours.
V. Style in general:
- Use the active voice
- Do not use contractions
- Do not use “I”
- Avoid blatant value-judgments
- Do not use vague words or meaningless phrases (so and so played “a significant role,” e.g. How significant?—that’s the question).
- Use a rich vocabularly, but only as long as you know the meaning of the words
