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Signposting in essays

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1. In most essays (up to 3000 words) you should avoid ‘signposting’ your argument. That is, you do not need to use expressions such as

‘Later in this essay I will be discussing…’
‘Let us now go on to consider…’
‘As I demonstrated earlier…’
‘We will now turn to evaluate another example…’

2. Just state clearly the point of your arguments and leave them to speak for themselves, uncluttered by any direction indicators. You do not need to offer a commentary on what you have already said, or what you will be saying later. In a well-planned essay, this progression should be self-evident from the arrangement of your work.

3. A sound essay plan and a coherent structure will reveal the logic of your argument and the relationship of its parts. If you have, for instance, four main topics to discuss, simple state clearly what those topics are, then deal with them separately, one after the other.

4. Each new topic should be clearly identified or defined as soon as you begin dealing with it. This statement will provide all the indication needed of your intentions. Remember that each paragraph should deal with just one principal stage or item of your argument. Each new topic requires a separate paragraph.

5. If you wish to some light indication of structure, it is perfectly acceptable to use formulations such as

‘The first reason … The second…’
‘On one hand … on the other…’
‘However, the main argument against this is…’

These statements will demonstrate that you have control of your argument.

6. Remember that although an essay may take many hours to write, it will only take a few minutes to read. Signposting is only necessary in very long pieces of work. Even then, skillful writers will integrate any direction indicators into their work as unobtrusively as possible.

7. The conventions on signposting may vary slightly from one subject to another. In some of the sciences it is necessary to announce in advance what you will be writing about. However, these pieces of work are likely to be closer to experimental reports than continuous prose arguments.

8. Similarly, in some branches of psychology or linguistics, students may sometimes be required to offer a meta-critique of a written assignment. They will be expected to describe what they are writing. This is to demonstrate their awareness of the processes in which they are engaged.

9. With these few exceptions, you should not normally comment on the manner in which you have written an essay. Your tutor doesn’t need to know in what order you assembled your evidence, or what difficulties you encountered during its composition. Some students try to disarm possible criticism by announcing in advance how difficult the question was to answer. Your tutor will already know its degree of difficulty, and doesn’t need to be told again.

10. However, you may wish to argue that the question raises a certain number of difficulties or crucial issues. This is acceptable – so long as you say what they are. You should then go on to discuss their relevance to the subject in question, and maybe even suggest some answers to them.

11. The conventions on signposting in report writing are different. Reports are normally written to a pre-determined structure or set of headings. These provide the sequence of events which in a conventional essay have to be constructed by the author.

12. A report of an investigation or an experiment will also have its own sequence of events, so it will be quite acceptable to use expressions such as ‘First the X was added to the Y … and then Z occurred … The results were then analysed and are shown in Table One’.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Spelling checkers used for essays

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1. Most word-processors have spelling checkers these days. You should use the checker before printing out your documents. This should form part of your regular editing procedures.

2. Checking your work with a spell-checker will help to highlight and correct commonly mis-spelt words such as ‘accommodation’, ‘parallel’, ‘recommend’, and ‘silhouette’.

3. The checker will also highlight mis-keyed words such as ‘hte’ for ‘the’ or ‘nad’ for ‘and’. You may either choose the correct word from a list, or the processor may offer you the opportunity to reverse the mis-keyed letters. [The latest even perform this function automatically.]

4. It will not be able to recognise specialist terms and unusual proper nouns – names such as Schumacher, Derrida, or Nabokov. These will not be in the processor’s memory. You will have to check the correct spelling of these yourself, as you would do with any other unusual words.

5. Remember that a spell-checker will not alert you to a mistake if you write ‘They washed there own clothes’ instead of ‘They washed their own clothes’. That’s because the word ‘there’ is spelt correctly even though it is being used ungrammatically in this sentence. The same would be true of ‘It is over hare’ instead of ‘It is over here’. That’s because ‘hare’ exists in its own right as a correctly spelt word.

6. Most spell-checkers will spot unwanted double words such as ‘going to to the fair’, and will offer you the opportunity to delete the second occurrence. But they will not notice anything wrong with a word broken by a space such as ‘to morrow’. That’s because these two terms exist in their own right as separate words.

7. The checker will not alert you to any mistake if you key the word ‘practice’ instead of ‘practise’, because both words exist separately. The same would be true of ‘advise’ and ‘advice’. [Most grammar-checkers will alert you to these common problems.]

8. If you decide to add to the processor’s memory names which are frequently used in your own subject discipline (Freud, Jung, Adler or Marx, Engels, Bukharin) make sure that you enter them correctly spelt.

9. Beware of adding too many names which might be thrown up in the checking of your document. Some proper nouns may be the same as mis-spelt words. If you were to add ‘Fischer’ to the dictionary as a name, this would mean that the spell-checker would not alert you to a problem if you mis-keyed ‘fisher’ as ‘fischer’.

10. Beware of adding to your processor’s dictionary just because it is easy and seems a profitable thing to do. You might for instance add your own postcode of ‘SE9 6OY’ – but if you then mis-keyed the word ‘TOY’ as ‘6OY’ the spell-checker would not then be able to pick up your mistake. It would assume that you wished to regard ‘6OY’ as an acceptable ‘word’.

11. A spell check is usually performed after all your text has been generated and edited. However, there are good arguments for using the checker at earlier stages. Layout and spacing might be affected; the document will be in a reasonably good condition at any given stage; and it may eliminate the necessity for a search and-replace procedure at a later stage.

12. Finally, here is a cautionary (and amusing) ditty which might help you to remember some of these points:

‘My New Spell Checker’

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

[Sauce unknown]

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Structure in essay plans

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1. The structure of a piece of writing is the (sometimes underlying) order of its parts. Good structure usually means that a persuasive or logical sequence of these parts has been created. This is often best established by creating the structure in essay plans.

2. The basic structure of most essays can be very simple:

  • Introduction
  • Argument(s)
  • Conclusion

3. Provided that the individual topics of your argument(s) are arranged in a clear and meaningful order, this basic model should create a firm structure.

4. The order of the parts is often determined by the nature of the subject in question. This order might be created by:

  • logical progression
  • increasing significance
  • equal significance
  • chronological order
  • narrative sequence
  • category groupings

Arranging the parts

5. Imagine you were writing an essay about French wine. You have decided to discuss four red wines and four white wines. The structure for this essay is created by diving the examples into white wines and red wines – as shown here.

Introduction

Part One – Red wines
* wine 1
* wine 2
* wine 3
* wine 4

Part Two – White wines
* wine 1
* wine 2
* wine 3
* wine 4

Conclusion

6. This is clear, simple, and uncomplicated. But you could also create a slightly more interesting structure by arranging the wines by region. This is the arrangement shown here.

Introduction

Loire
* red wine
* white wine

Bordeaux
* red wine
* white wine

Cotes du Rhone
* red wine
* white wine

Bugundy
* red wine
* white wine

Conclusion

7. It’s the same number of examples, but the arrangement is slightly more complex. This might also make the essay more interesting. Notice how each item is kept separate – so they don’t get mixed up. And each one would be discussed in a paragraph of its own.

8. Next – this process can be taken one step further with a slightly more complex question. You might often be asked to write an essay considering the arguments for and against some topic or proposition. For instance – “Consider the arguments for and against congestion charges in city centres.”

9. There are two ways you can arrange the structure for an essay of this type. Here’s the first, which we’ll call Strategy A.

Introduction

Part One – In favour of congestion charges
* [traffic] reduces volume
* [ecology] less air pollution
* [economy] generates local income
* [politics] positive social control

Part Two – Against congestion charges
* [traffic] public transport alternatives
* [ecology] transfers problem elsewhere
* [economy] reduces profitable activity
* [politics] punishes tax-payers

Conclusion

10. The arguments in favour of congestion charges are kept separate from the arguments against. The structure is simple, clear, and uncomplicated. Notice that the same topics (traffic, ecology, economy, and politics) are covered in both the case ‘for’ and ‘against’. Next – look at an alternative strategy, Strategy B.

11. You can see that in this example the structure is arranged in the form of TOPICS – and each one contains an argument for and against the proposal.

Introduction to congestion charges

TOPIC 1
* [traffic] reduces volume
* [traffic] public transport alternatives

TOPIC 2
* [ecology] less air pollution
* [ecology] transfers problem elsewhere

TOPIC 3
* [economy] generates local income
* [economy] reduces profitable activity

TOPIC 4
* [politics] positive social control
* [politics] punishes tax-payers

Conclusion

12. It’s fairly important if you are using this structure to keep a balance. And the topics must be clearly identified and matched. That is, you must not put an argument FOR economy alongside one AGAINST traffic

13. If there is no natural order for your topics, you might deal with them in order of their importance. You could deal with the smaller, less important items first. This leaves the larger, more important issues until the end of the essay. Discussing the detail first in this way leaves the larger items for general consideration in approaching your conclusion.

14. On the other hand you might wish to deal with the major item(s) first, then turn to a consideration of the detailed evidence which supports the argument you are making. Using this approach, you could then return to your main points again and give them further general consideration as your conclusion.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Taking notes for essays

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1. In preparation for writing an essay, you should be taking notes from a number of different sources: course materials, set texts, secondary reading, or tutorials and lectures. You might gather information from radio or television broadcasts, or from experiments and research projects. The notes could also include your own ideas, generated as part of the essay planning process.

2. The notes you gather in preparation for writing the essay will normally provide the detailed evidence to back up your arguments. They might also include such things as the quotations and page references you plan to use in your essay. Your ultimate objective in planning will be to produce a one or two page outline of the topics you intend to cover.

3. Be prepared for the fact that you might take many more notes than you will ever use. This is perfectly normal. At the note-taking stage you might not be sure exactly what evidence you will need. In addition, the information-gathering stage should also be one of digesting and refining your ideas.

4. Don’t feel disappointed if you only use a quarter or even a tenth of your materials. The proportion you finally use might vary from one subject to another, as well as depending on your own particular writing strategy. Just because some material is not used, don’t imagine that your efforts have been wasted.

5. When taking notes from any source, keep in mind that you are attempting to make a compressed and accurate record of information, other people’s opinions, and possibly your own observations on the subject in question.

6. Your objective whilst taking the notes is to distinguish the more important from the less important points being made. Record the main issues, not the details. You might write down a few words of the original if you think they may be used in a quotation. Keep these extracts as short as possible unless you will be discussing a longer passage in some detail.

7. Don’t try to write down every word of a lecture – or copy out long extracts from books. One of the important features of note-taking is that you are making a digest of the originals, and translating the information into your own words.

8. Some students take so many notes that they don’t know which to use when it’s time to write the essay. They feel that they are drowning in a sea of information.

9. This problem is usually caused by two common weaknesses in note-taking technique:

  • transcribing too much of the original
  • being unselective in the choice of topics

10. There are two possible solutions to this problem:

  • Select only those few words of the source material which will be of use. Avoid being descriptive. Think more, and write less. Be rigorously selective.
  • Keep the essay question or topic more clearly in mind. Take notes only on those issues which are directly relevant to the subject in question.

11. Even though the notes you take are only for your own use, they will be more effective if they are recorded clearly and neatly. Good layout of the notes will help you to recall and assess the material more readily. If in doubt use the following general guidelines.

Taking Notes – GUIDELINES

  1. Before you even start, make a note of your source(s). If this is a book, an article, or a journal, write the following information at the head of your notes: Author, title, publisher, publication date, edition of book.
     
  2. Use loose-leaf A4 paper. This is now the international standard for almost all educational printed matter. Don’t use small notepads. You will find it easier to keep track of your notes if they fit easily alongside your other study materials.
     
  3. Write clearly and leave a space between each note. Don’t try to cram as much as possible onto one page. Keeping the items separate will make them easier to recall. The act of laying out information in this way will cause you to assess the importance of each detail.
     
  4. Use some system of tabulation (as I am doing in these notes). This will help to keep the items separate from each other. Even if the progression of numbers doesn’t mean a great deal, it will help you to keep the items distinct.
     
  5. Don’t attempt to write continuous prose. Notes should be abbreviated and compressed. Full grammatical sentences are not necessary. Use abbreviations, initials, and shortened forms of commonly used terms.
     
  6. Don’t string the points together continuously, one after the other on the page. You will find it very difficult to untangle these items from each other after some time has passed.
     
  7. Devise a logical and a memorable layout. Use lettering, numbering, and indentation for sections and for sub-sections. Use headings and sub-headings. Good layout will help you to absorb and recall information. Some people use coloured inks and highlighters to assist this process of identification.
     
  8. Use a new page for each set of notes. This will help you to store and identify them later. Keep topics separate, and have them clearly titled and labelled to facilitate easy recall.
     
  9. Write on one side of the page only. Number these pages. Leave the blank sides free for possible future additions, and for any details which may be needed later.

Sample notes

What follows is an example of notes taken whilst listening to an Open University radio broadcast – a half hour lecture by the philosopher and cultural historian, Isaiah Berlin. It was entitled Tolstoy’s Views on Art and Morality, which was part of the third level course in literary studies ‘A 312 – The Nineteenth Century Novel and its Legacy.

Isaiah Berlin – ‘Tolstoy on Art and Morality’ 03 Sep 1989

1. T’s views on A extreme – but he asks important questns which disturb society

2. 1840s Univ of Kazan debate on purpose of A
T believes there should be simple answers to probs of life

3. Met simple & spontaneous people & soldiers in Caucasus
Crimean Sketches admired by Turgenev & Muscovites but T didn’t fit in milieu

4. Westernizers Vs Slavophiles – T agreed with Ws – but rejects science (Ss romantic conservatives)

5. 2 views of A in mid 19C – A for art’s sake/ A for society’s sake

6. Pierre (W&P) and Levin (AK) as egs of ‘searchers for truth’

7. Natural life (even drunken violence) better than intellectual

8. T’s contradiction – to be artist or moralist

9. T’s 4 criteria for work of art

  • know what you want to say – lucidly and clearly
  • subject matter must be of essential interest
  • artist must live or imagine concretely his material
  • A must know the moral centre of situation

10. T crit of other writers

Shkspre and Goethe – too complex
St Julien (Flaubert) inauthentic
Turgenev and Chekhov guilty of triviality

11. What is Art? Emotion recollected and transmitted to others
[Wordsworth] Not self-expression – Only good should be transmitted

12. But his own tastes were for high art – Chopin, Beethoven, & Mozart
T Argues he himself corrupted

13. Tried to distinguish between his own art and moral tracts

14. ‘Artist cannot help burning like a flame’

15. Couldn’t reconcile contradictions in his own beliefs
Died still raging against self and society

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Titles in essays

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1. Publications of book length such as text books or novels should normally be presented by giving their titles in italics. [In hand-written essays, this will be denoted by underlining].

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
R.G. Lipman’s Positive Ergonomics

2. When using a word-processor you should use italics for titles (with bold reserved for special emphasis). Remember to be consistent throughout your document, and do not combine any of these attributes.

3. You should not combine underlining or italics with quotation marks.

4. The titles of short stories and songs are indicated by single quote marks:

Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘The Voyage’
Kurt Weil’s show tune ‘September Song’

5. Thus, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ is a celebrated short story, but his long novel Ulysses is even more famous.

6. When offering book titles in references and endnotes the sequence of information given is as follows:

AUTHOR—TITLE—PUBLISHER—DATE—PAGE

Valerie Shaw, The Short Story, Longman, 1983, p.56.

If you are using the Harvard system of referencing, remember to put the date of publication after the author’s name.

7. The titles of individual poems are indicated by using roman type and single quote marks, thus:

W.H.Auden’s ‘Night Mail’
Browning’s ‘Pippa Passes’

8. Where a long poem has been published on its own, it may be indicated as a book, thus:

T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land
Milton’s Paradise Lost

9. Where a number of poems has been collected as a group, they are treated as a book, as follows:

‘Tess’s Lament’ is one of the poems in Thomas Hardy’s 1903 collection, Poems of the Past and the Present.

10. You should always make a clear distinction between fictional characters and books which are named after them. David Copperfield is a fictional character, whereas David Copperfield is the novel which bears his name. The same is true of Middlemarch (the fictional town) and Middlemarch (the novel).

11. Plays are indicated in the same way as novels, because they are usually published in single volume form.

Oscar Wilde’s play, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Shakespeare’s The Tempest

12. Magazines, newspapers, and journals are indicated in the same way as books:

The Economist     The Daily Telegraph
Architectural Review     English Studies

13. Individual articles from within these separate publications are indicated by single quotation marks and roman type, as follows:

A.B. Smith’s review article ‘Foreign Practices’ in The Observer business section of 27 October 1991.

14. The titles of films, radio and television programmes are also indicated by italics:

Double Indemnity     Round the Horne
Newsnight     World in Action

15. This convention also applies to the names of famous operas, ballets, paintings and sculptures:

The Magic Flute     Swan Lake
The Night Watch     David

16. When the title of a work includes mention of another book title, the second title should be placed in single quotation marks:

A.B. Smith, The Textual Development of ‘King Lear’, New York: Scholarship Press, 1986.

17. Notice that capital letters are used in the first word and any other important words of titles. Less important words such as ‘and’, ‘of’, and ‘in’ are not capitalised:

The Power and the Glory
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

18. The titles of works which are stored in electronic form will follow similar conventions, but are described separately.

19. Sometimes in documents stored as web pages, bold is used instead of italics because it shows up better on screen.

20. Whichever conventions you use, you should be consistent throughout your document.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Tone in essays

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1. The tone in essays or any other piece of writing can be roughly defined as ‘the author’s attitude to the subject – as manifest in the writing’. In academic essays (unless you have been instructed otherwise) you should adopt a tone which is neutral and objective. Your attitude to the subject should be serious and formal.

2. For instance, too much use of ‘I think that…’ and ‘I feel that…’ has the effect of making an essay too personal and subjective in its tone, as in this example:

‘I think that E.H. Carr is a really brilliant historian, and when I first started reading his book The Bolshevik Revolution I suddenly felt … ‘

3. This approach is also likely to encourage a casual and conversational style, which is inappropriate in a formal essay.

4. Avoid using features such as slang (‘far-out’) contractions (‘can’t’ or ‘they’ll’) and vogue words (‘situation’, ‘ongoing’, ‘fantastic’) which create a tone which is too chatty and casual.

5. Avoid the use of ‘I think’ and ‘I believe’ by substituting impersonal expressions such as ‘It seems that…Carr argues that…but there is now increasingly good evidence to show that…’

6. The following example illustrates an inappropriate tone which combines chattiness with writing in note form. It is from a student essay on ‘The Origins of the Industrial Revolution’.

Easy access to raw materials – coal, iron, etc. And cheap labour too (all exploited of course!). Then inland waterways and the building of the ship canal. Lots of good markets overseas as well.

7. These notes should be expanded and expressed as grammatically complete sentences in a manner such as this:

In that part of the North West there was easy access to raw materials such as coal and iron. The sources of labour were also cheap at that time since there was such unchecked exploitation. A system of inland water ways provided good transportation. This was especially true following the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal. In addition, Britain in the nineteenth century had access to (and in some cases a monopoly of) a number of overseas markets.

8. A manner of expression which is direct, simple, and clear is preferable to one which is flamboyant or wordy. Keep your sentences short and to the point. ‘He sent for the doctor’ is more direct than ‘He called into requisition the services of the family physician.’

9. Some people imagine that an ornate or flamboyant manner is necessary in order to create a good impression. This is not true. In fact the opposite is the case. Too many flourishes or a sense or wordiness will weaken your essay. Adopt a plain, straightforward prose style. Remember that academic essays are not exercises in creative writing. You will not give your work a sense of purpose or seriousness simply by adding literary decoration. Even when one is sorely tempted – one should eschew the grandiloquent. [That’s a deliberately bad example, by the way!]

10. All this is not a killjoy injunction against writing which is stylistically attractive. If you write fluently and include the occasional well-turned phrase, then your work will be more pleasant to read. If you are in any doubt however — Keep it plain and simple.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Topics in essays

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1. Topics are distinct units of meaning. They are normally sub-divisions of a subject, but they can sometimes stand as the purpose of an essay in their own right.

2. For instance, if the subject of an essay was ‘government’, the separate topics for discussion might be ‘finance and taxation’, ‘law-making’, ‘public health’, and ‘international diplomacy’. Each one of these however might, in a different context, be a subject on its own.

3. If ‘international diplomacy’ became the main subject of an essay, this might be considered by sub-dividing it into topics such as ‘government policy’, ‘political history’, ‘trade and industry’, and ‘foreign relations’.

4. In most essays, the subject in question can and should be broken down into a series of separate topics. These are then arranged in some persuasive or logical order at the planning stage to form your argument.

5. Remember that each paragraph normally deals with a separate topic. This should be signalled (usually by a ‘topic sentence’) at the outset. Its relevance to the subject in question should also be explained as part of the argument.

6. In the following essay plan the main subject is ‘French wine’ and the topics to be discussed are Loire wines, Bordeaux wines, Cotes du Rhone wines, and Burgundy wines.

Introduction

Loire
* red wine
* white wine

Bordeaux
* red wine
* white wine

Cotes du Rhone
* red wine
* white wine

Bugundy
* red wine
* white wine

Conclusion

7. In the following essay plan the main subject is ‘Congestion charging in city centres’, and the topics to be covered are – traffic density, ecology, economy, and politics.

Introduction

Part One – In favour of congestion charges
* [traffic] reduces volume
* [ecology] less air pollution
* [economy] generates local income
* [politics] positive social control

Part Two – Against congestion charges
* [traffic] public transport alternatives
* [ecology] transfers problem elsewhere
* [economy] reduces profitable activity
* [politics] punishes tax-payers

Conclusion

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Tutor comments on essays

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1. Tutor comments written on your essay script are the most detailed response you are likely to receive on what you have produced. You should take the trouble to read these comments carefully, and learn from them as much as you can.

2. Where there is no comment on the script you can usually assume that your argument is to the point. Tutors often find it difficult to comment on an argument which is relevant and well articulated. Ticks on the script are usually a sign that your writing is dealing with the issues required.

3. If you are answering the question successfully there may not be much for the tutor to say, except to offer encouragement and suggestions for further development at the end of the essay. [This however should not be taken as an endorsement of lazy script-marking.]

4. Your tutor may correct the first instance of a common mistake, then ignore subsequent occurrences. This often happens with spelling problems, for instance. You should take careful note, and try to learn the correct form.

5. Be sure to read the tutor’s comments at the end of the script. Don’t just check the grade awarded to your work. The comments represent valuable feedback and response to what you have written.

6. A comment such as ‘What does this mean?’ usually suggests ‘Your argument is not very clear at this point of the essay’ or ‘You are not showing the relevance of this topic to the question’.

7. The tutor may use square brackets [these] to indicate those parts of your argument which are not really necessary – as in this example.

… just as Mansfield Park [by the novelist Jane Austen] is a novel which is concerned with the theme of ‘improvement’

8. If the tutor invites you to discuss a particular issue in person, then take up the offer. But don’t abuse this arrangement. Tutors can easily become irritated by students ‘seeking further clarification’ too frequently.

9. Be academically modest. Be prepared to learn from your mistakes. Put into practice those suggestions made by the tutor. After all, they are made for your benefit, not for the convenience of the tutor.

10. The most noticeable advances in essay-writing skills are usually made by those students who take notice of each new suggestion offered for improvement. They are also likely to incorporate these ideas on a permanent basis. That is, once a new strategy or technique is adopted it becomes a skill which is used regularly. Subsequent suggestions for improvement are also incorporated in the same way.

11. Conversely (and not surprisingly) those students who make the least improvement in their work are those who seem to disregard tutor comments. They require the same notes of ‘advice for improvement’ with each successive essay. Do yourself a favour – take notice of your tutor’s comments.

12. See the selection of marked essays in Writing Essays 3.0 for examples of typical tutor comments.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Word limits in essays

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1. You should make every effort to stay within any word limits that have been set for an essay assignment. One important part of the exercise is that you should produce an answer to the question within set limits.

2. You will not normally be penalised if your essay is a little too short – so long as your argument is written in a concise style and you have covered all the topics which a full answer requires.

3. Similarly, an essay that is just slightly too long will not normally be penalised – so long as all your arguments are relevant to the point of the question.

4. However, you should avoid producing essays which greatly exceed the word limit. The longer you go on writing, the more likely you are to stray away from the point of the question. You will not normally be rewarded just for the quantity you produce.

5. An essay which seriously exceeds the word limit (say, by more than twenty or thirty percent) could be returned to you by your tutor as unacceptable. The argument could be made that you are not staying within the set limits, and you are possibly taking an unfair advantage over other students who have stayed within them.

6. Quotations should not normally be counted as part of the word limit – but the total amount of material from secondary sources should be so small that the proportion is insignificant.

7. You do not need to make a detailed count of every word (or pencil totals in the margin as ‘proof’). Use the word-count feature of
your word-processor to get an idea of the total. If it doesn’t have a counter, just make the following calculation for a rough estimate of your total word count:

words per line × lines per page × pages

Too long

8. If an essay is too long before you produce your final draft, its length may be reduced by rigorous editing. Consider some of the following possibilities.

9. Eliminate any repetitions in your basic argument. If you cover the same point from more than one perspective, retain only the most important parts of the discussion, and delete the others.

10. You might consider shortening your introduction, certainly if goes on for much more than 200 words. In some extreme cases it might even be better to go straight to your argument.

11. Check your prose style and try to make the expression of your argument as concise as possible. If necessary, shorten the length of your sentences by removing any words which are not essential to the argument. Cut out anything which introduces a conversational tone.

12. Reduce the number of illustrative examples. Each major point of your argument should normally be illustrated by one or [at the most] two examples of evidence which are then analysed or discussed. If you have more, you should just retain the most convincing and relevant. Eliminate the others.

13. Shorten any illustrative quotations to the absolute minimum. Most essays should not need long quotations from secondary sources – if only because it is your own argument which is more important. Select just those few words which make your point.

Too short

14. If on the other hand your final efforts have produced an essay which is shorter than the required length, you obviously need to do some extra work on it. Consider the following steps.

15. Go back to the start of the essay planning process and generate more ideas and topics on the subject in question. Try to think of new approaches or aspects of the subject which you might have ignored or forgotten.

15. Look closely at the question again. Ask yourself if you have followed all its instructions and covered all that it has asked for.

16. Make sure that you have provided an explanatory introduction and conclusion to the essay. Don’t waffle just for the sake of filling up the space. Introduce your argument succinctly and make sure that you have explained its relevance to the original question.

17. It might be that you have produced an argument which is not well enough illustrated by examples which are analysed and discussed. Make sure that you have sufficient evidence and explanatory examples to prove your point. Do not let an argument stand alone without proof.

18. Make sure that you have explained the relevance of your argument to the question which was originally posed. In other words, you must demonstrate the connection between your examples and the subject in question.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Word-processors for writing essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. The advantages of using word-processors for writing essays are overwhelming. They offer editing and re-writing tools, spelling-checkers and grammar-checkers, plus many features for improved layout and presentation.

2. If you are only just starting to use a word-processor and still producing handwritten essays, don’t feel disadvantaged. Keep in mind however (as an encouragement) that as presentation standards are forced up by word-processors, tutors are likely to become less and less tolerant of untidy work.

3. The main advantage of a computer when writing essays is that it allows you unlimited scope for re-writing and editing what you produce. You may start out with only a sketchy outline, but to this you can add extra examples, delete mistakes, and move paragraphs around to improve your argument. You are able to build up to the finished product in as many stages as you wish.

4. At first you might continue to produce your first draft in handwritten form, then transfer it into your computer at the keyboard. You can then edit what you have written, either on screen or by printing out what you have produced. This is quite common for beginners.

5. You will probably feel a strong desire to see everything printed out as soon as possible. Later however, with experience, you might edit on screen, only printing out the finished version. Most recent word-processors allow you to see on screen what the finished document will look like.

6. Before you print out your final document, make sure to leave plenty of blank space around the text so that your tutor can write detailed comments on what you have produced. Take the trouble to set wide margins, and follow the guidelines for good page layout and presentation.

7. The word-processor will produce your documents very neatly, but will probably do so by using single line spacing. Even though you are likely to be pleased by the neatness, learn how to set for one-and-a-half or double spacing so that your tutor is still able to make helpful additions and corrections between the lines of text.

8. If your word-processor has a spell-checking facility, then use it before you print out your document. But remember that it is unlikely to recognise specialist terms and unusual names such as ‘Schumacher’, ‘Derrida’, or ‘Nabokov’. These will not be in the processor’s memory. You will have to check the correct spelling of these yourself, as you will any other unusual words.

9. Remember too that a spell-checker will not make any distinction between ‘They washed their own clothes’ and ‘They washed there own clothes’, because the word ‘there’ is spelled correctly even though it is being used ungrammatically in this sentence. Use your grammar-checker [if you have one] to locate such problems.

10. Use italics to indicate the titles of books. (Reserve bold for special emphasis.) It is important that you are consistent throughout your document.

A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, London: Penguin, 1987.

11. Take full advantage of indenting to regularise your presentation of quotations. Use double indentation for those longer quotations which would otherwise occupy more than two or three lines of the text in your essay. Try to be consistent throughout.

12. Advanced users may well be tempted to take advantage of automatic footnoting. Word-processors can remove all the headaches from this procedure. However, do not clutter your text with them just for the sake of showing off your command of the technology.

13. In most cases, the size of font chosen should be eleven or twelve points. This will be easy to read, and will appear proportionate to its use, when printed out on A4 paper.

14. Choose a font with serifs (such as ‘Times New Roman’ or ‘Garamond’) for the body of an essay text. Avoid the use of sans-serif fonts (such as ‘Arial’ or ‘Helvetica’): these make reading difficult. Avoid using display fonts (such as ‘Poster’ or ‘Showtime’) altogether. These are designed for advertising.

15. Long quotations (where necessary) should normally be set in the same font as the body of the text, but the size may be reduced by one or two points. This draws attention to the fact that it is a quotation from a secondary source. Alternatively (or in addition) it may be set in a slightly different font.

16. If your word-processor automatically hyphenates words at the end of a line, take care to read through the work and eliminate any howlers such as ‘the-rapist’ and ‘thin-king’.

17. In laying out your pages, you should avoid creating paragraphs which start on the last line of a page or which finish on the first of the next. (These are called, in the jargon of the printing trade, ‘Widows and Orphans’). The solution to this problem is to control the number of lines on a page so as to push the text forward. An extra space at the bottom of a page is more acceptable than just one or two lines of text at the top of the next.

18. Titles, main headings, or essay questions may be presented in either a slightly larger font size than the body of the text, or they may be given emphasis by the use of bold.

19. Don’t use continuous capital letters in a title, heading, or question. In addition [even though many people think it is good practice] there should be no need at all to underline. If something is a title, a heading or a question at the top of an essay, then the larger font, and the use of bold should be enough to give it emphasis and importance.

20. Don’t forget to put your name and student ID number on any work you submit.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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