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How to structure an essay?
- Thread starter Neysh
- Start date
KeithWalker
- Joined Jul 10, 2017
- 3,607
I suggest that you type the same message into Google and do a little research. There are lots of good articles on the internet on structuring essays.
DickCappels
- Joined Aug 21, 2008
- 10,661
Raymond Genovese
- Joined Mar 5, 2016
- 1,653
The most important tip is to know your audience, and write to them. Also consider what "really good" might mean. Persuasive? Factual? Concise?
"Essays", in academic context, have a form, and are intended to explain and persuade.
The schoolish version of this is often overly restrictive and a sort of performance proving you know the rules.
I write a lot of essays but I don't care about the form demanded by instructors of writing. My essays state an idea concisely, lay out the facts and logic to support it, and conclude with a paragraph that demonstrates how the essay showed the validity of its introduction.
For me, an essay must be consistent and it often means revising the introduction in light of the rest of the piece. It should all work together, and there should be nothing stated not somehow shown. There should be no fat, all muscle.
But, if you are writing an essay for school, follow the form the instructor demands, the purpose of those essays is to get a good score. Unless you have an exceptional instructor the form will be as, or more important, than the content.
The schoolish version of this is often overly restrictive and a sort of performance proving you know the rules.
I write a lot of essays but I don't care about the form demanded by instructors of writing. My essays state an idea concisely, lay out the facts and logic to support it, and conclude with a paragraph that demonstrates how the essay showed the validity of its introduction.
For me, an essay must be consistent and it often means revising the introduction in light of the rest of the piece. It should all work together, and there should be nothing stated not somehow shown. There should be no fat, all muscle.
But, if you are writing an essay for school, follow the form the instructor demands, the purpose of those essays is to get a good score. Unless you have an exceptional instructor the form will be as, or more important, than the content.
I generally agree with what Yaakov has to say, but would offer up a different perspective.
I found the traditional school form for an essay -- namely the 11-sentence paragraph and the 5-paragraph essay -- significantly improved my writing ability, but because they were structured vehicles used to teach the very principles mentioned by Yaakov, namely an introduction that introduces the main points followed by providing support for each of those main points in turn, and finished with a conclusion that ties it all together. They also showed how those concepts formed, in essence, a scalable, recursive algorithm for building arbitrarily large persuasive documents (although at the time I recognized that this is what it provided, I had nowhere near the vocabulary to describe it using those words).
Fortunately I had instructors that DID understand that the goals were more important than blind adherence to the form. So they initially expected strict adherence but quickly relaxed that provided you adequately adhered to the goals.
What I've been surprised by over the years (though it might be little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy) is how often that 11-sentence paragraph format turns out to be the best fit. For those not familiar with that form, you have a paragraph that has a sentence that introduces three main points, followed by three groups of three sentences each in which the first sentence presents one of the main points followed by two sentences that support it, and then ending with a concluding sentence.
When editing stuff that I've written, usually with an eye toward condensing it, I have often realized that three points really is the most impactful number -- fewer and it becomes a bit superficial, while more and it becomes a bit daunting. Further, if you can't describe each of the main points adequately in one sentence, then you likely have a main point that is too narrow or too broad. Similarly, if it can't be adequately supported with two sentences, then it is likely either too obvious/trivial or it should probably be broken up into additional main points.
This is not to say that I support slavish conformance to that form for the sake of conforming to that form, only that the form has evolved for a reason; if we consider our writing in light of our understanding of those reasons, our writing will generally be the better for it and we may often discover that the result is something remarkably close to the "standard" form.
I found the traditional school form for an essay -- namely the 11-sentence paragraph and the 5-paragraph essay -- significantly improved my writing ability, but because they were structured vehicles used to teach the very principles mentioned by Yaakov, namely an introduction that introduces the main points followed by providing support for each of those main points in turn, and finished with a conclusion that ties it all together. They also showed how those concepts formed, in essence, a scalable, recursive algorithm for building arbitrarily large persuasive documents (although at the time I recognized that this is what it provided, I had nowhere near the vocabulary to describe it using those words).
Fortunately I had instructors that DID understand that the goals were more important than blind adherence to the form. So they initially expected strict adherence but quickly relaxed that provided you adequately adhered to the goals.
What I've been surprised by over the years (though it might be little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy) is how often that 11-sentence paragraph format turns out to be the best fit. For those not familiar with that form, you have a paragraph that has a sentence that introduces three main points, followed by three groups of three sentences each in which the first sentence presents one of the main points followed by two sentences that support it, and then ending with a concluding sentence.
When editing stuff that I've written, usually with an eye toward condensing it, I have often realized that three points really is the most impactful number -- fewer and it becomes a bit superficial, while more and it becomes a bit daunting. Further, if you can't describe each of the main points adequately in one sentence, then you likely have a main point that is too narrow or too broad. Similarly, if it can't be adequately supported with two sentences, then it is likely either too obvious/trivial or it should probably be broken up into additional main points.
This is not to say that I support slavish conformance to that form for the sake of conforming to that form, only that the form has evolved for a reason; if we consider our writing in light of our understanding of those reasons, our writing will generally be the better for it and we may often discover that the result is something remarkably close to the "standard" form.
The form can be a tool or an impediment.
Unfortunately, many instructors of writing are neither good writers nor good readers.
I have no problem with using structures to free other aspects, as Stravinsky said of orchestration, "the more I limit myself, the more free I am". Meaning that restricting the vehicle eliminated a lot of choices that would otherwise have to be made. You could say a similar thing about Haiku and other formal poetry.
As far as editing, it can be expressed by one of my favorite introductions to a talk, "I was asked to give a brief talk but didn't have time to prepare so this is going to be long".
So, I think we agree.
Unfortunately, many instructors of writing are neither good writers nor good readers.
I have no problem with using structures to free other aspects, as Stravinsky said of orchestration, "the more I limit myself, the more free I am". Meaning that restricting the vehicle eliminated a lot of choices that would otherwise have to be made. You could say a similar thing about Haiku and other formal poetry.
As far as editing, it can be expressed by one of my favorite introductions to a talk, "I was asked to give a brief talk but didn't have time to prepare so this is going to be long".
So, I think we agree.
I think we do, too.
I definitely agree with the comment about lack of time to prepare a brief talk results in a long talk.
When I give writing assignments (which isn't too often), I generally impose a pretty harsh length limit. They can be shorter, but can't be any longer. This is, of course, the opposite of what most students expect. At first they are excited that their paper is not to exceed, for example, two pages (in some specified font/spacing). That is, until they start trying to communicate all of the things that they feel they need to. When they ask for permission to make it longer, I show them a slew of publications that place similar hard requirements on length and that make it clear that if you go one word over that limit, your paper will be automatically rejected. So they have to start prioritizing their points, deciding which words are necessary and which are redundant, and figuring out how to rephrase a sentence to say the same thing in half the length. All of those tend to be very frustrating and time consuming, but the end result is usually well worth the effort.
When I first started writing professionally, I thought "how can I write such long pieces?", then as I went on I thought "boy, writing 1500 word columns is hard!". Then, I got book contracts and I thought "this is a 5,000 word feature! How can I make it 300 pages?"
Writing for magazines made all other writing a lot easier. If you can be concise you can expand your paragraphs, even into chapters sometimes. But if you don't know how to be concise, you will probably have a hard time communicating even if you are allowed as many words as you want.
I treat essays as outlines for much larger virtual works. I often write essays for myself, so I can understand my own thinking.
I'd rather people wrote essays instead of outlines if they are writing longer pieces, I think it's more valuable.
You forgot a negative sign before the 7th integral.You must follow this formula EXACTLY!
I do the same, especially for technical subjects. Writing an essay is an efficient way to expose holes in your own understanding, with the added advantage that -- once you've researched enough to complete the essay -- you have a short, readable summary of some topic of interest. I have hundreds of these -- my own personal Wikipedia -- on subjects ranging from ancient Greek history to transistor biasing to Gram-Schmidt orthonormalization.
When I started learning power electronics I decided on about day 4 that I was going to write a book about power electronics. As you said, it soon exposed a lot of gaps in my own knowledge which I was forced to fill. Now I think writing about something is actually more useful than reading about something.
The process of writing makes you think about what you read and it helps with retention.
William Zinsser has a good book on Writing to Learn. Then, don't forget to review Strunk and White's book, the Elements of Style.
Then there is Dale's Cone of Experience ... which I first saw tidbits of it in the Navy Manual for instruction when discussing the various delivery methods of teaching.
That instructional manual mentioned 5% retention for lectures. I think that may be true, however, recording lectures will allow you to pay attention, take important notes, and fill in the blanks later. That will increase your retention.
There was a time when a whole class failed an exam. The two instructors, I was one, sat and discussed why that occurred. First off, their ASVAB scores stated they were capable of learning this type material. So, if they were capable, what did we do that was wrong? Turns out, while the lecture was going on, they had their faces buried, writing notes, lots of notes, and not paying attention to what we were talking about. So, the solution we decided upon was to ensure there were outline notes that we used to teach, would now be a handout. There was room for additional notes, they paid attention to what was happening, with a great reduction in writing. Sometimes, the blame is with the instructional techniques and materials provided. They were more engaged, and that increased their retention as well.
Does this really work? Sure does. When my wife was in college, she outlined what I did and how easy it was to provide a handout from your power point presentation. The professor jumped on that concept and noticed the improvement.
William Zinsser has a good book on Writing to Learn. Then, don't forget to review Strunk and White's book, the Elements of Style.
Then there is Dale's Cone of Experience ... which I first saw tidbits of it in the Navy Manual for instruction when discussing the various delivery methods of teaching.
That instructional manual mentioned 5% retention for lectures. I think that may be true, however, recording lectures will allow you to pay attention, take important notes, and fill in the blanks later. That will increase your retention.
There was a time when a whole class failed an exam. The two instructors, I was one, sat and discussed why that occurred. First off, their ASVAB scores stated they were capable of learning this type material. So, if they were capable, what did we do that was wrong? Turns out, while the lecture was going on, they had their faces buried, writing notes, lots of notes, and not paying attention to what we were talking about. So, the solution we decided upon was to ensure there were outline notes that we used to teach, would now be a handout. There was room for additional notes, they paid attention to what was happening, with a great reduction in writing. Sometimes, the blame is with the instructional techniques and materials provided. They were more engaged, and that increased their retention as well.
Does this really work? Sure does. When my wife was in college, she outlined what I did and how easy it was to provide a handout from your power point presentation. The professor jumped on that concept and noticed the improvement.
Glenn Holland
- Joined Dec 26, 2014
- 703
And if you don;t follow this formula exactly, will there be a mushroom cloud rising above your class room?You must follow this formula EXACTLY!
Generally, structure ought be similar to any scientific publication:
1) Summary - four sentences telling about what this article is
2) Introduction/Motivation/Background/pre-History etc - just tell what was known and what was done before You, and why this thematic for You looked like interesting/actual/beneficial
3) Bit of theory if any needed and appropriate
4) problem situation which You may use to solve with current work, idea how to solve problem, methods, machinery, components, principles
5) exact calculus what how must work, circuit itself, circuit explanation, if appropriate - modelling screenshots, test-bed oscillograms etc Experimental Data
6) Discussion: what was good in Your job, what may been done better, Your advices to next experimentators in this theme. Short explaining why Humankind ought give a big Thanks for Your job with this matter, how it will become happy one day, when start to use Your thingy.
7) Attachment - if appropriate, larger tables, photos etc.
8) Acknowledgements: To my proffesor : name, surame, workplace, to Fund what funded a research, to my aunt/parent/teacher/wife inspiring me (this last serie better to omit).
1) Summary - four sentences telling about what this article is
2) Introduction/Motivation/Background/pre-History etc - just tell what was known and what was done before You, and why this thematic for You looked like interesting/actual/beneficial
3) Bit of theory if any needed and appropriate
4) problem situation which You may use to solve with current work, idea how to solve problem, methods, machinery, components, principles
5) exact calculus what how must work, circuit itself, circuit explanation, if appropriate - modelling screenshots, test-bed oscillograms etc Experimental Data
6) Discussion: what was good in Your job, what may been done better, Your advices to next experimentators in this theme. Short explaining why Humankind ought give a big Thanks for Your job with this matter, how it will become happy one day, when start to use Your thingy.
7) Attachment - if appropriate, larger tables, photos etc.
8) Acknowledgements: To my proffesor : name, surame, workplace, to Fund what funded a research, to my aunt/parent/teacher/wife inspiring me (this last serie better to omit).
