Some notes on Essay

Writing
Study Patterns

1. No-one can lay down rules about

how to study, but it is worth
working out a rhythm that suits
you, and that will enable you to
make the best of your time as a
student. This includes deciding
when and where to read as well
as how to plan and write an
essay. Some people find they are
at their best in the mornings
while other prefer to work late
into the night, so it is a good idea
to decide whether you are a lark
or an owl and plan accordingly.
Can you concentrate best in the
Library, or do you prefer to work
at home? Do you work best in
long, uninterrupted blocks of
time, or do you prefer to work in
short bursts, with frequent
breaks? You also need to
recognise that your friends’
rhythms may not be the same as
yours: some people produce
good work by studying through
the night sustained on black
coffee, others do not.
2. Try to embark on an essay in a
positive frame of mind. The best
way to do this is to begin work
well in advance of the deadline
and then you will have time to
enjoy your reading. Make sure
you allow time to think as well
as read; talk about the topic with
others, mull it over, re-read your
notes, follow-up further
references. Writing an essay is
like cooking; you may be able to
throw everything together
quickly in the end, but unless
you have decent ingredients it
 won’t taste very good.

3. You should have been shown

how to find material in the
Library, but if not, there will be
someone willing to help with
information at the issue desk
nearby. But you need first to be
sure what material you want. If
the reading list is not clear to you
, then ask the tutor who prepared
it to clarify which material is
relevant for your particular essay.
Some students seem to feel that
it is ‘cheating’ to talk with the
tutor about an essay in
 preparation. On the contrary,
such discussions can be a useful
part of the learning process.

4. You will need to decide how

much reading to do. A common
difficulty is that students read so
much and take so many notes
that they exhaust their interest in
the topic before they come to try
to order their thoughts. If you
keep the essay question in mind
all the time you should find ideas
occurring to you as you read, and
then it is easier to decide when to
stop reading and begin
 organising these ideas into an
essay.

5. Oddly enough (and this will

vary from subject to subject) you
may have to learn how not to
read books. Unless your study is
based on closely on particular
texts, you will find that you
have not enough time to read
books all through. Tutors may
want you to look at a number of
different sources and you have to
develop strategies to for finding
what you need. Some books are
like annotated bibliographies, in
 which case you will probably
need to concentrate on one pithy
section and then follow up the
leads in its footnotes. For books
with a more extended treatment
of a theme try starting with the
Conclusions, and then use the
chapter heading and index to
direct you to the most relevant
sections.
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6. Taking notes from your reading
is a rather personal process, but it
is important to try and develop a
system that works well for you.
It may be helpful to think about
 why you are reading something,
and in relation to writing an
essay there are perhaps three
main reasons:

a. to collect information and

ideas,
b. to find some good
quotations, and
c. to trigger ideas of your
own.

In the case of (a) the best way to take

notes is to read the passage or
section right through and then
summarise the key points in your
own words. This is a good basis
from which to return to the text for
(b), to select appropriate quotations.
Obviously you should note down the
ideas or comments of your own as
they occur to you. When taking
notes you should try to avoid
extensive quotations. At the time it
often seems easier to copy out vast
amounts of material than to select
and summarise, but it only postpones
thinking. NEVER mark a Library
book. It destroys the book for future
reader and it is a sign of lazy, sloppy
thinking.
7. It is extremely important that
when re-reading your notes you
can easily identify what type of
notes they are. Are they your
précis of the content? Are they
quotations? Or are they your own
ideas? The simplest system is to
put quotation marks around
quotations, and to put your own
ideas in brackets perhaps with
your initials (like alterations on a
cheque), but some people prefer
other methods, such as different
coloured pens. In both cases you
should include details of the
relevant page numbers alongside
 your notes. Plagiarism (passing
off someone else’s work as your
own), is a serious offence (see
Appendix A on
Acknowledging your Sources).
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Writing the Essay

There can be no hard and fast rules about

how to write a good essay, but the
following points should help to guide you
in the right direction.
8. To plan or not to plan. People
construct essays in many
different ways but it will help
you if you identify which way
suits you best. Try starting with
a plan or diagram of some sort
which maps out the sequence
of ideas, perhaps in answer to
a series of imagined questions
such as: What exactly is the
essay about? How am I going
to tackle it? What evidence am
I going to bring in to support
my augments? Is there
supplementary material which
could be brought in to
strengthen or challenge the
argument? Where does all this
get us in the end? If you find
that you can follow your plan
fairly closely as you write your
essay then you are probably a
one-draft or two-draft person.
Some people find that even
with a detailed plan their ideas
only become clear as they
write, and the finished essay
bears little resemblance to the
original plan. If you are one of
those people who don’t find out
what you are writing about
until you’ve written it, then
don’t agonise over the commas
in the opening paragraph; you
are a two-draft person, or even
a multi-draft person. Word
processors make the business
of redrafting easy, but ironically
for some people they can also
make writing a good essay
harder because it is so easy to
get bogged down in the detail
instead of letting the thoughts
 and line of argument flow.

9. A good essay is a selective

analysis. Before starting to
write you may have gathered
pages and pages of notes but
the skill lies in selecting the
evidence, organising the
material into an argument, and
arguing the point concisely. If
you find yourself going over the
word limit (usually 2,500
words, about 8-10 double
spaced typed pages), you are
probably including too much
material which does not
contribute to the argument or
exegesis. If your essay is too
long you may be penalised. It
 is worth remembering that
quantity is not the same as
quality.

10. To be good an essay needs to

be focused. If you have been
given a question to answer,
then answer it. If you have
been given a more open-ended
essay topic or title you will
probably find it helpful to frame
a suitable question to answer
as this will help you organise
your thoughts and your
material into an argument.
Keep the question or title in
your mind as you write. Ask
yourself how each paragraph or
section relates to the question.
 Students seldom recognise that
considerable thought has gone
into the setting of essay titles,
to define a field, to give scope,
but also to delimit the amount
of discussion required.

11. Think of your reader. It helps

the reader if the essay has an
introduction which raises in a
general way the kinds of issues
with which the essay will be
concerned, and give the reader
some kind of guidance as to
the sequence in which they will
be tackled. Then in the body of
the essay you should develop
your material, always trying to
make the links between the
 different ideas as clear as
possible. And finally, there
should be a set of concluding
remarks which sum up rather
then introduce new material.
Don’t worry about trying to
come to tidy, tight conclusions.
If there are ambiguities, or if in
the end you feel that the
question posed cannot be fully
resolved then it is better to say
so.

12. An essay should have an

argument, a thesis or a point of
view. You need to convince
your reader, and to do so is
much easier if you are
convinced yourself. It is
 possible, but not so easy, to
write a good, convincing essay
defending a thesis with which
you yourself disagree. But it is
almost impossible to write a
good essay if you have not
made up your mind and have
no clear point of view about the
topic. Having said that, you
should aim to convince your
reader with evidence and
argument, not with a harangue.
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13. It may help with the structure
if you give your essay
informative side headings. Even
if you do not formally write in
these headings it is the mark of
 a good, readable discussion
that you could write them in –
or your reader could – if
necessary. This means that
your text needs recognisable
paragraphs, each of which
contains a theme or idea. And
when the theme changes, so
does the paragraph.

14. If you are dealing with

numerical data, you should
make sure that any tables you
present have a self-explanatory
title, so that they can be read
without the accompanying text
if necessary. However, the
tables themselves will rarely be
self-explanatory, so you should
 explain in the body of your
essay what you think the table
shows, and how it relates to
your argument.

15. You can make your essay

easier to read, and more
convincing, by presenting data
in more imaginative ways. Try
not to use a single table to
present a number of different
types of comparison; instead,
produce fresh tables for each
dimension of the argument.
And don’t present the data in
such a way that the reader has
to do a lot of work on it (eg,
calculating percentages,
proportions or trends) in order
 to see how it supports your
argument; do the work
yourself, and use the table to
present the results. You should
also ask yourself whether a
table is the best way to present
your data. A pie-chart, a
histogram, a strip-chart, or a
graph might help you to
communicate the same
information more directly and
convincingly to your reader.

16. One of the common weakness

in essay writing is the
assumption that quoting an
author whose opinion agrees
with your own counts as
evidence in your favour. But
 your reader will be asking ‘Why
should I accept your view, or
for that matter the view of the
authors you quote?’ To answer
that question, you need to
mention some supporting
arguments or data. If you don’t
have any, then you should not
try to hide the fact. Instead,
include it in your essay;
comment on its absence, and
say what you’d like to know,
what the evidence would look
like, why you think there isn’t
enough data.

17. A different weakness is the

tendency some students have
to compile masses of evidence,
 but without telling the reader
what it means or why it is
being amassed. If, as you are
writing, you keep in mind the
question ‘Why are you telling
me all this?’, it should never
occur to your reader.

18. If you get really stuck, try and

decide where the problem lies.
Do you have too much
material? Because you find
material interesting doesn’t
mean to say it is going to be
relevant to the essay question.
Do you feel you have lost the
thread of the idea? Perhaps
your approach to the question
changed as you were writing. It
is often helpful to try and
explain your ideas to a friend,
or if you have time, put your
essay aside for a day or two.
Sometimes when you come
back to it after a break it
suddenly seems much clearer.
If you can’t resolve the
problem yourself then you can
always go and see your tutor
about it. S/he cannot write
your essay for you but will be
able to help you by, perhaps,
clarifying the question,
suggesting a different line of
enquiry or reassuring you that
your approach is valid.
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19. There are a number of
conventions you should observe
about how to organise and
present your quotations,
footnotes, and bibliography.
See the detailed discussion
in Appendix A on
Acknowledging your Sources. It
will also help if you observe the
following stylistic conventions:

a. Always put your name,

the name and code of
your course, and the
title at the beginning, or
on a coversheet.
b. Number each page of
the essay, and make the
 margins wide enough on
both sides of the page
for your tutor’s
comments. Using double
spacing, and one side of
the paper only, is also
advisable.
c. If at all possible, word
process your essay; it
will be much easier to
read. Most departments
require this.
d. Short quotations (a few
lines, or less than 50
words), can be run on
as a part of the main
text, in inverted
commas; longer
 quotations should be
indented from the text
(in which case they can
be single spaced, and
there’s no need for
inverted commas).
e. If you want to omit part
of a sentence or
paragraph that you are
quoting, indicate this by
spaced dots . . . (this is
called ‘ellipsis’).
f. Number your footnotes
continuously, rather
than by the page.

20. Always read through a finished

essay carefully. Make sure it is
within the word limit, and
correct errors of spelling and
punctuation. Don’t rely on the
spell checker on your word
processor; a spell checker
cannot tell you if you mean
‘their’ or ‘there’, or ‘start’ or
‘smart’. A good way of checking
for problems with syntax and
punctuation is to read your
essay through out loud. It
should flow reasonably
smoothly, and the length and
structure of your sentences
should allow you time to
breathe. If English is not your
first language, try and get a
native English speaker to read
your essay through for you. An
 uncorrected essay looks
unloved, and carelessness in
the writer can hardly stimulate
a tutor to care about what you
have written.

21. Keep a copy of your essay

when you hand it in, in case of
mishaps or second marking.

22. If your essay seems to be late

in being returned to you, don’t
be afraid to ask your tutor
about it. Most of us would
expect, all things being equal,
to return essays within a
fortnight of getting them.
23. When your essay is returned,
make sure that you don’t just
concentrate on the overall
mark, but spend some time
trying to understand how your
tutor’s marginal and concluding
comments explain why essay
got the mark it did. If you still
find it puzzling, or if you don’t
understand some of the
comments, you should talk to
your tutor about it. The best
time to do this is probably
during your tutor’s ‘office
hours’, a period of time each
week when s/he will be in the
office and available to talk to
students about anything
relating to their coursework. As
 a general rule, students make
far less use of this important
opportunity for one-to-one
contact than they could.

24. If you can’t sort out your

worries about the mark in this
way, most departments have a
system of double marking for
essays. This means that
students can ask that their
essay be marked by another
member of staff in the
department, and the initial
mark either confirmed or
altered. But be warned: the
second marker may judge that
your essay should have
received a lower mark than the
 one your tutor originally gave
you.

25. Finally, you should remember

that none of these rules and
pieces of advice are absolute.
Good essays come in a variety
of shapes and forms, and one
of the pleasures of essay
writing lies in experimenting
with different approaches to
the task. We hope,
nonetheless, that these
guidelines will be of some help.