Writing an Essay

1. Writing an Essay

2. Whatis an essay? • An essay is a series of paragraphs that are meant to describe, argue, analyze or clarify a topic. • An essay is unified by its thesis, which is the central, controlling idea running through each paragraph. • An essay is generally written in three parts: • The introduction • Body paragraphs • The conclusion • In addition to those main parts, most essays will also include a Works Cited page – we’ll get to that later.

3. The Introduction • The introduction to the essay is often the most important part, because it: • captures the reader’s interest, • introduces the topic • states the thesis • outlines the plan. • If any of these parts are unclear or absent, the rest of the essay is weakened. • There is no strict order to how the introduction should be written. Some people insist that the thesis should be the first sentence of the introduction. Some insist that is should be the last. In reality, as long as it is clearly stated, it doesn’t matter where it occurs in the introduction.

4. The Body Paragraphs • The body paragraphs are all self-contained units that work together for a common purpose: supporting the thesis of the essay. There should be no repetition of thoughts from one body paragraph to the next – organization of your ideas is the key to success in the body paragraphs. • Between all paragraphs, you should provide transitional phrases – words that clearly lead from one idea into the next. Within paragraphs, you also need transitions that will help the ideas flow from one to the next. See the transitions page for examples. • One important note to remember: Just like the essay as a whole is unified by the thesis, each body paragraph is unified by a central idea.

5. The Body Paragraphs – cont’d • The development of ideas in body paragraphs works like this: (following this model will generate paragraphs of roughly 11 sentences) Transition Transition Conclude this paragraph; transition to next

6. CitingQuotations • Most of the proof that you use in your essay will come in the form of quotations or paraphrased ideas taken from the texts you have consulted to generate your ideas. • Whenever you quote or paraphrase an idea from another text, you must cite it. In English, we use MLA style for citations, which means that we make a parenthetical reference to the work we have used. • FOR EXAMPLE: • To refer to a book, put the author’s name and the page(s) used in parentheses: (Orwell 34). • To reference a Shakespearean play, put the Act, Scene, and line(s) used in parentheses: (3. 1. 23-25). • For an article without an author, put an abbreviated form of the title of the article in parentheses: (“Titanic” online) – Here ‘online’ indicates that the article is web-based

7. Citingquotationscont’d • Any works that you cite during your essay must be listed on your works cited page which is attached to your good copy. • To spell it out clearly (because a surprising number of students don’t understand how this works): • In your essay, you CITE the source of your information by putting relevant information in parentheses (as on the previous slide) • At the end of your essay, you indicate with a full MLA-style bibliographical entry the WORKS you have CITED. To NOT cite anything, but to still include a Works Cited page indicates a lack of understanding. • IF YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO A WORKS CITED PAGE IN MLA STYLE, SEARCH IN GOOGLE.

8. The Conclusion • The purpose of the conclusion is to summarize your argument or position and to end the essay with an idea that may open up new areas of thought on your topic. There are four things that you need to do in the conclusion: • Briefly summarize the ideas that have been presented in the body paragraphs • Remind the reader of the thesis of the essay, but avoid restating it exactly as it appears in your introduction • Be definite in tone. (After spending almost 1000 words developing your thoughts around a central idea, you don’t want to use words like ‘probably’ or ‘maybe’ with regard to your thesis). • Widen the perspective of your thesis by answering a ‘big picture’ question – provide the answer to ‘so what?’

9. Ok… nowwhat? • You now have a sense of what an essay IS, but there is a world of difference between merely writing an essay and writing a great essay. Follow these tips and pointers to be successful: • PROOFREAD. You should spend as much time revising and editing your essay as you do generating a first draft. Most students do a superficial edit of their first draft and submit it for marks. Proofreading can make a mediocre essay good and a good essay great. • PROOFREAD. You should spend as much time revising and editing your essay as you do generating a first draft. Most students do a superficial edit of their first draft and submit it for marks. Proofreading can make a mediocre essay good and a good essay great. (Yeah. I put it twice. It’s that important).

10. Follow the writing process. I recommend something like this: • Brainstorm ideas • Organize ideas by topic • Outline ideas (make points, find or use proofs, provide explanations) (it’s a good idea to conference with the teacher while doing your outline) • Do a rough copy (everything you do up to this point, I recommend you do by hand) • Type out a draft and print it. • Let your essay sit for a day or so. Try to not think about it. THEN revisit it and proofread with a less-stressed mind. You’d be amazed how many improvements you will find and be able to make. • Conference with the teacher. Show a ‘nearly-complete’ draft to the teacher and get feedback. Major errors can be caught here and fixed before you submit your essay. • Revise again and prepare your good copy or final draft. • Do not struggle to come up with thoughts and look for quotations to support them. Instead, find quotations and generate thoughts from them. • Keep track of the source of your quotations as you write them • Use the proofreading checklist that is provided for you.

11. Be sure that word choice is varied and precise, but don’t use the thesaurus to find words which are unfamiliar to you in the hope that by using them your essay will seem smarter. It won’t. • Use transitions to move between ideas within paragraphs and between paragraphs. Do not use the same transitions all the time, and in a senior class, your transitions should be more sophisticated than just one word. (e.g. ‘Second’ is not as effective a transition as ‘To examine this idea further…’) • Do not use figurative language or any phrasing that expects your reader to interpret your thoughts. Effective writing does not require interpretation. • Employ economical use of words – do not use 50 words to say what can be more easily said in 15. • E.g. “While the dew was still fresh on the grass and the robin’s belly not yet full, they embarked on a sojourn to The Big Smoke – Canada’s biggest city – fully prepared to part with their hard-earned dollars and by doing so to make the return journey awash with worldly goods.” • OR • That morning, they went to Toronto to shop.

12. Incorporatingquotations • Quotations are used when you use another person’s idea word-for-word in your writing. Whenever a quotation is used, you must be certain to: • put it in quotation marks • write it exactly as it appears in its original state, context notwithstanding • incorporate it into a sentence and do not have it as a sentence of its own • use it to support an idea and not as an idea on its own • cite your source according to MLA style • For example: • Orsino’s most significant transformation comes when he falls in love with Viola because when he does, he “is able to transcend appearances and love a real woman, not an idealized image” (Epstein 137). • Things to note about this example: • the period comes after the citation (and is not in the quotation itself – even if the quotation itself ends with a period) • the quotation fits within the natural flow of the sentence (read aloud, you wouldn’t hear a shift into the quotation)

13. Incorporatingquotationscont’d • Sometimes, however, you may need to slightly alter a quotation in order for it to make contextual sense in your work. When you do, put any changes in [brackets]. • For example: • Twelfth Night presents characters who portray extremes of emotion: “he is fixated on love; she, on sorrow” (Epstein 136). • * In this sentence, we don’t know who “he” and “she” are, but this problem is easily fixed: • Twelfth Night presents characters who portray extremes of emotion: “[Orsino] is fixated on love; [Olivia], on sorrow” (Epstein 136).

14. Incorporatingquotationscont’d You may also find that the parts of a statement that you want to use have extra unnecessary words within them. When this happens, use an ellipsis ( … ) to represent the material you have deleted: For example, your original statement might read; Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are celebrated because they are rich with the essence of humanity, as he “always adopts a complex perspective. He’s dedicated to the idea that love is serious and essential to human happiness. But at the same time, he enjoys mocking young lovers – pointing out their antics, their extravagant posturings, and, above all, the arrogance of their belief that no one has ever felt the way they do. He examines the madness and delusions of love even as he celebrates its enchantment” (Epstein 77). * Here, the quotation is much too long, as the intended idea could be much shorter: Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are celebrated because they are rich with the essence of humanity, as he “always adopts a complex perspective. … He examines the madness and delusions of love even as he celebrates its enchantment” (Epstein 77).

15. Incorporatingquotationscont’d • If you do use an ellipsis, remember that the parts of the sentence that you still use must actually be part of a proper sentence. Don’t make the reader guess at what’s missing – what is NOT there should be irrelevant because what is left over still makes sense. Quotations, because they are meant to support your ideas, should be kept short. As a rule of thumb, know that the longer the quotation, the less clear your intention for using it is likely to be. If you MUST use a lengthy quotation, use proper format for doing so: • Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are celebrated because they are rich with the essence of humanity, as he • always adopts a complex perspective. He’s dedicated to the idea that love is serious and essential to human happiness. But at the same time, he enjoys mocking young lovers – pointing out their antics, their extravagant posturings, and, above all, the arrogance of their belief that no one has ever felt the way they do. He examines the madness and delusions of love even as he celebrates its enchantment (Epstein 77). • * note that this lengthy quotation is • Indented • Not in quotation marks • not in quotation marks

16. Incorporatingquotationscont’d It is also possible that you might want to use a series of quotations in a sentence which each come from the same source. As there is only one citation needed, just put it at the end of the sentence after all of the quotations: Shakespeare’s authorship has been questioned because “a glove maker’s son lacks … breeding”, “very little is known about [him]”, his “parents … were probably illiterate” and because his handwriting “appears to be the laborious scrawl of an illiterate” (Epstein 277-278).

17. Incorporatingquotationscont’d • Some other tips: • if a quotation appears in the middle of a sentence, cite your source before the next punctuation (comma, colon, semi-colon, period) • when quoting Shakespeare, do not quote the character names as part of the text (e.g. “Orsino: If music be the food of love, play on”; instead, you need to contextualize the use of your quotation to make it effective (e.g. The play begins with Orsino ordering “If music be the food of love, play on” (1. 1. 1). • And oh yeah… when citing Shakespeare, as long as you are only writing about one play (and until you are in university, you won’t be comparing two Shakespeare plays in one essay), cite the act, scene, and line like so : (3. 2. 24-25) – which means act 3, scene 2, lines 24-25. Do NOT cite it by using Shakespeare’s name and the page number like you do for other authors. • Do not use a quotation merely to repeat the point you’ve made. In essay writing, you must employ economical use of words. Repetition is bad form.