Tips for Writing a College Essay
Here are some tips on how to organize and write your essay.
Thesis
Most of the essays you will be writing will have a thesis and support. Such an essay will have a thesis statement, or main idea of the essay, as well as evidence that develops or supports that thesis. Every paragraph should work to support your thesis. Your essay will also have a short introductory paragraph, which orients the reader to the subject and contains the thesis statement. Your conclusion will be a separate paragraph that might rephrase the thesis (to prove you have done your job), and perhaps even place this entire exercise in a larger context.
Paragraph Organization
Your paper should have at least five paragraphs: one for the introduction, one for the conclusion, and at least three paragraphs for support. Each paragraph should be indented by five spaces (the Tab Key also does this). Each paragraph should have a topic sentence. The topic sentence is a bit like the thesis: it is a declaration of what the paragraph is going to say. Every sentence in that paragraph should relate to that topic sentence, just as each paragraph should be related to the overall thesis.
Tone
Your paper should assume an audience that is intelligent but essentially ignorant of the subject matter. That means you must introduce historical characters who are not commonly known with first and last names, and a few brief words on who they are. From then on you should refer to them by the last name, rather than their first. For example, “George Marshall, Secretary of State, and later known as the father of the Marshall Plan, had been a successful military man. Marshall proved to be less adept as a diplomat, however, as his mission to negotiate with Communist forces and Nationalists in China after World War II was a failure.”
Support
You must provide documentation (evidence) for all words or ideas that are not your own. Certain information is considered common knowledge and does not need to be documented by a citation, but if an average person does not immediately know it, you do. For example, George Washington being the first president of the United States does not have to be documented; that he died at the age of 67 does. In order to inform your reader of the source of your information, you must provide a citation: a citation is a parenthetic source marking within the text that refers to the full reference in the list of references at the end of the paper. For example, if you were quoting something, you would cite the source this way (emphasis added):
“Unlike liberals of the twenty-first century, the most liberal-minded of the eighteenth century tended to see society as beneficent and government as malevolent” (Wood, 105). Your list of references would then contain the full reference of the book from which you quoted:
Wood, Gordon S. The American Revolution: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2002. Print.
(Notice that the paragraph should be a “hanging indent,” which is required for the list of references. For more on MLA style, consult the Purdue Owl, which is linked on the course web site.)
It is very important to properly cite your sources to avoid committing plagiarism.
Re-write and Revise
No one gets it “right” the first time. Writing is a skill that will improve with practice, but not even the most skilled author can write something perfectly the first time. When your first draft is finished, re-read it. (This is often best done aloud, since your mind often “inserts” words that are missing when reading it silently.) Revise the paper. Make the arguments and evidence sharper. If you have a friend whose judgment you trust, have them read your paper. What seems clear to you might not be so clear to them, which indicates that it might need to be rewritten.
Reading to Write
The best way to learn how to write well is to read widely and consciously. By reading widely (from various sources—newspapers, magazines, books, etc.) you will be exposed to a variety of different styles; by reading them with a mind to these different styles you will be reading consciously (i.e., conscious of those differences).