WRITING A HISTORY ESSAY

Transcription

1 WRITING A HISTORY ESSAY 1) Establish context of the text. This step isn t necessarily one that you need to do in the text of your paper, but you need to do it at least mentally before you write. First, determine the genre of the source (is it a govt. report, political treatise, list, self-help book, manual for the slaying of dragons, etc.), as this will influence the content and structure of the document more than any other factor. Second, discern the author s intent in writing and the historical moment/context of the source, even if you don t explicitly address it in your paper the historical background will dictate how you treat the sources. Remember that the word context means with the text, and so when you write about a text, your discussion should be informed by what s around the document. 2) What does it say? Now that we have established the context of the work, figure out what the author is actually saying. At this point, you should also consider the structure of the work: in what order are topics discussed? Does the order create a natural flow for the argument? How does the author phrase his or her argument? If the author had used other words or a different structure, would it have changed the nature of the argument? What does the chosen structure and vocabulary of the text give the author in terms of rhetorical construction? If the source uses a word, term, or idea you don t know, for the love of all that is good and holy, look it up. God invented Google for a reason. 3) Assumptions. Consider the fundamental assumptions an author is making and any biases or predilections he or she might have. Note: a bias does not inherently mean that an author is in error or should not be taken seriously. For example, it is a poor essay which rants that an author is misogynistic and hates women simply because he compares them unfavorably to men (mostly because it shows your own socially-acceptable bias with regard to these attitudes). A stronger writer will take the text on its own terms and attempt to determine (while avoiding passing judgment) why the author of the text takes this particular stance. 4) Forming the Question. You ve read your texts carefully hopefully several times with varying degrees of attention and it has now come time to form your question. Note that this is a question, not a thesis. It is an utterly ridiculous notion that everything you write must be driven by a statement or declaration. Try instead to form a cogent, thoughtful, focused question that you can seriously and honestly begin to answer in the space allotted. What the question is and where it comes from are usually up to you. The best place to start would be the first three steps of this guide. a. Open essays. These are essays for which there is no given prompt question or the provided prompt is more general and open-ended. Is there something about the context, content, or fundamental assumptions of the text that puzzles or intrigues you? Did you stumble upon a seemingly unobvious point as you studied the construction of the source s rhetoric or the structure of the author s argument? These can make great thesis questions/statements if your professor has not provided you with a specific prompt. b. Closed essays. These are essays for which there is a specific prompt or question(s) to be answered. There s still a great deal of room for creativity here. Apply the same

2 analytical techniques to the prompt as you do to the source text. Are there presuppositions contained within the prompt? What is the ultimate purpose of this exercise (greater familiarity with a historical period, questioning of assumptions, comparison of two similar texts, etc. trust us, there is always a reason behind the prompt, even if you are not aware of it)? If it is a multi-part prompt or there are optional components, how do they fit together? Do they suggest an organization or structure? If so, why that particular structure? In other words, trust no one and always question your instructions. 5) Outline, outline, outline. Other than suggesting you write multiple drafts of every essay which you should do, but let s not be naïve here this is the first way to make sure you turn out a quality product. Always sit down for at least five to ten minutes and sketch out potential sub-topics and a structure/organization for your paper, even if the final essay is only a few pages long. We would also strongly urge doing this by hand with a pencil and paper; typing it out on a computer allows you to put your thoughts down more quickly, but it limits the vital thinking that happens while you physically write out words. It may sound silly, but only advanced writers should ever attempt this step on a computer. 6) Openings. Avoid opening with sweeping generalizations, bland truisms, tired clichés, or lots of generalized background material (particularly if your professor provided you with that information in the first place). Doing so weakens your paper by making you sound like a regurgitated encyclopedia article and bores your reader. Try opening with the main point of your essay, normally found in the second, third, or even last sentence of your first paragraph or cut the first paragraph entirely and have a one sentence intro you tack onto the beginning of your second paragraph you know, the part where you actually get to the point of whatever it is you re talking about. 7) Body. Sometimes it helps to write this section before the intro, but if you have a thesis question rather than a statement, this might not necessarily be the case. The goal for this section is clarity; always strive to have a structured, ordered argument or discussion (this is where outlining comes in handy). Don t worry too much about being pretty or subtle until you have mastered the art of clear writing. A few tips: a. Quotation. Do NOT make your paper a stringing together of quotations. Only direct quote when absolutely necessary. It is never permissible to spend an entire paper regurgitating the content of a source to your reader, particularly if the reader is the one who assigned that source to you in the first place. But it s evidence! you cry. Yes, but historians are about analyzing evidence, not merely accumulating it. Otherwise we d all be antique dealers and museum curators. b. Answering the question. Remember the question we formulated in Part 4? I cannot count the number of essays I have graded which pose a question in their first paragraph and then proceed NOT to answer it. Likewise, if given a closed prompt, many students will write an essay that doesn t actually answer the question posed. Our advice here? Answer the question. 8) Conclusions. Many of the same rules that apply to openings also apply here. Contrary to everything you ve ever been told or thought about writing a formal essay, a conclusion is

3 NOT supposed to be bland. Yes, it is good to briefly recap the structure or main points of your essay, but that is not all a conclusion is supposed to do. Strive to actually CONCLUDE something, which is why posing a thesis question is so wonderful after setting out your evidence and argument in the body of the paper, the conclusion is your final answer. However, there are pitfalls here as well. Avoid introducing lots of new evidence into your conclusion as most of that belongs in the body of the essay. And, as with openings, avoid ending with sweeping generalizations or drawing some moralizing life lesson or comparison with the modern era. Such techniques make your writing seem trite, irrational, and more often as not will make your professor roll his or her eyes at yet another undergraduate trying to sound like a Zen master. In the words of the immortal Bob Newhart, STOP IT. 9) EDIT. NEVER EVER turn in your first draft. It will always be second-rate work, and it will always have a stupid error in it somewhere that you could have caught if you took more than five minutes to read it between the time you printed it out and the time you handed it in. Also, always print out your essay and physically mark it up with a pen. Trust us on this. We ve written countless essays in our careers, and you will always do a better job of selfediting and catching errors if you read a physical copy of your writing. Better yet, have someone else read your essay. If you have fears about other people judging you and saying mean things about your writing, GET OVER IT. People will be judging you for the rest of your life, so now is a good time to get used to it. The best thing you can do is have someone who is a good writer and will be brutally honest read your work for you. (Likewise, if you are asked to read someone else s work, be honest. If the essay is bad, you have a moral obligation to politely let him or her know so that he or she doesn t turn it in, look like an idiot, and get a bad grade. The Golden Rule applies here.)

4 COMMON WRITING MISTAKES The following are a list of common and preventable writing errors. Your professor in this or any class does not want to have to take the time to point them out, and you will most likely get counted off for them, particularly since you ve been given them in an easy-to-follow list. 1) It is/there are/this/these are stated/shown in this source/document/writing. If you can t think of a better, non-pronoun-based subject for your sentence or subordinate clause, chances are you probably don t know what you re actually trying to say. Pronouns create distance and weaken any sentence in which they are employed as subjects. Such phrases are often accompanied by bad passives. Also, it s considered bad form to refer to the source AS a source, and the use of the word writing as a synonym for work or document fell out of use in the mid-nineteenth century. 2) Bad passives. The passive is not inherently evil or bad there are times where you just can t get around using it or using the active sounds wrong stylistically. However, you should avoid it as much as possible as poorly used passives only call attention to the fact that they are passive and distract from the overall impact of the sentence. Moreover, passives remove agency from your work and weaken your analysis. Wondering if a verbal construction is passive? Try adding by Steve after the verb. If it makes sense, it s passive. 3) Judgy-ness. Even if the source author is a hypocritical, lying bastard/genocidal maniac/pillager/tax evader/sheep worrier, your analysis should SHOW him or her to be so. Simply telling your reader that you believe it to be so is unnecessary, inelegant, and usually means you haven t engaged the text on a deep analytical level to discern how its rhetoric functions. You aren t here to pass judgment upon the sources, as such judgment indicates the imposition of your own value systems (which are just as culturally relative and idiosyncratic) on the past. Realize that in a hundred years time people will be saying how stupid and backward you were. Don t believe me? Watch MTV. 4) Quote dumping. Dumping whole quotes into your prose without properly contextualizing, analyzing, or even integrating them. If the quote isn t integrated, I begin to doubt whether you understood it; you have to draw conclusions for your reader, because I am a dumb (albeit well-informed) little lamb. 5) Sweeping generalizations and unfounded assumptions. Avoid opening a paper with a gross generalization since the dawn of time, man has always valued X, Europeans during this era always were Z, vampire sparkliness has long been established, etc. Likewise, claiming that all of group X felt such-and-such a way about group Y based on your reading of ONE source is neither academically rigorous nor sound reasoning. Use words like suggest and perhaps in drawing your conclusions/ insinuations. 6) Grammatical and stylistic slovenliness. Grammar check is a marvelous but imperfect tool, which is why we still require you to take English classes. However, there are many screw-ups that it will not catch, particularly clichés, colloquialisms, and thesaurus-happy

5 writing (the name given to when you over-indulge in the Shift-F7 key combination because you want to make your writing sound smarter to mask your poor effort). Other, more particular annoyances of ours here include: Very. 99% of the time, you can leave this word out. Incorrect usage of its/it s. Not sure? Replace with it is to see if it makes sense. If it does, it s the latter. Clearly/obviously/naturally/surely. If anything in history were ever clear, obvious, or natural, we would just hand you a book and say go read this ; see also the section on judgy-ness. Using needless words. Known in Strunk and White s Elements of Style as Rule 13 never use three words when one will suffice. For example, never use the phrase the fact that as it doesn t mean anything. Use of the first and second person and other informal writing quirks, e.g., I, we, our, you, your. Be old school about this. This is a formal academic essay, not a blog. Time period/back then/at the time. All are inelegant ways to refer to the past. Ending sentences with prepositions. As Churchill once said, it is a thing up with which I shall not put. Capitalizing nouns which are not proper nouns. You are not Germans Democracy, Capital, and Spaceship do not need to be capitalized. Misused punctuation. It is high time you learned the rules of comma and semicolon usage. For the latter, whatever comes after a semi-colon MUST be a complete sentence. The only exception to this is when you use it to set off items in a series which have internal commas that might confuse meaning. Also, s is NEVER used to create a plural noun. Failing to distinguish between your voice and the source s. The sentence Edward Cullen had no flaws requires the modifying phrase according to his vapid girlfriend. Novel. There is a strange tendency among college students to call any long prose work a novel. This is wrong. A novel is a long work of literary fiction, with characters and plot development. It is not synonymous with the word book. 7) Fruitcaking/lack of impact/significance. Fruitcaking is when you give back a text either the essay prompt or the source without altering it with your own thoughts and analysis. I do not need or want you to spend an entire intro paragraph turning the prompt question into a declarative statement. Use that space to lay out the specific aspects of the text you want to discuss in your essay. Nor do you need to spend time telling me how the author says X, then talks about Y, and concludes by moving on to Z. Such writing (which is, by the way, the correct usage of that word) merely indicates that you have done the reading (or some part of it) but without comprehension. I have read these sources; I do not need you to tell me what they say. Moreover, anytime you do choose to include an observation about the text, you need to explain why that observation is significant or important. For every declaration you make, your essay should also answer the question of so what? (This is known as impacting your argument.)