How Simplicity is your Greatest Ally in convincing Essay Writing!
Jul 12, 2024
How do we nail a good paragraph and sentence layout, and why is this important? How do we not tire or alienate our assessor?
One of the greatest rules of essay writing taught at university level, is consistency. We do not hear much more about essay writings in university handbooks, at least not in my experience. We do hear that an essay should be 'structured', whatever that means. We also become aware that arguments should be made in a kind of chronological order.
The aim of any essay it to have some kind of 'discovery'. That is, to have a literally, publishable academic paper. Papers are publishable when there is a clear discovery, something entirely new in the literature. At all levels before PhD, this discovery can take the form of an argument which has some unique spin on it. This spin can be your own opinion, based on your own research, which you present.
At all stages, the paper should be kept in a simple and consistent form. This assists the reader or assessor to understand the argument. If the assessor cannot easily understand your argument, you risk achieving a drastically lower grade. This can be despite actually formulating a clear and unique spin, a true contribution. In other words, any assessor can easily be mistaken, with tens or hundreds of papers to mark or oversee.
How to we keep a paper simple? We could start by making sure that it does not exceed the word count. We do not want to overwork the assessor. We want to make life as easy as possible for them, so that they become our friend and ally in delivering a good grade!
We could turn our attention towards how we should deliver sentences and paragraphs. Sentences can be long, if we choose, broken up by commas, dashes, even colons and semi-colons. All this is fine. However one idea should be kept in mind. There should just be one point made per sentence. This does not have to be the case all the time. It should be the case for much of the time if simplicity is our goal.
As to the issue of paragraphs, these can be half a page long if one chooses. A wise reader of many books, with shelves of history books in her living room, once told me that the purpose of the paragraph is to 'give the reader a rest.' Another purpose of the paragraph, and this is what I learned while writing and rewriting my PhD, is this. It is to foment, analyse and conclude a single argument.
The next paragraph following this might introduce another argument, critiquing what has just been argued by turning the question upside down.
Ultimately an essay could be structured as a kind of internal monologue between two or more parties, even arguing or opposing one another. The purpose of introducing a counterargument however, will always be to strengthen the core arguments of the essay by eliminating possibilities. “We have argued that the attack on Pearl Harbor was not preventable. Yet, suppose Macarthur was at Pearl Harbor on the day of the attack. Would his additional connections in the upper echelons have facilitated a pre-emptive strike against the Japanese?” Other possibilities like this, with evidence of other historians supplied, add excitement and can make for a captivating read.
By deconstructing and critiquing your own argument, even trying to tear it apart, you strengthen it.
So long as the essay is kept sufficiently simple in terms of paragraph and sentence structure, it becomes easier to argue at a higher level, in a way that will not tire or alienate the assessor.
I hope you have enjoyed these tidbits of information.
Charles Kos PhD.
Writing Tutor.