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What is good writing?

About this free course

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of level 1 study in English Literature and Creative Writing: www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q86.

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Contents

- Introduction

- Learning outcomes

- 1 The importance of writing

- 1.1 Why write?

- 1.2 What is an essay?

- 1.3 Developing your essay-writing ability

- 2 What does an essay look like?

- 2.1 A lack of insight?

- 2.2 Looking at other people's essays

- 2.3 Analysing Philip's essay

- 2.4 Analysing Hansa's essay

- 2.5 Other aspects of writing

- 2.6 How good are Philip's and Hansa's essays?

- 3 What is a good essay?

- 3.1 A sharper focus

- 3.2 Answering the question

- 3.3 Drawing on course material

- 3.4 Showing a good grasp of ideas

- 3.5 Presenting a coherent argument

- 3.6 Taking an objective, analytical stance

- 3.7 Writing clearly

- 4 Conclusion

- 5 Dictionaries/companions to arts study

- 5.1 Subject areas

- Keep on learning

- Acknowledgements

Introduction

When you write down an account of your ideas for other people to read, you have to explain yourself particularly carefully. You cannot make the mental leaps you do when you talk with others or think about things by yourself. This makes writing probably the most challenging aspect of studying. This free course, What makes good writing?, will help you to develop the basic skills and confidence required for writing by explaining what is involved in good writing and why it is so important.

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of level 1 study in English Literature and Creative Writing.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

- discuss why writing is so important

- understand and use critically the main criteria of good essay-writing

- be aware of the basic technical and stylistic considerations involved in writing.

1 The importance of writing

1.1 Why write?

Of all aspects of studying, writing is probably the most challenging. That is because when you write down an account of your ideas for other people to read you have to explain yourself particularly carefully. You can't make the mental leaps you do when you are in conversation with others or thinking about something for yourself. To make your meaning clear, using only words on a page, you have to work out exactly what you think about the subject. You come to understand it for yourself in the process of explaining it to others. So writing makes you really grapple with what you are studying. In other words, it forces you into a very deep and powerful kind of learning. That is what makes it so demanding. When you write you are really putting ideas to use.

In writing you have done previously you may have ‘taken in’ ideas from books, articles, TV and so on. But it is only when you can use these ideas to say something for yourself that you have really ‘learned’ them. Ideas only become a properly functioning part of your thought-processes when you can call on them as you communicate with other people. It is very valuable to debate issues with other students in discussion groups. But an even more exacting way of using ideas in argument is to do it in writing.

A key part of using ideas effectively is to be able to write clearly and persuasively. In our society this is a very valuable skill. It puts you on a much better footing with other people if you can present your point of view forcefully in writing. Perhaps you started out on your studies with the idea only of learning more about art, music or history, but you may discover that one of the most valuable things you gain is the ability to write much more effectively. Whether you start with a rather weak writing style or a fairly well-developed one, there is always plenty of progress to be made.

So writing tends to be both the most demanding and the most rewarding part of any course of study. And, because it contributes so much to what you learn, you have to put a lot of your time and energy into it.

1.2 What is an essay?

The different arts and humanities subjects make their own particular demands on you. You may have to do various kinds of writing – diaries, logs, project reports, case-studies – or even write creatively. In this chapter, though, we are going to concentrate on the essay because that is by far the most common form of writing in arts and humanities subjects.

The word ‘essay’ originally meant ‘an attempt’ or try at something, but now it usually means a short piece of writing on a specific subject. It is a complete piece of writing that can stand alone – it must make sense to the reader ‘in itself’. You are given an essay title or question, which sets out the isues you need to address, and a word limit of around one or two thousand words – possibly a bit shorter to begin with. You work from the title, putting together an argument that leads the reader towards a conclusion. Your tutor marks your essay, making comments not only about what you have said but also the way you have structured and written the essay. These ‘criticisms’ are meant to help you develop both your grasp of the subject and your powers of expression. So an essay opens up a teaching–learning dialogue between you and your teacher. In fact, it does still have some of the original sense of ‘trying your hand’ at something, with the idea that you can get better at it through practice.

Your tutor will usually grade your essay too, so that you can see where you ‘stand’ in relation to whatever standards apply to your course. This means that, over time, you can see what kind of progress you are making. However, you should not see essay-writing simply as something to be endured because your work must be assessed. It is an essential part of the learning process. When you look back over a course you have studied, you will find that the topics you have written about are the ones you understand most clearly and remember best.

Key points

Writing essays is a very important part of studying because:

- it deepens your learning of the subject you are studying;

- you learn to use ideas to argue a case;

- it enables you to enter into a dialogue with your tutor through which you can extend and refine your thinking, and your writing skills;

- it enables your tutor to assess your progress.

1.3 Developing your essay-writing ability

To develop your skill in writing essays you need to address two basic questions.

- What does a good essay look like?

- How do you set about producing one?

We will look at the first of these questions in this chapter and the second in the next.

1.3.1 Reading guide

There is a lot to think about in this course, particularly if you work carefully through all the examples and activities, which are mainly in section 2. I suggest you take the course in five stages:

1. Up to the end of section 2.1

2. Section 2.2

3. Section 2.3

4. Sections 2.4 and 2.5

5. Section 2.6

6. Sections 3 and 4.

Alternatively, simply stop reading closely when you feel you have gone far enough for your present needs. Just skim through the rest of the course looking at the boxes. You can come back to it at later points in your studies when you are ready to work on new aspects of your writing. Learning about good writing is not the kind of thing you can do in one ‘go’. It is something we all need to keep working at.

2 What does an essay look like?

2.1 A lack of insight?

One of the curious things about learning to write essays is that you are seldom offered much insight into what you might be setting out to produce. You know only too well what your essays look like and what your tutor says about them, but you don't know what else you might have done. For instance, you have very little idea what other people's essays are like and what comments they get back. Perhaps you are told your essay ought to be ‘more structured’ or ‘less subjective’, but how are you supposed to know what a more structured or a more objective essay would look like? Your tutor passes judgement on your essay by comparing it with lots of others, whereas you only get to see your own.

2.2 Looking at other people's essays

One of the best ways of developing your essay-writing ability is to see how other students respond to the same essay title as you. It is not that you want to copy someone else's style. It's just that you need to broaden your understanding of what is possible when you are answering an essay question.

'Self-help’

If you are studying with other students you might arrange to meet from time to time to read and discuss each other's essays. If you can't meet, you could exchange essays by post. This is not cheating. It is a way of gaining insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your own writing by comparing your approach with other people's. Anyway, you probably wouldn't be able to copy their styles even if you tried. And why would you want to when it is your writing you are aiming to develop?

The idea of letting other people see your work is a bit daunting at first. Your writing feels like a ‘private’ matter, between you and your tutor. But, once you take the plunge, other students can often be as helpful as a tutor in giving you ideas and opening up new possibilities.

That is just what we are going to do here. Below you'll find a link to and article called ‘On the town: women in Augustan England’ by Joyce Ellis, followed by links to two essays on the subject of the article. Read the article and the essays. You will get the most from this section if you print the essays out. The essay writers were adult students in a ‘return to study’ course, who were given this task:

Write a short essay (of no more than 500 words) on the following:

Did eighteenth-century women migrate to towns mainly because of the attractions of the towns, or mainly to escape from life in the countryside?Discuss in the light of Joyce Ellis's article.

Click 'View document' to open the Joyce Ellis article ‘“On the town”: Women in Augustan England’ (PDF, 0.1MB).

View document

Click 'View document' to open Philip's essay On the Town. “Woman in Augustan England” 1680–1820 (PDF, 0.1MB). Philip's essay was handwritten and came with a note. Part of it reads: ‘Writing this is a learning experience because I am starting late in life to going back to be re-educated. But I feel more than willing to attempt the challenge…’.

View document

Click 'View document' to open Hansa's essay Did eighteenth century women migrate to towns mainly because of the attractions of the towns, or mainly to escape from life in the countryside? (PDF, 0.1MB).

View document

Did eighteenth-century women migrate to towns mainly becauseof the attractions of the towns, or mainly to escape from life in the countryside? Discuss in the light of Joyce Ellis's article.

Activity 1

Read the essays by ‘Philip’ and ‘Hansa’ which can be accessed through the links above.

1. As you read, note any places where you have difficulty grasping the point, and write any other thoughts that come to you in the margins. Pencil in any alterations you think could usefully be made. (If possible, work on printed copies of the essays.)

2. When you get to the end of the essays, take a sheet of paper and write two headings: ‘Strengths’ and ‘Weaknesses’. Note down the good things about Philip's essay and the weak points. Then do the same for Hansa's.

3. Try to weigh up the quality of these essays.

Do you think that one of them is better than the other? (Can they be good in different ways?)

Overall, do you think that they are good essays or poor ones?

How much of that is to do with the quality of the ideas in them and how much to do with the way the ideas are presented?

4. Finally, can you draw any general conclusions about the qualities a good essay should have? (Look back over your answers to 2 and 3 above.)

Write down your conclusions.

Before you begin, read the box below about ‘“Judging” writing’.

‘Judging’ writing

This is a demanding activity and it will take you some time. You may not want to do all of it at this stage. However, it is worth doing. It will be time well spent because you need to develop your ability to see what works in writing and what doesn't. It is not helpful to try to learn formal ‘rules’ of writing. Rather, you have to become a reasonably good judge of real pieces of writing, including your own. ‘Marking’ other people's work helps you understand what you should be aiming for in your own writing.

2.3 Analysing Philip's essay

2.3.1 The title

The first thing I noticed about Philip's essay is that although it begins with a title it is not the one he was given. This immediately creates two problems.

1. If I were Philip's tutor I would find it difficult to weigh up his essay against the challenge he was actually set.

2. The title he has made up is not a good one, so it weakens his essay from the outset.

Philip's title doesn't pose a question for him to answer. So I began reading without any sense of what he is trying to say. He has given himself a broad theme, but no purpose. An essay never asks you just to ‘write what you know about the topic’ – it always requires you to present an argument of some kind. Often, as here, the purpose is to answer a question. Other essay titles may ask you to discuss a particular point of view, or compare and contrast two points of view. But however the title is worded, it is always meant to pose a ‘problem’ which your essay should then set out to argue about and solve.

Philip neither starts with a problem to solve, nor finishes with a solution, so there is a rather aimless feel to the essay. It's reasonably interesting, but it isn't going anywhere in particular. This makes reading it a lot harder. Since, as a reader, you have to ‘project’ meaning into the written words, if you're not sure where the words are leading it is much more difficult to follow. A good essay is never just a string of sentences. It is a journey from the question in the title to the answer in your ‘conclusion’.

Philip's lack of clear purpose is the biggest weakness of his essay. We see it at the end of the first paragraph, where he throws in a comment about modern young women. The comment doesn't mean much to me, but in any case it has little to do with the topic. Everything you say in an essay should contribute in some way to answering the question in the title. This is the great value of having a problem to solve – it gives you a way of deciding what to put in and what to leave out. It also helps you to organise what you put in, so that it builds up towards your conclusion. Because Philip does not have a clear purpose, he drops in stray points that don't lead anywhere. And in his last paragraph he is left making vague remarks about women in general – needing company and seeking things ‘in their favour’ (couldn't this be said about men too?). So the essay fizzles out, without doing justice either to the themes of Ellis's article or to Philip's own ideas. All of this is quite understandable in a first essay. But it points up the crucial importance of recognising that an essay is meant to be an argument.

Key points

- An essay should take the form of an argument.

- This argument should start from the problem posed by the question or title at the top of your first page, and it should lead your reader through to a conclusion set out in the final paragraph.

Yet in spite of getting off on the wrong foot by not sticking to the title, Philip's essay has a lot in it, as we can see if we pull it apart. Here is the basic content of his essay set out in note form. Check the notes quickly against his essay to see if you agree that I've captured the gist of what he says.

2.3.2 The content of Philip's essay

Paragraph 1: Introduction – social context

1. Ellis – a portrait of C18 women whose fathers/husbands were of landowning class.

2. Men were country-oriented → expected wife/daughters to fit into high-status rural life-style.

3. Women were under-privileged [?], owing to the boredom of country life.

4. Contrast with modern woman – who can combine marriage, children and career.

Paragraph 2: Tedium of country life

1. Increasing wealth → rising standard of living → more servants → women more time for skills → extreme frustration.

2. In country, women couldn't exercise skills:

- females outnumbered males [?]

- few opportunities to meet.

3. Strict rules of social propriety, very visible → conduct impeccable at all times.

4. Longed for urban life – even for short spells – to be able to socialise.

Paragraph 3: Attractions of town

1. Towns → variety of respectable social options, including active role in organising.

2. More women to meet – exchange views – learn new ideas.

3. More meetings with men – theatre, concerts – both sexes could mix respectably.

4. In many ways beneficial to women.

Paragraph 4: Male interpretation of women's migration to towns

1. Male jibes at women's migration to towns.

2. Viewed women as inferior in many ways.

3. Saw escape from boredom of country as ‘improper’.

Paragraph 5: Conclusion – Women's need for company and amusement

1. Women need company and escape from boredom

2. → will continue to seek things in their favour.

Setting out the essay like this shows us a number of things.

Structure

We can see straight away that Philip's essay has a structure. Each paragraph deals with a new aspect of the topic and the sequence of paragraphs has a clear line of development. In the first paragraph Philip sets up the general background; then he explores the repellent side of country life, followed by the attractive side of town life; then he notes male attitudes to the women's migration to towns; and in his final paragraph he draws a general conclusion. This is an excellent outline plan for a short essay. He hasn't entirely carried it off, as we shall see in a moment, but there is nothing wrong with the basic structure.

Key points

- An essay needs to be structured.

- Partly this involves organising the points you want to make into groups, and giving a paragraph to each group.

- It also involves arranging the paragraphs into a meaningful sequence, leading towards your conclusion.

Arguing a case

Philip clearly has a sense that he is meant to be arguing a case. Perhaps the best bit of argument comes at the start of paragraph 2. If you look at the notes you'll see that I have used arrows to show how the argument works. He says that increasing wealth led to a rising standard of living, which meant that more servants were employed, which led to women having more time to polish up their social skills, but that this ‘in turn’ led to frustration because country life no longer gave women enough opportunities to exercise their skills. This is very purposeful writing. He drives us forward through the logic of his argument.

As paragraph 2 continues, Philip tells us why women didn't have the opportunity to exercise their social skills in the country, saying first that women outnumbered men (though I'm not sure where he got that from) and then that few chances arose for meeting others. At this point the logic is still clear – we have just been given two reasons why opportunities to exercise social skills were limited. But he then moves on to the oppressiveness of the rules of ‘propriety’. It isn't obvious whether that still has to do with the exercise of social skills. Perhaps it is added simply as another source of the ‘frustration’ Philip mentioned earlier, but if so the connection is not made. It reads as just an item in a list of points, not as part of a clear sequence. This lessens the impact of the build-up of the logic. That's a pity, because the last point is about women longing for city life where they could exercise their skills, which would have followed on very nicely from the points about not being able to do so in the country. We end the paragraph with the sense that there were ‘a bunch of reasons’ why women were fed up with country life, instead of a sharp focus on the irony of having increasingly sophisticated skills but dwindling opportunities to use them. Just read the paragraph again to see if you agree.

Key points

- An argument is a series of points arranged in logical sequence, with links made from one point to the next.

- Putting in points that distract from the main flow of the argument diminishes its impact.

Linking points together

Looking at the flow of Philip's argument as a whole, we can see that it gets off to a weak start – it lacks a title to give it a clear framework and purpose, and the opening sentence does not engage the reader.

Openings

There is a lot to be said for brisk, direct opening sentences in an essay. You need to set the reader's thoughts off in the right direction, so there is no virtue in a lot of formal ‘throat-clearing’. The first sentence should grab your reader's attention. It should be related to the essay question and it should be doing important work for your argument. But it doesn't have to be fancy.

It is often said that in your ‘introduction’ you should say what you are going to do in the essay (then do it in the ‘middle’ part of the essay, and then say what you have done in the ‘conclusion’). But this kind of writing to a ‘formula’ is tedious to do and pretty dull to read.

After the opening sentence, the first two proper points in paragraph 1 (see my notes) actually do a good job of getting things going. Unfortunately, point 3 does not follow on particularly well and point 4 is simply a distraction. Yet broadly, once he gets going, you can see that in the first two paragraphs Philip is telling a ‘story’ about how and why women's roles in the countryside changed over time, and what this meant to them.

At the end of the second paragraph he concludes ‘so therefore woman began to long for the urban or city way of living…’. This leads us into the next paragraph, and to the topic of women's role in the town. He begins the fourth paragraph with ‘This transition…’ which connects back directly to what he has said in the last sentence of paragraph 3. And by using the linking word ‘Nevertheless’ at the start of the last paragraph, Philip shows he knows he should be making a connection there too, even if he hasn't quite worked out how to pull the whole thing together at the end. So he has a good general sense of the need to connect each stage of his argument into a flowing sequence.

But although Philip links up the stages of the argument well, he doesn't always organise the main points he wants to make within each stage into a meaningful sequence. As we saw, in the second paragraph he does not manage to weave the idea of the demands of propriety into the flow of his otherwise purposeful writing. Here's how the main points about women's role and their life in the countryside might be re-organised into a connected, logical sequence.

Life in the countryside

1. Points about rising standard of living, etc. (which Philip handles well) → these women lost their household function.

2. As a result, they had more time to develop accomplishments and fulfil a ‘decorative’ role.

3. But the demands of propriety meant they could mix only with their own kind (unlike their menfolk).

4. This particular population was sparse. Lack of transport and bad weather prevented women from mixing socially and so fulfilling their role in rural society.

5. Instead they were restricted to pastimes in and around their homes, such as needlework, letter writing, reading and walking.

Here a clear line of argument is being developed within the stage of the argument that deals with life in the countryside.

Key points

- You have to develop an argument in stages towards your conclusion.

- This means you have to link each stage to the next, so that the reader can follow the direction your argument is taking.

- And, within each stage of the argument, you need to organise your main points into a logical sequence.

Bringing in your own ideas

At the end of paragraph 2, Philip makes his point about the busy lives of modern young women. (Presumably he means to draw a contrast, rather than suggest a ‘resemblance’.) Why did I suggest that this is not a good idea? Doesn't it show initiative to bring in a few ideas of your own? Is essay-writing meant to be just repeating back what you've read in books and articles? This is a tricky issue. Certainly you are meant to think about what you write and to say things as you have worked them out for yourself. It would be very dreary indeed simply to repeat back what you have read, and you wouldn't learn much. On the other hand, your thinking is meant to be based on the ideas and information you have been reading about in your studies. The essay is an exercise in ‘engaging with’ these arguments and ideas, and trying to put them to use. This helps you to learn in depth. It is also an exercise in being disciplined in your writing – saying exactly what you intend to say, and only what you can justify saying. It is not an open invitation to write down your thoughts to see what your tutor makes of them.

There are three problems with Philip's attempt to introduce the comparison with modern women.

- If he is going to bring in something from outside the Ellis article he needs to justify it. He can't just drop in a remark in passing and expect his reader to accept it without question.

- Because Philip's observation is not drawn from what he has read in Ellis's article, it opens up a whole new area – it raises questions about what kinds of generalisations can be made about women now, what kinds of comparisons can reasonably be drawn between then and now, and what kinds of evidence might be relevant to making this case. He simply does not have the space to tackle all this.

- In any case, it is beside the point; it is irrelevant to an argument about the reasons why eighteenth-century women migrated to towns (the task set by the original question).

You are not forbidden from bringing in ideas of your own but you have to do so cautiously, and always take the time to back up your case so that your reader doesn't just dismiss it out of hand. Your reader is only interested in well thought out arguments based on good authority or good evidence, not just anything you happen to want to say. Generally, as a newcomer to a subject, it is best to concentrate on trying to do an intelligent job of working with the arguments and information you have been reading about. Your own originality of thought has plenty of opportunity to shine through.

This even applies to the terms you use. For example, Philip says in paragraph 1, ‘These were under-privileged women…’. ‘Under-privileged’ is not a term Ellis uses, and it sounds pretty odd given that she is talking about wealthy society women. Privilege was what they did have. ‘Socially cut-off’, ‘under-stimulated’, or ‘under-employed’ are all terms that might more accurately be used. But it is wisest to stay close to the terms that authors use, unless you know a lot about the subject. After all, what grounds has Philip for placing these women in a particular category other than what he has learned from Ellis? She will have chosen her terms carefully, based on her own detailed knowledge of the subject and on the terms in use amongst other experts. Writing essays is also learning to use the ‘language’ of the writers in the field you are studying.

Key points

- Dropping thoughts of your own into your essay, in passing, tends to raise lots of complicated questions that you cannot deal with.

- Any ideas you do bring in need to be explained and justified.

- If you just focus on working with the terms and ideas you have been studying, your own thoughts will work their way in anyway. You don't need to make a special effort to bring in extra ideas of your own.

Arguing to a conclusion

If we ignore the bits where Philip strays off the subject, how well does his argument work? Does he make a good case? Well, I think even Philip was feeling a bit doubtful about this, since by the end he seems to be running out of steam. The conclusion is tame. He obviously hasn't realised that his closing sentences need to pull together what he has said earlier, and present an answer to the question in the title (as given). Rather, he seems to be casting about for something grand-sounding to finish off with, so he makes a general point about women's needs.

Yet, as we saw, there is some quite vigorous argument earlier in the essay. So what does it all add up to? The general gist of his argument seems to be this:

- Men of the land-owning class enjoyed country life and expected their women folk to ‘fit in’.

- But women found country life stultifying and frustrating.

- Town life offered them many more opportunities (so they migrated there, though Philip doesn't actually say so).

- The men mocked them for migrating, or criticised their impropriety.

- But women will do what they need to.

In the end, he presents the women's migration as a straightforward clash of interests between them and their menfolk. The upshot is that women refused to bow to pressure or criticism from the men, and looked to their own needs (as women in general will). This is a weak conclusion because it relies on a notion of ‘what women in general will tend to do’. None of the rest of the essay presents any arguments about what women in general do, so we have no reason to agree. (After all, thinking about different times and different societies, there are many examples of women having felt themselves morally or practically prevented from seeking what was ‘in their favour’.) Ellis is trying to explain why these women, bound into a particular society at a particular time, not only longed for town life but actually migrated to towns in large numbers. This calls for a more robust explanation than ‘what women in general tend to do’.

Overall, then, Philip's argument is pitched in the right general area, but it does not really get to the heart of things. Nevertheless, I think it is a good attempt by someone who is new both to reading this kind of article and writing this kind of essay.

Key points

In the concluding paragraph of your essay you should give a direct answer to the essay question you have been asked (or a solution to the problem posed in the title). It does not have to be grand, but there should be a sense of having reached an ending. The judgements you make should be:

- relevant and appropriate to the question you are discussing; and

- justified by what you have argued earlier on.

2.4 Analysing Hansa's essay

To refresh your memory, look again at Hansa's essay and the notes you made earlier. The first thing I noticed is that her essay starts with the title she was set. It also comes to a conclusion that tries to answer the question in the title, so straight away it has some important strengths compared to Philip's. From the start she gets stuck into the argument, making a purposeful attack on the question in her opening sentences. And, while she covers a lot of the same ground as Philip, she develops a stronger line of argument overall – though not always as clearly as she might. To help us see all this we can again set out what she says in note form. Quickly check the notes below against her essay to see whether you think they are a fair summary.

The content of Hansa's essay

Paragraph 1: Introduction – role of women in C18 upper-class society

1. C18 soc. – expected women to have accomplishments (piano, etc.).

2. Image of women as fragile, etc.

3. Trained for role as ‘embodiments’ of male status.

Paragraph 2: Restrictions of rural life

Country life → little scope to display skills

- sparse population at higher social levels

- travel difficult

- tight social boundaries.

Paragraph 3: Tedium of rural life – attractions of town

1. Refined ladies' boring life – denied role as estate managers – excluded from country pastimes → reduced to letter writing, reading.

2. But in town – wider social opportunities:

- role in social planning

- opportunity to display accomplishments

- enjoy socialising.

3. Offered women much more scope – for display of accomplishments – desire for sociability/ amusement → rapid expansion of female urban population.

Paragraph 4: Women's need to be in towns to play out the role prescribed for them

1. Male-dominated society → women's highly prescribed and restricted role → social skills required of them could only be satisfactorily enacted and displayed in town – where more people of same rank – good transport.

2. Women fled country to escape v. tight restrictions (→ boredom).

Paragraph 5: Conclusion

Women not so much attracted to town – or escaping from countryside – as mainly trying to fulfil their very restricted social role as fully as possible.

Structure and argument

The structure of Hansa's essay is fairly similar to Philip's. However, you may have noticed that the subject of her second paragraph spills over into paragraph 3. This immediately suggests an improvement – the first part of paragraph 3 could be put back to the end of paragraph 2 (from ‘Thus the lives…writing letters.’). Then she will have a paragraph on the country followed by one on the town, which will help her reader to follow this shift of focus as her argument moves forward.

Now we can see the five stages of Hansa's argument more clearly:

- The role of well-to-do women

- Country life

- Town life

- The futility of trying to play the ‘society woman’ role in the country

- Conclusion.

Let's see how she links the argument together. Notice that she introduces the ‘country life’ stage of the argument by referring back to ‘these skills’; that is, the skills she has referred to in her opening paragraph. The new paragraph 3, on ‘town life’, begins with ‘However,…’. That suggests a contrast between this and what she has just been discussing (country life). And when she begins the fourth paragraph with ‘In view of the somewhat prescribed role…’ she is again referring back to the earlier stage when she discussed that role. ‘In effect…’ signals her conclusion. So we have a connected ‘line’ of argument here – a thread of meaning running through the essay.

Making connections

‘Links’ are the words you use to show the relationship between what you have just said and what you are going on to say. For example:

link words

what they signify

‘and’, ‘also’, ‘as well as’

you are adding something of a similar kind to what you have just said;

‘but’, ‘however’, ‘although’

you are about to say something different;

‘because’, ‘since’

you are going to explain what you have just said;

'so’, ‘therefore’

you are going to conclude an argument and draw out its significance.

Of course, there are many more words of these kinds (including ‘of course’, which suggests ‘I don't think I need to explain any further because no doubt you get the idea’).

Your readers cannot see into your mind. They may not be able to see connections between points that seem perfectly obvious to you. Link words act as ‘signposts’ that indicate the direction your argument is taking next. They show how your readers are meant to understand what you are about to say – they help your readers ‘follow’ your meaning as they read. So you should use them often.

Ellis's article is a very good example of how to do this. She uses many words that show how what she is saying follows on from her previous point; whether it adds something, qualifies it, or contrasts with it. As a result, reading her article seems fairly effortless (from the second page at least). That's because she is doing the work of ‘steering’ us, her readers, through the meaning of her text.

In the fourth paragraph we see Hansa ‘bringing together’ what she has said in the first three – about the role of women, about country life and about town life. This is a very good move. She is setting herself up to draw her conclusion. She wants to argue that women's attitudes to country life and town life arose directly out of their very restricted role as status symbols for their men-folk. We can summarise what she says as follows:

1. women were attracted by the towns (because they could fulfil their role better there);

2. women were escaping from the countryside (because they could not fulfil their role there).

So, at this stage, Hansa's answer to the question of whether women were attracted or escaping appears to be ‘a bit of both’. But then in her conclusion she seems to contradict that, by saying they were ‘in effect’ doing neither. What they were doing, she says, was mainly trying to fulfil the role that society had ‘burdened’ them with. (Notice that this ‘mainly’ is what the essay question asks her to reach a conclusion about.)

Hansa is saying that the really important issue here is what was expected of women at that time – the role that was available to them. This is what really explains why women migrated to towns. It was not essentially a matter of ‘escaping’ from the countryside because it was dull and soggy, nor of being ‘attracted’ to the town because it was more fun. The deeper and more important reason for women's migration was so that they could live life more fully as the women they were expected to be. This brings us much closer to the heart of the arguments in Ellis's article than Philip's account does. However, Hansa hasn't made her case very obvious. We have had to dig a bit to find it. When I first read her conclusion it took me by surprise; it seemed contradictory. Indeed, I think there is something missing from her essay.

A frame of reference

Hansa, like Philip, starts her essay by talking about the role of well-to-do women at the time. And also like him, she doesn't give us any idea why she does that. When you read the essay title it does not have any obvious connection to women's roles. So we are left a bit bemused. We can follow what Hansa is saying, but we don't really know what the point of it is.

If we compare this with Ellis herself, she begins by talking about a ‘dramatic’ migration of women to the larger towns during the period. Clearly, a social change on that sort of scale needs explaining. In other words, she begins by showing why the whole issue matters. Having established that, she sketches out an ‘argument’ about why the women migrated. She says she wants to disagree with the satirists of the time who presented these women as seeking ‘freedom from male control’; in her third paragraph she tells us she is going to argue against the satirists’ views. She also outlines what it is she is going to say. So, by then, we can see both what she proposes to do and why. In short, she has set up a ‘frame of reference’ within which we can understand the purpose of her argument. (Bear in mind how important frameworks for thinking are for readers.)

This ‘frame’ is missing in both Hansa's and Philip's essays. If Hansa gave us some idea of the scale of the migration, and a few pointers to the debate she is engaging with, we would be able to follow her argument through to its conclusion more easily. For example, she might add something like this to the end of her first paragraph:

They were also expected to live for long spells in their family homes in the countryside. When these women began to migrate to towns in large numbers, satirists of the period presented this as a wilful desire for ‘freedom from male control’ and a chance to enjoy frivolous pastimes.

There are many different ways of doing this kind of frame-setting. The point is that nowhere in her first paragraph does Hansa make a link to the title of the essay (and hence to the conclusion she is leading towards). She has her argument in her head, but she doesn't remember to set up a frame of reference within which her argument will make sense to us. Remember, an essay is a complete piece of writing; it must make sense to readers ‘in itself’. So you have to explain yourself ‘as if’ the reader is someone who has not read the texts you have been studying and has no special knowledge of the subject.

Key points

You have to remember that your readers need some kind of frame of reference for your argument. You need to find a way of setting a context for your argument at the start, so that you set your readers’ thoughts going in the right direction. They need some sense of:

- why it is worth paying attention to what you are saying

- what you are arguing ‘against’.

Making judgements

The essay title, then, invites the writer to engage in the debate between Ellis and the satirists. This involves coming to some kind of judgement between the arguments on the two sides. As we saw, Philip does not really commit himself. Insofar as he makes judgements, they are about the parallels between the situation of eighteenth-century women and women now, and between eighteenth-century women's actions and those of women in general. I found these views:

- irrelevant, in that they do not contribute to his argument – they do not connect with either the official essay title or his own made-up title;

- inappropriate, in that we have not been reading about these other women, so we have no information or arguments to go on in responding to Philip's observations.

Making judgements

We make judgements about what we read all the time. Indeed, we read other people's writing in order to think our ideas through more thoroughly and to extend them. Unless we have some ideas of our own we can't ‘make sense’ of what we read. And our ideas ‘inform’ our judgements.

However, when you present your judgements in an essay they have to be relevant to the question you are discussing, and appropriate in terms of the sources of information and authoritative debate available to you. You must try not to make assumptions as you develop your argument. Ask yourself ‘what if my reader disagrees with me?’.

Hansa, on the other hand, does commit herself. In taking Ellis's line against that of the satirists, she brings her own judgement to bear. But does she manage to present her judgements ‘relevantly’ and ‘appropriately’? In the first three paragraphs she very properly keeps her judgements to herself and sticks to outlining the women's general circumstances, and the opportunities available to them in country and town respectively. But then in paragraph 4 the gloves come off:

In view of the somewhat prescribed role forced upon women in the eighteenth century by the male dominated society which formulated social mores.…(underlining added)

Hansa is saying that this society was dominated by men; that men made the social ‘rules’ and, presumably, ‘forced’ them upon women. The relationship between men and women at the time is certainly relevant to the essay question. But is it appropriate for Hansa to make such a statement as if it is based on her own knowledge of the facts – when actually, if she got it from anywhere, we know that it was from Ellis? At least, she should refer to the source of her information, saying perhaps, ‘As we see from Ellis's article, this was a male dominated society…’

But she would have difficulty doing that because Ellis does not say this explicitly anywhere. Ellis does not actually use the term ‘male dominated’, nor does she explore the question of where the rules of correct female behaviour ‘came from’. So Hansa is not making a statement based on fact here – this is a judgement, based on her interpretation of Ellis.

What Hansa says, then, is inappropriate for two reasons:

1. because she writes as if she herself has knowledge that she does not have;

2. because she presents what is a judgement as though it were fact.

In effect, what she presents us with are her own assumptions about how eighteenth-century society worked.

Hansa's personal judgement comes through again right at the end of the essay when she talks about women being ‘burdened’ by their role. Again, she presents this as if it is obvious and well established that ‘society’ placed a heavy and oppressive load on these women. I dare say some of their servants would not have found their way of life such a burden. So, again, this ‘pronouncement’ jars. It feels as though we are being dragooned into seeing things from Hansa's point of view, without having been given good reason to.

So although Hansa has brought in her own judgements in a way that is relevant, she has not quite handled them appropriately. But then in a first essay it is quite an achievement to have engaged so well with Ellis's arguments. I doubt if it will take Hansa long to develop the ability to present her case more convincingly.

Referring to your sources

One of the best ways of putting together a convincing argument is to make direct use of your source material – in this case, Ellis's article. Neither Hansa nor Philip does quite enough of it. Hansa does some in her opening paragraph, when she refers to the particular accomplishments women acquired – playing the piano, singing, embroidering – and, in the last sentence, quotes from Ellis briefly. In her second paragraph she also identifies the different pastimes men and women had in the countryside. (Philip does none of these things in his opening paragraphs.) They need to make the Ellis article a more tangible presence in their essays because Ellis is both the authority for their arguments and the source of the information they present.

For instance, we saw that it would have been helpful for Hansa to be able to rely on Ellis's authority when mounting her argument about male domination. Had Ellis in fact argued this explicitly, Hansa could have used Ellis's terms and also quoted her words. In this way Hansa could both have explained herself clearly and offered evidence in support of her argument. She might also have illustrated the attractions of the towns by referring to some of the detail Ellis provides; rather than vaguely referring to ‘social events’, she could have made specific mention of the theatres and concert halls (as Philip does). This would help us to ‘see’ why women were attracted to the towns, and would not take up many more words.

‘Referring’ to a text

When you are asked to ‘discuss’ an essay question ‘in the light of’ or ‘with reference to’ a course text such as the Ellis article, you not only have to explain the ideas but also bring in some of the detail of the text to illustrate what you mean to say. You also need to refer directly to the text to back up or justify the main points you make; you have to use ‘examples’ and snatches of quotation from the text as evidence to support your points. And you must always take care to be accurate when making these references and quotations.

At present, Philip's and Hansa's arguments appear to arise too directly out of their own ‘knowledge’ and this is unlikely to be convincing to their readers. It is a vital part of writing skill in the humanities to be able to weave quotations and other references into your essays, so that you convey a sense of direct engagement with the texts you have been studying.

Key points

An essay should stand on its own as a complete piece of writing. You cannot assume that your readers have any ‘special’ knowledge of the subject you are writing about, nor that they have read the texts you have been studying. You have to refer to your source material in order to:

- explain the points you make

- illustrate them (give examples of what you mean)

- provide evidence to support your arguments (justify them).

2.5 Other aspects of writing

Now we will look at the way Philip and Hansa wrote and presented their essays. Did you find them both easy to read? As regards Philip's, my answer is, ‘yes and no’. It is sometimes easy because he has a fluent way with words. But it is often difficult because he does not use enough punctuation to help us make sense of his words, and because of certain mistakes he makes. I found Hansa's essay easier to read. Her writing is more technically correct and more assured than Philip's. But I think that sometimes it is too formal and elaborate.

Activity 2

Look back at the essays and the notes you made about them. Look at the way Philip and Hansa express their ideas. Did you pick out any mistakes in their sentences, punctuation or spelling? How important do you think it is to spell words correctly?

2.5.1 Sentences

We can see that Philip knows what a sentence is because he writes some perfectly good ones. For example:

In many ways going into urban life from the countryside was beneficial to woman of the upperclass.

This sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop. It has a subject (urban life) and a main verb (was). As any sentence is, it is a self-contained ‘unit of meaning’. It makes sense read out on its own. The only thing wrong with it is that ‘upper class’ should be two words rather than one. Also, although it is not wrong to say ‘woman’, it sounds odd because we normally say ‘women’.

But what about this one? (Read it out loud.)

With society becoming more wealthy it was possible for the fathers and husbands to provide an even better standard of life for their wifes and daughters, more servants could be provided to do the work and this left the woman more time than ever to develop the social skills of the era, but this in turn led to extreme frustration among woman of that class.

It sounds long and rambling. But in fact all it needs is two full stops and a couple of minor corrections (to ‘wifes’ and ‘woman’) to turn it into three pretty sound sentences, as follows.

With society becoming more wealthy it was possible for the fathers and husbands to provide an even better standard of life for their wives and daughters. More servants could be provided to do the work and this left the women more time than ever to develop the social skills of the era. But this in turn led to extreme frustration among women of that class.

Writing sentences

Every sentence needs a verb – a ‘doing’ word – and (almost) every sentence needs a subject – a person who, or thing that is ‘doing’. Take this sentence: ‘She popped the question’. ‘She’ is the subject (because she was ‘doing’ the popping) and ‘popped’ is the verb (because that is what she was doing). If you are not sure whether you have written a sentence, a simple test is to ask ‘Does it have a subject and a verb?’ – in this sentence ‘it’ is the subject and ‘does have’ is the verb.

It is quite possible to use grammar effectively without knowing the rules in a formal way. Many people can ‘hear’ whether a string of words is a sentence or not because it ‘sounds’ complete when it is. They don't have to stop and think about whether it contains a subject and a verb. If you find it isn't obvious to you, even when you read your work out loud, then you need to get some help with grammar (by going to a local class or getting a book about it). You will find it very difficult to develop your writing style until you have a good feel for what a sentence is.

At first sight it looks as if writing in sentences may be a big problem for Philip. Yet he does have a sense of where a break is needed – but he tends to use commas where he needs a full stop and capital letter. The sentences are there; he just hasn't marked them as sentences. I doubt if he needs to worry too much about this. With prompting from a tutor and plenty of practice – and especially through reading his essays out loud – his sensitivity to sentences will develop spontaneously. But the local library or bookshop would be a good place to ask about courses and books if need be.

Hansa's writing is much more assured. But, as I said, some sentences strike me as over-formal and elaborate. Take this one, for example:

Because of this, and because an urban environment offered women so much more scope, not only to display their accomplishments but also to indulge their own desire for sociability, amusement and companions’, the female population of England's towns expanded dramatically.

Too many points that are important in their own right are squashed into one sentence here. The construction is extraordinarily complicated: ‘Because A.., and because B., not only C.. but also D, E and F, the female population..’ It would read more easily if she removed the central part – ‘not only to display…amusement and companions’. (Incidentally, she does not need the apostrophe after the ‘s’ in ‘companions’.) There would still be more than enough to think about. Also, more emphasis would be placed on the last part of the sentence, which is actually the main point of it. As things stand, we arrive at ‘the female population..’ over-burdened and out of breath, as it were.

In sentences such as this Hansa's meaning is so condensed that it gets lost. She is trying to say too much. Her sentences are over-elaborate and her meaning too densely packed. If she wrote more directly, in simpler sentences, her meaning would be clearer and she could give more emphasis to the points that are most important.

Keeping it simple

A sentence is a self-contained unit of meaning. An essay is constructed by putting these units in sequence, one after another. Meaning should flow from one sentence to the next, carrying the argument forward.

If you sometimes do not make proper sentences, or you make them too dense and complicated, your meaning becomes unclear. Your reader cannot follow you because the flow of meaning is interrupted. Until you have a lot of experience you should write fairly short, simple sentences that carry your meaning forward in a reliable way.

In the main, aim to make one point in each sentence. If a sentence delivers two points, consider splitting it in two. A reader may want to agree with one point but not the other, so it is useful to have them set down separately. Then your reader can examine the logic of each one more easily.

2.5.2 Punctuation

Some of the sentences we have looked at are harder to understand than they might be because they are not very well punctuated. Punctuation marks are the ‘stops’ in a sentence that divide it up into parts. They make it easier to follow the meaning of the words. For instance, it is easier to read this sentence of Philip's if we put a comma after ‘wealthy’:

With society becoming more wealthy, it was possible for the fathers and husbands to provide an even better standard of life for their wives and daughters.

Punctuating

Punctuation is the system of signals you give to your reader to show how the grammar of the sentence is supposed to work. The basics are the capital letter at the start of a sentence and the full stop at the end. You use commas to mark off any sub-parts of the sentence. Other punctuation marks are:

semicolon  ;

marks a pause which has more emphasis than a comma but less than a full stop; also often used to divide up items in a list

colon  :

signals that a list is to follow

brackets  ( )

always come in pairs and go round an ‘aside’ – a point which is not part of the main flow of a sentence. If you read ‘through’, missing out what is in the brackets, the sentence should still make sense

dash  –

can be used similarly to brackets, but you can use just one to signal a shift to a related point

hyphen  -

links words together as above in ‘sub-parts’

apostrophe  '

indicates letters missing (as in ‘don't’ and ‘'phone’); also indicates belonging to (as in ‘Philip's’)

inverted commas  ‘ ’

also called ‘quotation marks’, these are necessary when you want to use another author's exact words. Everything between the quotation marks, including punctuation, should be exactly as in the original text. If you deliberately add or omit something, you should signal the changes with square brackets or with an ellipsis (three dots in a row). For instance, if I were to quote Ellis' view that it was ‘vital that [these women] conformed to contemporary norms which had shifted...towards and ideal of delicate, innocent and essentially decorative womanhood’ you'd notice that my addition of the words ‘these women’ was signalled by square brackets, while the few words that I didn't need and so left out are signalled by the ellipsis. Inverted commas are also used to pick out words for ‘emphasis’

question mark ? and exclamation mark ! are fairly obvious. You will very rarely need to use an exclamation mark in an essay.

We all make mistakes in punctuation as we write. So it is important to check through the first draft of your essay with this in mind. When in doubt, read the sentence out loud, perhaps even in an exaggerated way, and ‘listen’ to where you make little pauses as you speak it. Often, you need to put in a comma at those points.

2.5.3 Consistency

A common problem with sentences is not making all the parts match up. What is wrong with this sentence of Philip's, for example?

So therefore woman began to long for the urban or city way of living, if even for a short period so that they could deploy the art of socializing…

The mistake is that ‘woman’ should be followed by ‘she’ not ‘they’. ‘Woman’ is singular, whereas ‘they’ are plural. (He should also put a comma after period’, and change ‘even’ to ‘only’.) Similarly, in her fourth paragraph Hansa refers to ‘a high ranking women’. You have to make up your mind whether you are talking about one thing or lots of them.

Another kind of matching up is making the items in a list the same kind of word. Instead of writing ‘sociability, amusement and companions’ Hansa should say ‘companionship’. The first two words are abstract nouns, so the third word in the list should also be an abstract noun. Also, some words take partners: ‘not only.. but also’, for example, and ‘either.. or’. When Hansa writes in her conclusion ‘women...were neither mainly attracted to the towns’ she should add ‘nor escaping from the countryside’.

Another common slip is to have tenses of verbs not matching. Look at this sentence of Philip's:

The women who lived a fairly comfortable style of life belonged to a class of society where the father or husband would be a land-owner.

‘Lived’ and ‘belonged’ are in the past tense. So Philip should use the past tense of the other verb in the sentence; ‘would have been’, rather than ‘would be’. (Incidentally, a ‘class of society’ is not a place so he shouldn't say ‘where’. He should have said ‘in which the father..’.)

Tenses

The tense of a verb indicates the time the action takes place. For example, ‘I laugh’ is happening in the present. ‘I laughed’ is what happened in the past, and ‘I will laugh’ is set in the future. (There are of course other tenses too.) The main thing is to be consistent in using them. Decide whether you are discussing the past, present or future and then stay there, unless you have a good reason for making a change.

Some of these may seem small points. But I am not nit picking, nor being critical for the sake of it. Inconsistencies such as these get in the way. They slow your readers down and distract them from taking in the meaning of your sentences. Reading is hard enough, without having our attention diverted along the way.

2.5.4. Choosing the right words and phrases

Both Philip and Hansa occasionally use words and phrases that don't really do the job they want. We saw, for instance, that Philip uses the word ‘resemblance’ when actually he means ‘contrast’. Here are some other examples from his writing.

Philip's words

More accurate words

Paragraph 1

‘portrayal’

portrait, account

‘orientated to’

fitted for

Paragraph 2

‘a greater amount of society’

a wider society

Paragraph 3

‘variation of’

variety of

Paragraph 4

‘certain amount of jibes’

many jibes

And in Hansa's second paragraph I'd say it is more correct to refer to the ‘exercise of’ skills than to the ‘indulgence’ of them.

Choice of words

When you are writing you have to use the words that come to you. You would never get started if you stopped to worry over each one. However, when you are reading over what you have written you should check that you have used words that convey the meaning you intended. The exact meaning of the words you use is more important in writing than in speech.

In the long run your sensitivity to the shades of meaning words carry will increase. But as you study, the best thing to do is just get on with your writing – with a dictionary at your elbow.

2.5.5 Writing style

As we have seen, Hansa tends to use whole clusters of words and constructions that are a bit over-formal rather than wrong. She seems to be trying to impress her reader. For example:

They therefore fled from the country in order to escape the restrictions and consequent boredom placed upon them by the very limited pastimes that a high ranking women in the eighteenth century was permitted to indulge.

Normally, we would use a word such as ‘allowed’ rather than ‘permitted to indulge’, which sounds rather pompous. And, strictly speaking, we ‘indulge in’ pastimes. Also, ‘restrictions’ may be ‘placed upon’ people, but we don't usually say that about ‘boredom’. Boredom is something we experience or suffer. It would be altogether simpler and more straightforward to say:

So they fled from the countryside to escape these restrictions, and the boredom that resulted from having so few pastimes.

Sometimes Philip, too, seems to be striving to impress by using formal language instead of simple, direct terms. For instance, in paragraph 3 he talks about women being able to meet‘… many more of the female sex’ when he just means ‘other women’. And at the end of paragraph 2 he says, ‘…so that they could deploy the art of socializing and mingling with a greater amount of society’, when it would be more direct to say ‘…so that they could put their social skills to use, and mingle with a wider society’. Similarly, ‘This transition was not without a certain amount of jibes from the male population against the women of that time…’ could simply be put as ’Some men mocked these women for making the transition…’. Perhaps Hansa and Philip are assuming that they have to sound ‘academic’ for their tutors.

On the other hand, Philip uses a phrase from popular speech when he says that these women have ‘gone down in history’ as experts at organizing social events. This is definitely not an academic turn of phrase since it implies that there is one history we all agree about – a kind of ‘hall of fame’ for society's all-time ‘stars’. (Note that Ellis herself does not say this; she is very precise. What she says is that women ‘sometimes took a leading role’ in planning certain social events such as race meetings, balls, theatre performances and concerts.) Phrases like Philip's may seem to give a flourish to your writing, but they are not appropriate in an academic essay. They are not precise enough, and they tend to raise more problems than they are worth. In any case, a flourish is not quite what you are after. What you need is a lively and compelling style that is at the same time simple and direct.

But who exactly are you writing for? How can you develop an appropriate style and tone of voice unless you can ‘picture’ your reader?

'Speaking’ to your reader

Writing is a very special form of ‘conversation’. As you write, you are talking to someone you cannot see and who does not reply. But you know he or she is ‘listening’ and reacting mentally to what you say. You have to take all the responsibility for deciding what is to be said and how, and for sustaining the other person's interest. You are also responsible for establishing a relationship between you and the ‘listener’.

This is one of the trickiest things about writing. You have to convey a sense of who you are assuming your reader is and how you expect he or she to approach your words. You also have to convey a sense of who you are claiming to be – from what position you are ‘speaking’. Are you speaking as an expert on the subject of discussion, as a witty entertainer, as a patient explainer, or what?

There are two issues here. You have to develop a sense of your ‘audience’ and of the right ‘tone of voice’ in which to write.

1 A sense of audience

Who should you assume your audience is when you write an essay? Is it someone who is very learned and critical, or someone who knows nothing and couldn't care less about the subject? Although your tutor is the person who actually reads your essay, he or she is not your ‘audience’. The standard advice is, ‘Write for the intelligent person in the street’. In other words, assume that your reader has not read the books you have been studying, but that she or he is interested in the question posed by the title of the essay and is capable of picking up your arguments quickly, provided you spell them out clearly.

2 Your writing ‘voice’

Who are you to present yourself as? Basically you are expected to be a calm detached observer, pointing out to an equal (who happens not to be informed on this subject) some arguments that are relevant to a question you are both interested in (that is the question in the essay title). It is not easy to find a comfortable writing ‘voice’. It may take several essays before you can settle on a satisfactory one. One of the main reasons for getting stuck at the start of an essay is trying to work out where you are ‘coming from’. Sometimes you have to make several shots at your opening before you can find a voice with which you can proceed.

2.5.6 Essay presentation

Both Philip and Hansa presented their essays neatly, with no crossings out or obvious slips of the pen or type. And they make very few spelling mistakes. Philip puts ‘wifes’ for wives, ‘citys’ for cities and ‘carreer’ for career, and Hansa ‘sparcity’ for sparsity.

Spelling

People often worry about how important it is to spell correctly. Do you lose marks for bad spelling?

In principle, no you don't. You shouldn't actually lose marks. But it is hard for a marker not to be influenced by very weak spelling (or grammar, or punctuation). It detracts from the general impression your essay creates.

If you are really poor at spelling, don't worry that it will prevent you making progress. But don't be entirely relaxed about it either. You should make the effort to look words up in the dictionary when you are not sure about them. And it is a good idea to make a list of the words you often get wrong and try to learn them. However, it isn't worth trying to memorise great long lists of them. In general, the more you read and write the more you will develop a sense of when a word ‘looks right’ and when it doesn't.

If you use a word-processor for your writing it can be a great help in improving your spelling. You just instruct it to do a ‘spell check’ and then make a point of looking out for the mistakes you make regularly, so that you can try to memorise the correct versions.

It is important to present your essay well. Otherwise, it suggests that you don't care enough about your work to read it through and make corrections before handing it to someone else to read. And your tutor is bound to find it harder to make sense of what you are trying to say if there are too many mistakes in it. Tutors usually make allowances for the occasional blunder, but, if you want your writing to have its full impact, you must read it through carefully and correct any errors that you spot.

Key points

The way you write is as important as what you say. So when you are writing you must try to:

- use properly formed and mainly simple sentences

- punctuate them in a way that makes your meaning clear

- pay attention to grammar, making all parts of sentences consistent

- be precise about the particular words and phrases you use

- address your reader appropriately

- present your work with care, reading it through to correct spelling and other mistakes.

We have seen that, although there are good things in Philip's writing, there are quite a number of ways it could be improved.

Activity 3

To test yourself out on the points we have talked about, go back to Philip's second paragraph, starting from ‘The country was no place…’ and put in some punctuation and any other alterations that make it read more easily.

Here is my attempt, with the reasons for the changes I made given below. (New words appear in red.)

Changes

- Now’ interrupts the flow of ‘no place to exercise these new skills’, so I moved it to earlier in the sentence.

- When Philip wants to identify which ‘new skills’ he is referring to, he can either say ‘these new skills’, or ‘the new skills they had been taught’ – he doesn't need both, and it sounds awkward.

- Start a new sentence after ‘taught’.

- Comma after ‘thing’ because it's a preparatory phrase before the main sentence starts. No need for ‘at that time’ because he has already said ’now’ in the previous sentence. But my square brackets indicate that this sentence should really come out altogether – Ellis does not say this.

- New sentence at ‘Few’; ‘crowds of people’ isn't quite right for gatherings of people of this rank – ‘in society’ or ‘socially’ captures it better.

- No need for ‘but’ – just start another sentence at ‘Most’.

- What the demands of propriety imposed on women were ‘requirements’ not ‘meanings’. ‘Women's’ instead of ‘their’, since readers might be losing track of who ‘they’ are by now.

- New sentence at ‘Any error’. And ‘could’ is better than ‘would’, since not every error might be spotted.

- New sentence at ‘So’. Doesn't need both ‘so’ and ‘therefore’. Needs the plural ‘women’. Doesn't need ‘urban’ and ‘city’. Good to put a comma after ‘living’, and after ‘period’ – since ‘if only for a short period’ is a side point.

The rest we've already discussed.

How do these compare with your improvements? It doesn't matter if yours are different. Many of these changes are more a matter of taste and judgement than ‘right and wrong’. The main point of the exercise was to focus your attention on the details. Your aim is to achieve directness, simplicity and a nice flow to what you write. You will gradually develop a feel for what works best and when, and your tutor will probably have plenty of suggestions to make.

2.6 How good are Philip's and Hansa's essays?

There are no absolute standards against which the quality of an essay can be judged. It depends on the course you are studying – its content and aims, and the level at which it is pitched. Your tutor will tell you how your essays stand within the context of your course. What we can do is outline the strengths and weaknesses of Philip's and Hansa's essays. In the second question of Activity 1 I asked you to think about this and to make your own lists. Have another look at them and see how they compare with my judgements.

2.6.1 Philip's essay

Strengths

- a reasonable understanding of the general issues Ellis deals with

- a good basic structure

- some good sequences of argument

- a promising feel for language

- fluency of expression

Weaknesses

- the wrong title and consequently a lack of focus

- argument is loose-knit in places – some points are not relevant

- occasionally misrepresents Ellis

- uncertainty regarding the overall argument, so arrives at a weak conclusion

- poor punctuation

- the language is artificial at times – striving for stylishness, instead of clarity

Overall, Philip's essay shows plenty of promise. He develops some useful ideas and has the makings of an effective writing style. However, there are some points to work on. If I were his tutor writing to him, this is what I would say.

Dear Philip,

Well done for getting yourself over the hurdle of sending in your first essay especially as it's such a long time since you last did this kind of writing. The essay shows a lot of promise. You obviously worked hard with the Ellis article and you have done a good sound job of getting your thoughts together for this essay. The structure is very solid and, what is more, you have a nice fluency to your writing which gives you a good base to build on.

Where you have come a bit adrift is in not working with the exact title you were set. This made it hard for you to come to a strong conclusion at the end. Also, as you will see from my notes on the script, there are some places where your line of argument could be strengthened. And you will need to spend a bit of time working on your punctuation, as well as a few other points of grammar and choice of words. None of these should present a major difficulty – they will gradually come right with practice. Just make a habit of reading my markings and notes carefully and then work out how you can make things read more easily.

Broadly, you are doing exactly the right thing – which is to pitch in and work as best you can with the ideas you have been reading about. As you keep doing this you will find your style getting sharper and your grip on your subject more secure. Keep up the good work.

2.6.2 Hansa's essay

Hansa's essay would get a higher grade than Philip's. But, like his, it has both strong and weak points.

Strengths

- subtle understanding of Ellis's argument

- excellent focus on the question in the title

- generally sound structure

- some very fluent writing in places

- plenty of attack in the opening – pacey first paragraph

- good sense of how to draw a conclusion

Weaknesses

- one weak point is in her paragraphing

- in places, language over-formal and sentences too densely packed

- needs to clarify her line of argument (that is, reorganise a little)

- could pay even more attention to signalling how the argument is developing

- doesn't quite set up the frame of reference within which she is arguing

If I were Hansa's tutor, I would write to her in congratulatory and encouraging terms. This is a very creditable job of getting to grips with quite a subtle article and an essay title which demands a bit of careful thought. Hansa has studied well and attacked her essay with insight and flair.

This comparison of Philip's and Hansa's work shows that essays can be good in different ways. And it shows that when we make judgements about the quality of an essay, we need to think about both the quality of the ideas in it and the way these ideas are presented. After all, the ideas only really ‘exist’ in the form we see them on the page.

As I've suggested, judging one essay against the other I'd say that Hansa's is better than Philip's. That is mainly because she addresses herself to the essay question she was set, and puts together a reasonably well-connected argument that leads to an answer to it. Along the way, she shows that she has a good grasp of the ideas contained in her source material.

2.6.3 Re-working Hansa's essay

Now we have looked at Philip's and Hansa's essays in such detail, what have we learned? Perhaps the best way to answer that is to write another version of the essay, building on all the things we have discussed. In fact, I have taken the basic content of Hansa's essay, tidied it up and shuffled it about a little to bring out her argument more strongly. (However this is not the only possible way of structuring an argument in answer to this question.) I have also woven in some of Ellis's terms, and more reference to her article, to show what is meant by ‘referring to your source material’.

Activity 4

Read the version below and compare it with Hansa's. Then look quickly back through all the Key Points boxes in this course to see whether what we said should be done is achieved here.

Click here to open the revised essay (PDF, 0.1MB).

3 What is a good essay?

3.1 A sharper focus

So far, we have been analysing essays in a practical way, looking at the strengths and weaknesses of some actual examples, rather than at formal rules or abstract ideas about essay-writing. Now, though, we need to summarise.

I suggest this because I think you already have a fairly good idea of what effective writing is. I don't think the point of a course like this is to tell you much that is devastatingly new. It is to bring into sharper focus what you ‘know’ already, and to help you apply these intuitions as you develop your own writing. It is one thing to be able to see when someone else's writing is ill-planned and confusing, but quite another to be able to pinpoint why and to avoid making the same mistakes yourself. So have your notes on the final part of the Activity in Section 2.1 in front of you and compare them with mine which are set out below.

Key points

Criteria of good essay-writing

When a tutor reads your essay, she or he will be asking the following questions.

- Have you answered the question in the title?

- Have you drawn on the relevant parts of the course for the main content of your essay?

- Do you show a good grasp of the ideas you have been studying in the course?

- Have you presented a coherent argument?

- Is the essay written in an objective, analytical way, with appropriate use of illustration and evidence?

- Is the essay clearly written and well presented?

3.2 Answering the question

An essay can be good in almost every other way and yet be judged poor because it ignores the question in the title. Strictly speaking, I should say ‘it ignores the issues presented in the title’ because not every essay title actually contains a question. But, in fact, there is usually a central question underlying an essay title, even when it takes the form of a quotation from a text followed by the instruction ‘Discuss’. And you need to work out what that underlying question is, because this provides a sharper focus for your ‘answer’. But, in any case, it is generally a good idea to ask yourself ‘Have I answered the question?’. That's because you are never just asked to ‘write all you know’ about a subject, or simply describe something. You are set a specific problem to think about in the light of what you have been studying.

Your task is to argue a case in relation to the question posed in the title. Everything you say in the essay should be relevant to that task. It isn't enough that a point you make is interesting to you (as we saw with Hansa's interest in women's oppression). You have to convince your readers that the point has some bearing on the title and is therefore worthy of their attention.

That is why it is a good rule always to write the title of the essay across the top of your opening page. It reminds you what you are supposed to be doing and where your readers are starting from when they begin reading your essay. And you must always stick exactly to the title you are given – not devise a modified version of your own, as Philip did. A tutor faces a demanding job commenting on and assessing your essay. The job is made possible by setting it up in a tightly defined way, so that it is clear what has to be done to show a certain level of achievement. This is the purpose of the title and the reason you have to work to it at all times. Tutors can be quite impatient if you insist on demonstrating a whole lot of knowledge you haven't been asked for.

3.3 Drawing on course material

Unless you are taking a course in creative writing, essays are generally meant to help you consolidate what you have been studying. You are not asked to answer the question in the title ‘off the top of your head’ nor on the basis of some prior knowledge. You are expected to take the essay as an opportunity to scan back over what you have been reading or doing and select relevant material from that. The tutor who marks your essay will already have in mind a range of course material that could be used in answer to the question. Your ability to make good, relevant selections from that material is part of what she or he assesses.

If you miss out some of the important ideas and information, or make the occasional strange selection, it may not matter provided you make good use of other relevant material. But if you try to answer the question entirely from knowledge drawn from outside the course, you may run into trouble. In effect, what you are doing is focusing attention on the fact that you haven't used the relevant material in the course and the new knowledge available to you. Also, it is often very difficult for tutors to evaluate your account of material they are not familiar with. They are unlikely to have time to read, view or listen to your sources. So, you may find you receive a higher grade for an essay that is based on course material, even if it has been put together hastily, than for one on a topic you think you know much more about.

3.4 Showing a good grasp of ideas

To show your grasp of the ideas you have been studying you have to express them for yourself, in your own words. Your tutor will certainly be looking out for signs that you understand the centrally important issues. For example, Philip showed that he understood the significance of Ellis's point about women's loss of a household management role. But he was very vague about the effects this had on women's lives in the countryside, which suggests he hadn't really sorted out that part of his argument. His tutor would see that he needs help with it. Your tutor has to be able to see your thought-processes at work in this way in order to give you the kind of advice and support that will help develop your understanding. So what you must avoid doing is using other people's words.

Plagiarising

When you are writing an essay you are often working with ideas and terms you are not familiar with. This makes it difficult for you to produce a clear, coherent argument and you may become anxious about whether you will ‘get it right’. To be on the safe side, some students are tempted to ‘lift’ sections of words from textbooks and articles and put them in their essays without using quotation marks or acknowledging the source. In other words, they try to pass these words off as their own. This is known as ‘plagiarism’.

Tutors are usually very familiar with the difference between the way students write and the way experienced authors write, and soon notice when a student lurches between an ‘expert’ and a ‘beginner’ style. A particular giveaway is when most of the words are as in the original except for one or two (changed for purposes of camouflage), which stick out like sore thumbs because they are in a different style. Another is when smoothly flowing sections of writing are interspersed with short, inelegant linking phrases. It seems that most people write particularly badly when they are trying to stitch together someone else's words. Because you are not in control of ‘making’ the sense as you write, plagiarizing actually makes your writing worse.

This approach will not get you good marks. Indeed, when tutors spot what is going on (which is not difficult) they will tend to assume you understand very little and mark you down. Worse, you do not develop your own writing style. If you become locked into the sterile and tedious business of parroting other people's words rather than expressing thoughts for yourself, then you are likely to remain a beginner for a long time. And you will not learn much about the ideas in the course either.

There is only one way to learn to use ideas in writing and that is to practise expressing them in your own words. They may not come out very well to begin with but, like a learner in any field, you have to be prepared to make mistakes sometimes. It is through letting your weaknesses show that you learn how to do something about them, and allow others to help you learn.

3.5 Presenting a coherent argument

Presenting a coherent argument is closely linked to ‘answering the question’. The essence of an essay is that it sets out to be an argument about the issues raised in the title. Even if you have a lot of good material in it, it will not be judged ‘a good essay’ unless the material is organised so that it hangs together. This implies two things:

1. You need to sort out your points into groups so that they can be presented in a structured way, giving the essay a beginning, a middle, and an end.

2. You need to keep a thread of meaning running through your essay. Each sentence should flow on from the previous one, with adequate signposting to help your reader follow the moves you are making.

Presenting a coherent argument is also closely linked with ‘showing your grasp of ideas’. One of the reasons why your writing tasks are set in the essay form – the form of an argument – is because that makes you use the ideas you have been studying to say something. Anyone can copy material from books. The point of an essay is to make you think. When you present a coherent argument you are showing that you can take hold of the ideas and organise them to do some work for you.

Perhaps you were a bit puzzled when I said earlier that Philip and Hansa both argue quite well, in view of the criticisms I had made of their arguments. What I meant was that they both have some sense of what an academic argument should be like. Most important, they show they know that arguing in an essay is not the same thing as ‘having an argument’ in everyday life, when people tend to confront each other – often being stubborn, emotional, irrational, and making wild generalisations. An argument in an essay aims at the very opposite of these things. The writer must be objective, precise, logical, and concerned to back a case with evidence.

Philip and Hansa sometimes write in a vague and woolly way, but at other times they are quite precise – accurate in what they say, and careful to use the right word. This shows they know it matters which words you choose in making a particular point, even if they don't always find them. And they connect up the stages in their argument well enough to show that they are aware they should present their ideas in a reasoned or logical sequence, not spray them around any old how. Even if they do not use enough evidence from Ellis's article to illustrate and support what they say, they use enough to show they know this matters too. In other words, they both give signs of recognising what it means to write an academic essay, and this is fundamental to everything else.

3.6 Taking an objective, analytical stance

One of the things I said an essay should be is ‘objective’. What does that mean? Being objective about something means standing back from it and looking at it coolly. It means focusing your attention on the ‘object’, on what you are discussing, and not on yourself and your own (subjective) feelings about it. Your ideas should be able to survive detailed inspection by other people who are not emotionally committed to them.

An essay should argue by force of reason, not emotion. You must make deliberate efforts to develop a style of writing that is cool, dispassionate and fair to all sides. That means you yourself must be open to doubt and criticism. Your arguments should be presented in the spirit that your reader might not agree with them. And if you want to dispute a claim someone else makes, you are expected to have analysed that claim carefully, to argue your case and provide evidence for your point of view, rather than setting out to criticise or cast doubts on your opponent's character or motives. You should be respectful to other writers. You should assume that you are writing as a member of a community of equals, all of whom are intelligent, open-minded, fair people. You should write on the assumption that your readers are also members of that community, and that they will be interested only in your reasons for thinking what you do. They will not be interested in you as a person, or in your ideas because they are your ideas.

3.7 Writing clearly

A final point that emerged from our analysis of Philip's and Hansa's essays was that a good essay is easy to read. Grand-sounding phrases and elaborate sentences do not make an essay impressive. Clarity and economy are what count. Such ease of reading is achieved at several levels.

3.7.1 Technical considerations

Handwriting

Nowadays most people use a word processing package to write essays while some people may use a typewriter. However, if you don't have access to either of these you will need to hand-write your essay. Should this be the case, the ease of reading depends on the quality of your handwriting . It is only fair to your tutor to try to make your writing as legible as possible. This will take time and care. But when you have spent a long time putting an essay together, it is a waste if what you say is misunderstood just because your writing is misread. It is also prudent to take care. It would be an angel of a tutor who was not a bit impatient at having to spend ages trying to make out your handwriting. If it is really dreadful you will have to get someone to tell you which letters are hardest to read and practise straightening them out, rounding them more, or whatever. Having said that, most tutors have resigned themselves, in the course of duty, to becoming expert at deciphering all kinds of scrawl. They will usually do their best not to be too influenced by it. (Actually, a lot of students complain that they can't read their tutors’ scribbled comments on their essays, so this is not a one-way street.)

Layout

When using a word processing package, it is best to use a font like Times New Roman which is sober and easy to read. Set the font size to 11 or 12 points and use double line spacing. You should also make sure that there are generous margins – the default settings are usually sufficient. If you are writing by hand, your essay is easier to read if it is set out neatly on the page. You should use lined A4 paper and leave generous margins for your tutor to write comments. Write on one side of the paper only – this makes it much easier to cross-refer from one section of the essay to another. Make sure you leave spaces between paragraphs. This is all straightforward stuff, but the point is that you should ‘stand back’ from your finished essay and look at it as an ‘object’ you have created. Does it look inviting to read? It is surprising how many essays have words squashed onto every square centimetre of the page. Be ‘page-proud’ and generous with space. Unless your essays look as if you care, why should anyone else?

Grammar, punctuation and spelling

As we have seen, these contribute enormously to ease of reading. The whole point of punctuation is to help the reader approach your words in the right way, and the rules of grammar are what enable the reader to construct the sense intended by the writer. Mistakes in either make the reader stop to work out what is being said. Poor spelling can also cause frequent interruptions. Meanwhile, the reader ‘loses’ the thread of your meaning. None of these abilities is easy to improve quickly, and all fall beyond the scope of this book. But if you think you are particularly weak in them you should seek help. Take comfort from the thought that your tutor will usually try to ‘read through’ to your intended meaning, and will also try to help you improve.

3.7.2 Language

Your language should be direct rather than fancy. Don't strive for effect. You should always go for short and simple sentences where you can – especially when you are building up a basic essay-writing style. You can play with more elaborate words and grammatical structures later, when you have established a secure basic technique. Don't beat about the bush; pitch straight in to answering the essay question in a direct, purposeful way.

3.7.3 Fluency

Try to make your essays flow from one sentence to the next. As we have seen, this is partly a matter of structure and partly of signposting. It is vital to think of your essay in terms of its overall structure – to move points around, and cut and trim, in search of a clear sequence for your ideas. Then, having worked out a structure, you have to ‘talk’ your reader through it, emphasising the key turning points in the essay, summarising where you have got to, showing how each new point follows from the last, and finally bringing it all to a conclusion.

3.7.4 Explaining

You need to be able to think of things from your reader's point of view. The reader cannot see into your mind so you have to explain your points quite fully and carefully. You need to give examples to illustrate what you are talking about and to justify what you say. In other words, you need a sense of your ‘audience’ and you have to work out how to ‘speak’ to these readers in the right ‘tone of voice’.

4 Conclusion

Finally, a few key messages to take from this course. One is that there is no great mystery about what good writing is. We can recognize it just by reading it. The difficulty is how to produce it. However, since there are different aspects of writing well, you will find it useful to return to the ‘Criteria of good essay writing’ from time to time to consider how your writing is developing. When you are about to submit an essay to a tutor, or after you get it back with comments on it, you can check through the list to see what progress you are making on each front.

Another point you might think about is that, in the processs of reading Philip's and Hansa's essays, you have had a glimpse into the role your tutor plays. As you saw, it isn't easy to read other people's writing and make sense of it. Nor is it easy to pinpoint what their strengths and weaknesses are. There are two lessons here.

1. Be sympathetic to your tutor and present your work as well as you can.

2. Don't be too upset or too irritated if your tutor misses your point, or if he or she offers advice you don't think is appropriate or makes comments you don't think are fair. It is almost impossible to get things right all the time.

Last, take away the knowledge that you don't have to get your writing perfect before submitting it. The essays we have looked at are nowhere near perfect, but they are fine as early attempts. In fact, there isn't such a thing as ‘perfect’ anyway. There are many different ways of writing a good essay. These students did exactly the right thing by simply ‘having a go’. You have to assume that your first attempts will not be wonderful and just get on with it. A good learner in any field is prepared to make mistakes.

This OpenLearn course provides a sample of level 1 study in English Literature and Creative Writing.

5 Dictionaries/companions to arts study

5.1 Subject areas

Unless you are advised otherwise, always consult the most recent edition of these books. The dates / editions given here are as at the time of printing.

5.1.1 Art History

Haggar, R.G. (ed.) (1962) A Dictionary of Art Terms, London, Oldbourne.

Hall, J. (ed.) (1979) Hall's Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, London, John Murray.

5.1.2 Classical Studies

Hornblower, S. and Spawforth, A. (eds) (1997, 3rd edn) The Oxford Classical Dictionary, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Howatson, M.C. and Chilvers, I. (eds) (1993) The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5.1.3 Film Studies

Bawden, L.-A. (ed.) (1976) The Oxford Companion to Film, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5.1.4 History

There is no general dictionary or companion to the study of history as such. However, there are period and subject-specific companions and indexes, such as:

Jones, C. (1990) The Longman Companion to the French Revolution, London, Longman.

Consult those appropriate to your course.

5.1.5 English Language

McArthur, T. (ed.) (1992) The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5.1.6 Languages and Law

Your course will recommend appropriate dictionaries, grammars and reference books.

5.1.7 Literature

Drabble, M. (ed.) (1995) The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

5.1.8 Media Studies

Watson, J. and Hill, A. (eds) (1984) A Dictionary of Communication and Media Studies, London, Arnold.

5.1.9 Music

Blom, E., revised by Cumings, D. (eds) (1991) The New Everyman Dictionary of Music, London, Dent.

Isaacs, A., and Martin, E. (eds) (1982) Dictionary of Music, London, Sphere.

5.1.10 Philosophy

Flew, A. (ed.) (1979) A Dictionary of Philosophy, London, Pan Books.

Bunnin, N., and Tsui-James, E.P.> (eds) (1996) The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell.

5.1.11 Religious Studies

Hinnells, J. R. (ed.) (1995) A New Dictionary of Religions, Oxford, Blackwell.

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Acknowledgements

The material below is part of an extract (chapter 4 pages pp. 101–142 and pp. 265–268) adapted for OpenLearn and contained in The Arts Good Study Guide, by Ellie Chambers and Andrew Northedge from The Open University. Copyright © The Open University, 2005. The Arts Study Guide forms part of the study material for The Open University course A103 An Introduction to the Humanities and has been designed to be used with other Open University courses.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence

Course image: Pittypomm in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this course:

J. Ellis, ‘On the town’, Permission for this article is from Online Archives at: History Today, December 1995.

K. Sawyer

All other materials included in this course are derived from content originated at the Open University.

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