How to Write an Essay

People occasionally ask me if I have any advice to offer them on how to write a good essay. Most of the time, I reply with fairly long-winded and jumbled voice notes as I wrack my brain for all the disparate pieces of advice I’ve taken onboard from friends, teachers and articles over the years. I’ve decided that instead of doing this, it would be more useful to consolidate this advice into one document and then upload it online so that anyone else can access it too.

This post draws from a number of sources; but by far the biggest inspiration is a wonderful guide written by the late Bob Hargrave, a Professor of Philosophy at Balliol College. A link to this is provided at the end – I implore you to read it!

Disclaimer: The type of essay I had in mind when writing this guide was a typical assignment or exam essay you would be set in a social science or humanities undergraduate or Masters course. This guide is based on my experiences as a student of Philosophy, Politics and Economics – as such, I cannot guarantee that it carries over to History, Geography, English Literature etc. Likewise, parts of this guide do not extend to creative writing pieces, blogs, or more journalistic forms of writing.

Further disclaimer: I am not an examiner or teacher. My only real authority on this topic stems from the great advice I’ve received over the years, and from the fact that I have tended to punch above my weight in essay-based exams. You follow my advice at your own risk. With these caveats in mind, I present to you the 10 commandments of good essay-writing.

Commandment 1: Answer the damn question

This one comes first as it is by far the most important. It also represents the most common pitfall that poor essays fall into. Open any Examiners Report on any essay-based subject at any University and I can almost guarantee you will come across a statement like this:

“Quite a few students attempted to squeeze prepared answers into the frameworks provided by the questions, rather than thinking about the question and attempting to answer it directly.” - Theory of Politics Examiners Report, University of Oxford, 2015.

Do not attempt to shoe-horn in related essays which do not directly answer the question posed. Remember: essays are not are not a test of how much you know about a subject. They are a test of how well you can explain and argue what you do know.

A good way to test whether you have answered the question is to play the “Guess the Question” game: if you were to cover up the title, would someone reading your essay be able to guess what it was? From Professor Hargrave’s guide, here are some unfortunate answers to this game from Oxford finals examinations:

• Write down all you can remember about Locke on Personal Identity, in no particular order. Abandon any attempt at accuracy or rigour. Above all, do not draw any conclusions.
• Think up a really stupid view on Personal Identity, which no philosopher has ever held, and blame it on Hume. Remember to end your essay in the middle of a sentence.
• Compose a brief piece on Personal Identity parodying the style of Readers' Digest, and beginning with the phrase "Ever since the dawn of time...".
• Copy out from memory your tutorial essay on Personal Identity.
• Confuse Hume with Berkeley. If you have never heard of Berkeley, just confuse Hume.

To avoid being immortalised in future essay writing guides such as this, write this in two-foot letters on your wall: answer the question exactly, fully, and only the question in front of you.

Commandment 2: Argue a case

All essays make a case – in fact the word ‘essay’ itself originates from the Latin word ‘exagium’, which means to weigh up or ascertain. A case is essentially a structured argument (see Commandment 4) which aims to convince the reader that the authors' view on the question at hand is correct. An essay is not a literature review, nor is it an invitation to knowledge-dump everything you know about the subject.

In making a case, you should avoid sitting on the fence (e.g. “this evidence points this way, this evidence points that way, so in the end I don’t really know”). This does not mean you have to take ridiculously one-sided or polemic positions. Be nuanced by all means: but if you think a ‘middle way’ provides the best answer to the question, then defend that position with fervour.

Of course, to argue a case, you need to know your view on the matter. Which assumes you actually have a view on the matter. Which leads to…

Commandment 3: Defend a position you actually believe

This may sound obvious, but it wasn’t for me when I first started writing essays. Rather than thinking critically about the question, I would tend to assemble the most convenient argument based on what I’d read. For example, if I’d read more about compatibilism than determinism then I would defend compatibilism in my essay on free will based on my (flawed) assumption that I had more evidence in favour of the former, so writing the essay would be easier.

If you’re not sure about your opinion on a particular topic – that’s okay! Think about it, read about it, speak with classmates about it until your view becomes clearer. In an exam, I would not recommend answering questions upon which you don’t have a settled view. The pressure of an exam is not the time to be deciding what your genuine opinion is; this should have been done long ago during your revision.

Defending a position you actually believe in will make your prose sound more authoritative and convincing (see Commandment 10). It will also (hopefully) make the whole ordeal of essay-writing less pain-staking.

Commandment 4: Plan your structure

There is a simple way to think about structure. Imagine you are in a court trying to convince an intelligent, scholarly, but not-necessarily-well-informed-on-the-question-at-hand jury that your view on the question is correct. The structure you would use to make this argument should be the same as the structure you use to write your essay.

What might this look like? It should be logically coherent – in the sense that if the jury accepts every point you make, it shouldn’t be a great leap for them to accept your conclusion. It should also be evidence-based, where evidence can take the form of real-world statistics or anecdotal examples. Above all, it should be clear. You are far better off concentrating on simple points that are under your command rather than sophisticated points which are not under your command. Apply this advice to many more walks of life.

Commandment 5: Deliver a strong thesis statement

A thesis statement is a one sentence summary of your argument which exactly answers the question posed. This is useful for many reasons: i) it leaves the reader with no doubt in their mind where you stand on the topic ii) it forces you to articulate clearly what you actually think iii) it provides a good focal point for the rest of your essay to refer back to.

Your thesis statement should be delivered in your introduction, preferably as early as possible. Which leads on to the next point…

Commandment 6: Nail your introduction

One of the most powerful biases humans exhibit is the ‘halo effect’ – the idea that if you make a good first impression, then everything you do subsequently is more likely to be perceived in a favourable light (and vice-versa). Examiners and readers are no different: if you start off erudite you can get away with murder later in your essay; if you start off muddled then it will be an uphill battle to change their opinion about you.

Good introductions have the same essential ingredients: a crisp and punchy opening sentence, a thesis statement delivered clearly and unambiguously, an indication as to how you will go about defending this statement, and absolutely no flannel, waffle, or anything else unrelated to the question at hand. For examples of good, bad, and ugly opening paragraphs, refer to the next section.

It is also important to make sure that your introduction and conclusion speak to each other. A tutor once told me that he could predict, with a high-degree of accuracy, how good an essay would be just by reading the introduction (to see where the author thought they were going) and conclusion (to see where the author thought they had ended up). If the two paragraphs were sensible, clear and aligned, then this was a strong indication that the author had produced a good essay.

First (and last) impressions matter. If you’re sitting an exam in which you’re asked to write three essays, I would recommend concocting a ‘shit sandwich’: putting your strongest essay in the envelope first, the weakest in the middle and the final one at the end. This is a small point and probably won’t make much difference – but you might as well game the system as best as you can.

Commandment 7: Keep it short and focused

If your tutor has imposed a word limit, stick to it. This is not to encourage laziness: it is to sharpen your writing and force you to think carefully about structure.

Make every paragraph count. Each paragraph should be linked to and drive forward your thesis statement like a tentacle of an octopus. Each tentacle should make its own independent contribution: consequently, if any tentacle is dismembered, this should make your overall argument weaker. 

A good way to test this is to cover up each paragraph and then ask yourself if your essay is any way weaker without it. If the answer is no, delete that paragraph.

Commandment 8: Cite, but don’t name-drop

Citing is important: in an assignment it shields you from plagiarism and in an exam it signals to the examiner that you are well-informed on the topic. But don’t name-drop. What I mean by this is don’t cite for the sake of citing e.g. just to mention an author you want to show off that you’ve read. No one cares that you suffered through the entirety of Hobbes’ Leviathan unless it directly relates to your argument.

In terms of technicalities, it is fine to just put the authors surname and the year in parentheses at the end of your sentence (Harvard referencing); in an exam, you can drop the year altogether. In general, avoid quoting text verbatim unless you literally cannot put it better in your own words (which will be rare!)

To get an idea of an essay which is citation rather than point-led, this is a genuine excerpt from my A-Level History coursework:

The historian Creveld acknowledges this point by noting “there was not a single cartridge fired that had not been manufactured before the outbreak of hostilities”, lending credence to Blackbourn’s interpretation. Furthermore, Taylor’s conviction in the importance of railways furthers this argument, as he states “the basis for their [Prussia’s] success was their railway timetable”. Indeed, Prussia’s ability to utilise railways when mobilizing was only made possible due to the economic boom, which the historian Henderson acknowledges in saying “existing industries – coal and iron – were expanded to supply fuel and rails for the railways”, which further supports the importance of economic strength in securing victory. However, the efficacy of the railways is questioned by Sheehan, as he argues that whilst “railroads changed the scale as well as the tempo of war”, unfortunately “with this new scale came profound problems of command, communication and control”. The historian Voth lends further weight to this counter-assertion, as he stipulates that “Moltke’s plans to supply his armies in Austria by rail nearly ended in catastrophe”. Moreover, the importance of economic growth in developing Prussia’s munitions industry is further refuted by Taylor, who testifies that “Prussia was inferior in the application of industry in war”. This viewpoint is corroborated by Sheehan…

Yikes.

Commandment 9: Don’t obsess over definitions

I occasionally see essays that feel the need to define every term in the question, which reads like something out of Clockwork Orange. As a general rule, you only need to define a term if it is inherently ambiguous (e.g. ‘neoliberalism’) and if your answer to the question hinges crucially on what you take that word to mean.

For instance, my answer to the question “Is realist theory obsolete?” clearly depends on my interpretation of the word “obsolete”. I could plausibly take it to mean one of three things:

1. It is no longer written about/discussed
2. It is no longer useful to scholars
3. It is no longer a tenable explanation of how the world works

1) is patently false; you would have a hard time defending 2); but 3) is a very reasonable view that many IR scholars hold. Clearly, which definition I choose makes a massive difference to my argument.

Commandment 10: Write authoritatively

Imagine you are writing for the Economist or the Financial Times. You wouldn’t read phrases like “in my opinion” or “it seems that” in these magazines and for good reason – they depower the author and make them seem hesitant and non-committal. So don’t write phrases like this in your essay – be authoritative![1]  

It is also useful to bear in mind George Orwell’s timeless ‘six elementary rules’ of the English Language:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print
2. Never use a long word where a short word will do
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

If you want an example of good academic prose, look no further than the writings of Robert Nozick. I am definitely more of a champagne-Rawlsian, but the way in which Nozick captures the mind through prose is second-to-none.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Essay Introductions

I also nicked this idea from Professor Hargrave, but thought it would be fun to re-do using my crap first year undergraduate Philosophy essays as fodder. Without further ado, here are the good, the bad and the ugly of essay introductions, using genuine essays I wrote during my undergraduate degree. 

The Ugly

Are the Mind and Body Two Separate Substances?

The question of mind-body dualism has been a prominent area of philosophical discussion throughout the course of human history, and still retains the same relevance and controversy today as it has done in the past. In order to establish a thorough conclusion to the question of this essay, it is necessary to examine the main viewpoints that have been presented on this topic, and compare their validity against each other.

Commentary

Oh dear. Platitudinous first sentence, and the second for that matter. In fact, this introduction isn’t really saying anything. For instance, putting myself in the shoes of a reader, I have no idea what the question is and no idea what line of argument the writer is taking.

If you think about it, this introduction could be about any essay. Replace ‘mind-body dualism’ and ‘philosophical’ with ‘Darwinian evolution’ and ‘biological’ and this could literally be copy and pasted into another essay, which is never a good sign.

In short: this is a waste of paper – but in fairness, this was my first ever essay at Oxford.

What Constitutes Personal Identity?

The idea of defining our personal identity and capturing the real me invokes a greater sense of importance than many other areas of general philosophy, and has therefore always been a prominent area of discussion. In this essay, I am going to argue that we must tear up all our naturally held assumption about ourselves; we cannot be certain that our identity dies when our body dies; we cannot be certain that our identity implies an owner (or a self), and we cannot even assume we retain the same identity throughout our bodily lives.

Commentary

This introduction is slightly better, but still majorly deficient. Again, we have a platitudinous first sentence. While there is a semblance of a thesis statement in here, it is very woolly and ill-defined. If I had to play the ‘Guess the Title’ game, I would probably say something along the lines of “write down a list of vague, disconnected thoughts loosely related to the topic of personal identity”. This was my second ever essay – baby steps!

The Bad

Do We Have Free Will?

At first glance, the issue of free will can often be dismissed as trivial, and the preceding arguments embarrassingly one-sided. Surely we can be certain that free will exists? However, as I will demonstrate at the beginning of this essay, the doctrine of hard determinism puts forward a strong argument to suggest that the causal nature of our behaviour renders us unable to influence both the present and the future, and thus makes the notion of freedom highly questionable. I will then show that any attempts to bypass or transcend determinism are either impossible or insufficient in proving we have free will, and thus the only way to show we are really free is to somehow reconcile determinism with freedom. After dismissing a few of the more common arguments for compatibilism, I will finally settle on an argument proving that freedom and determinism can indeed coexist, and hence show that human beings do have free will. 

Commentary

Things are getting better slowly. There are some good things about this introduction: first, we have a thesis statement, highlighted in bold. Anyone reading this will know exactly that this is an essay defending freedom of the will. There is also an (albeit slightly unclear) indication of how I’ll go about doing this: by reconciling determinism with freedom.

Still, things could be improved. The first sentence doesn’t really make sense – I sort of know what I must have meant at the time but it is very woolly and leaves a bad first impression. The second sentence is not much better: the hanging question is insipid and disempowering.

A final point: when confronting questions that have occupied human minds for millennia, a good rule of thumb is to add a healthy dose of nuance and not come down too heavily on one side. As much as I would have liked, it is unlikely that my 19-year-old self was able to crack the problem once and for all.

Should principles of justice be chosen behind a ‘veil of ignorance’?

The veil of ignorance is a methodological thought experiment first introduced by John Rawls in his Theory of Justice. In this essay, I will ultimately argue that we should choose principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance, since, as I shall explain in a subsequent paragraph, two fundamental requirements of justice are best ensured by assuming ignorance. I will then explore three major objections to Rawls’s device, examining each one in turn before explaining why I think they are all fundamentally misguided.

Commentary

Again, we have an identifiable thesis statement, and this time the opening sentence goes some way in clarifying and introducing the question. However, this introduction is too short, even for an exam essay. The reader is left with no idea of how I will defend my thesis statement which may cause confusion later down the line. At the very least, I should have stated what these objections are and given a short indication of how I will go about countering them.

The Good

‘In the final analysis, a state’s foreign policy choices will be determined by whichever domestic interest groups are the strongest.’ Do you agree?

The role of domestic interest groups in foreign policy choices embodies the puzzling tangle between domestic and international politics that the IR theorist must contend with. In approaching this puzzle, I will adopt Puttnam’s two-tiered strategic framework to assess the role of constitutive actors and exogenous forces in shaping foreign policy direction. Using this framework, I will argue that foreign policy choices are not determined by whichever domestic interest groups are the strongest, since these interest groups may be cleverly circumvented by astute Level I negotiators. Moreover, the fact that Level I negotiators often pursue policies that are overtly at odds with the interests of their domestic constituents shows that it is they, and not domestic interest groups, who are the most important actors in the conduct of foreign policy. This must be caveated by acknowledging the importance of exogenous variables such as ideology, since these can influence the behaviour of all agents within Puttnam’s underlying framework.

Commentary

This essay has a clear thesis statement and a good explanation of how I will go about defending it. Referencing Puttnam’s model sets out a logical framework from the outset which will make the whole essay clearer and more structured. Not all essays warrant a framework, but in topics as broad as ‘foreign policy choices’ introducing one can make unwieldy questions a lot more manageable. The added nuance at the end is also a nice touch – if done well, self-critiquing a framework/paradigm can be a powerful way to signal both intellectual rigour and command of material.

What explains the continued salience of ethnicity in so many African political systems?

Garrick Bailey defines an ethnic group as “a named social category or people based on perceptions of shared social experience”. The emphasis on perception implies that Bailey interprets ethnicity as a social construct, as opposed to a purely descriptive account of different physiological characteristics. For the purpose of this essay, I will view the concept of ethnicity under similar guises. Thus, since ethnicity is a construct, to explain its continued salience we must examine the motivations people had for creating and sustaining these identities. To do this, I will distinguish between the motivations of two types of agents: elites and commoners (non-elites). Embodied in this distinction is an important message: ethnic divides are not simply ‘top-down’ or ‘bottom-up’ impositions; they are embraced and perpetuated by elites and commoners alike. Thus, this essay focuses on two questions:

1. What motivation did elites have to appeal to ethnicity?
2. What motivation did commoners have to accept and advance these ethnic divides?

Using this framework, I will argue that the continued salience of ethnicity is attributable to elites and commoners using ethnicity to pursue two aims simultaneously: elites used ethnicity as a means to gain or consolidate their power; commoners used ethnicity as a means to retain a sense of personal identity and to enhance their claim to state resources. This argument will be made in reference to two case studies in particular: Rwanda and Kenya.

Commentary

This, I think, is about as good as my introductions ever got. There is a strong thesis statement and a clear indication of how I will go about defending it. The definition given at the start seems both reasonable and necessary: ethnicity is a murky and controversial topic so defining it from the outset helps avoid any ambiguities later. Finally, the reference to Rwanda and Kenya at the end signals that the essay will be evidence-based and helpfully narrows the scope.

References

The two guides written by Professor Hargrave can be accessed here:

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~mnat/~ball0888/oxfordopen/Rodin.htm

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~mnat/~ball0888/oxfordopen/paragraphs.htm

This guide is also available in PDF format, available here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2bc6hx035hi3moq/How%20to%20Write%20an%20Essay.pdf?dl=0

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[1] There is a good argument to be made that rewarding authoritative language in essays unfairly biases men over women. I am certainly sympathetic to this argument: but unless something changes, my advice will remain to make a conscious effort to write authoritatively.