Writing a Research Essay
My students often ask about how a research essay should be written, particularly with regard to the structure and style. You will be judged on the clarity of your writing throughout life so you must work on this skillset continuously if you want your ideas and thoughts to be taken seriously. The following are my recommendations.
Contents
Writing well
Strunk and White's, The Elements of Style [1], has stood the test of time as being a great book to improve your writing. If you do not have a copy, please borrow one from a library or consider buying one. It is not long, but I feel it is an indispensable guide for anyone. If you have not read this book and are a technical IT person, you may prejudge an English language style guide to be pretentious and complex but I have highlighted some excerpts below which should show you that this is not the case. Please obtain and read the entire book.
If you want the e-book, it is available from Amazon The Elements of Style. Be prepared for the best 67 cents you have spent in your life!
Omit needless words
"Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell." [1]
This rule really benefits from some examples of common mistakes followed by the corrections. Below are again, some examples from Strunk and White.
"the question as to whether whether used for fuel purposes used for fuel he is a man who he in a hasty manner hastily the reason why is that because The fact that is an especially debilitating expression. It should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs."[1]
Do not overstate
"When you overstate, readers will be instantly on guard, and everything that has preceded your overstatement as well as everything that follows it will be suspect in their minds because they have lost confidence in your judgment or your poise. Overstatement is one of the common faults." [1]
Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity
"Do not use initials for the names of organizations or movements unless you are certain the initials will be readily understood. Write things out. Not everyone knows that MADD means Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and even if everyone did, there are babies being born every minute who will someday encounter the name for the first time." [1]
Be clear
"...since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. And although there is no substitute for merit in writing, clarity comes closest to being one... When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences. Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a badly worded road sign, heartbreak among lovers caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear!" [1]
Avoid fancy words
"Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twentydollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. Anglo-Saxon is a livelier tongue than Latin, so use Anglo-Saxon words. In this, as in so many matters pertaining to style, one's ear must be one's guide: gut is a lustier noun than intestine, but the two words are not interchangeable, because gut is often inappropriate, being too coarse for the context. Never call a stomach a tummy without good reason." "If you admire fancy words, if every sky is beauteous, every blonde curvaceous, every intelligent child prodigious, if you are tickled by discombobulate, you will have a bad time with Reminder 14. What is wrong, you ask, with beauteous? No one knows, for sure. There is nothing wrong, really, with any word — all are good, but some are better than others. A matter of ear, a matter of reading the books that sharpen the ear." [1]
If you need more convincing, you can read another author's favourite excerpts from the book in the article here: http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.murdoch.edu.au/stable/25594676 In short, make sure you read the whole book and start trying to integrate some of the ideas that resonate with you into your writing.
I think the following Aristotle quote provides a nice summary of this section.
Style to be good must be clear. Clearness is secured by using words that are current and ordinary.’ - Aristotle
Digital tools to use
There are numerous digital tools that you can use. These need to be used as tools and not as an excuse to be lazy and inarticulate in your writing. Using all the tools in the world will not transform poorly structured and worded writing into something genuinely meaningful.
- Grammarly - Tool to check some basic spelling and grammar but do not rely too heavily on it.
- Studiosity - Greater feedback on structural/technical issues, see links in LMS
The most important aspect of these tools is that you use them to try to locate your weaknesses in writing. Are you consistently doing something wrong? Try not to rely on them to turn poor work into acceptable work but instead as a learning tool in your continual development.
Structure
The image to the right [2] describes the overall structure that will work for most essays. Note that introductions should narrow in focus from beginning to end. The conclusion of a document should end with broader implications and future directions. The best way to structure the content within the body is described in greater detail below. Remember that there is no absolute right or wrong here, you will have to use your best judgement.
Many students don't put enough thought into how they structure their document. Remember that if your thoughts are unclear, then there is no way that when you come to write it will be any clearer. The lesson here is that clarity in your thought process will lead to clarity in the narrative of your writing. Clarity of thought on a topic should hopefully improve as you read more, so the pre-requisite for all of this is that you have done a lot of reading on the topic and have had the time to sit back and reflect on what you have read. The takeaway message: read a lot and read with as much lead time on your deadline as possible.
Most documents can be written with a variety of different structures. If the topic was World War 2, and obviously this is an enormous topic, the structure could vary wildly based on the story that we were trying to tell. If we simply wanted to describe the major events in a simplified manner then a chronological order might be best. Comparatively, if we wanted to reflect on the importance of technology in World War 2 then we might group technologies into, land, sea, air, communications and within these subsections, we might describe the developments in a chronological manner. If the topic was to describe the often underemphasized role of the colonies, then the first group of topics might be British, French and Italian colonies. Within the section British colonies, we might have paragraphs on Singapore, India and Africa.
The message I am trying to communicate is that there is no one size fits all set of headings that you can apply. A document's structure can take many different forms and will vary based on the story that you are trying to tell.
Writers block and getting started
This section is going to sound like it is contradicting the previous one on structuring an essay. There are many guides which will tell you to carefully plan the entire essay with clear thoughts and dot points on each paragraph. This advice is sound, but many, including myself, can struggle to get started, to commit those first few words on paper.
An alternative approach is to; just write! There can be nothing more intimidating and demoralising than having spent 15 hours reading on the topic and still having nothing to show for it. If you find yourself in this scenario, then my advice would be to just write! Get something down on the page, no matter how badly it is structured or worded. Once you have a terrible draft then at least you have something to work with. Many writers, will then revise, rewrite iteratively until they have something that they are satisfied with. You do have to be prepared to do the heavy revisions required. This could involve complete restructure of the entire document numerous times.
Again I will provide an excerpt from Strunk and White:
"Quite often you will discover, on examining the completed work, that there are serious flaws in the arrangement of the material, calling for transpositions. When this is the case, a word processor can save you time and labor as you rearrange the manuscript... Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers." [1]
The takeaway message here is that for many writers, the writing is the idea/originality generation process and you may just need to get words on paper.
How to Reference in an Esasy
You can use IEEE style referencing or APA, but the most important thing is that you pick one and remain faithful to the style guide.
Essure that you know the difference between a reference list and a bibliography. Remember that at university, we really only care about the articles that are in your reference list. We expect that you have read many more articles than the ones that you citing.
The use of Wikipedia for citations is controversial, but I don't think that it should be. In many areas, Wikipedia is a stunningly good resource. My opinion is that while Wikipedia is great, it is never the original source of truth or information on a topic. Remember that when we cite articles we want to cite the original source. As an example, take the famous Churchhill quote below
"...We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old." -W. Churchill [3]
Consider that we could use a range of potential sources for where this came from:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Wikipedia_links
- http://audio.theguardian.tv/sys-audio/Guardian/audio/2007/04/20/Churchill.mp3
- https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/we-shall-fight-on-the-beaches/
Have a look at my reference list at the bottom of the page. What did I reference?
Plagiarism
Know that there is a clear line between what is fair and unfair use of help in assessment. The aids that your University make available to you, such as Studiosity, Grammarly or in person help within the library are all fair. Paying someone to complete the work, using a previous submission, synonymizing text online or failing to acknowledge sources are all clearly in the Academic misconduct camp. This is not a hazy or fuzzy line. It is much better to submit nothing than to violate your own code of integrity as well as the University's.
Common Mistakes
The following are common issues that I see in student work:
- A string of loose unconnected paragraphs on the topic, which may be appropriately cited but fail to show that the student had a clear line of thinking from beginning to end. This is usually caused by a student overly relying on paraphrasing two to three sources. This work will fail to appropriately describe any sort of debate within the topic and fail to demonstrate any originality of thought. The remedy here would be for the student to spend much more time reading more articles on the topic.
- Student describing a really superficial topic, which does not reach the depth required for this level. In this case, there are two potential remedies for this problem: A) the student should have sought feedback on the article they were writing to get this feedback b) the student's understanding of the area is weak and a significant amount of reading is required to improve the level.
- The work never states anything original, interesting, important or deep. In this case, usually, the sources being cited are newspaper articles and technical magazines. The student either failed to read deeply on the topic and/or was padding out the work. Remember to write concisely, about topics that you care about and that you have done the necessary amount of reading.
- Overuse of quotes. Generally, the best way to cite a source is to paraphrase and use an in-text citation. Save quotes for things like speeches, or when particular the wording of a statement is very precise and you wish to avoid misrepresenting a statement. Note that I have overused quotes in this document. The quotes from J.K Rowling and W. Churchill are fine, because they are quotes of something that has been said. The reason that I have certainly over-relied on quotes from Strunk and White is that the lessons and wording of the best language style guide should not be butchered by someone who is not an expert in that field. The take-away message: use quotations sparingly.
Keep at it
You are not going to morph from being an average to a great writer overnight. It is going to take lots of time and effort. To reinforce this idea, I will end this with a quote from J.K Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series:
"You have to resign yourself to wasting lots of trees before you write anything really good. That's just how it is. It's like learning an instrument. You've got to be prepared for hitting wrong notes occasionally, or quite a lot. That's just part of the learning process. And read a lot. Reading a lot really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on." - J.K. Rowling [4]
I would also add that good writing generally requires you to revise and rewrite over and over. If you are wondering about the usage of a particular word, Guardian and Observer journalists have published their style guide here: https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
A class exercise
As an exercise in structuring and planning an essay, let's work as a class on how we could write an essay on heart attacks. Resist the urge to look up an essay. Start by listing keywords on your page. Then, in groups structure the resulting keywords into a coherent plan for an essay.
References
[1] W. Strunk and E.B White, The Elements of Style. 4th ed. S.l.: Longman, 1999. Hardback. ISBN|0-205-31342-6 (hardback). S.l.: Longman, 2000. ISBN|0-205-30902-X (paperback). With a foreword by Roger Angell.
[2] Monash University, Writing Essays, 2017. [Online]. Avaliable: https://www.monash.edu/rlo/quick-study-guides/writing-essays. [Accessed: 11 April 2019]
[3] W. Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, 4 June 1940
[4] Linda Richards, J.K Rowling January Profile, January Magazine. [Online]. Avaliable: http://www.januarymagazine.com/profiles/jkrowling.html [Accessed: 11 April 2019]
