As I’m sure all history students know, essay writing is something that we spend a lot of time doing. It’s fair to say that these tasks are the most frustrating and intimidating work we do semester to semester as budding historians. Hopefully, however, this article will assist you in your essay writing. This article will be using information found on the Queen’s History Department website, and all appropriate links will be at the bottom of the article for your own further use. This article will also be using an essay written by me as an example of both layout and style.
The first thing you must do when writing an essay is to know what you are writing about. Sometimes you get to choose a topic and sometimes the assignment calls for a specific topic, or you will get a broad topic in which you need to make more focused and refined. Either way, you need to know exactly what you want to write about.
Subsequently, you need to gather your sources. Again, sometimes an assignment will delegate what source(s) you can use, and you will need to stick within those. However, sometimes you will be on your own and will need to choose your own sources. It is very important to make sure that these sources are relevant to your topic. It is also uniquely important as a history student that you employ both primary and secondary sources in order to have a variety of both historical and scholarly sources. As a basic definition, a primary source is a source right out of history, while a secondary source is a source written by a writer outside of the period being written about. An example, from the excerpts of the essay being used as description for this essay, a primary source used was the Russian Primary Chronicle compiled in 1113 by Nestor the Chronicler, while a secondary source was Byzantium and the rise of Russia: a Study of Byzantino-Russian Relations in the Fourteenth Century by John Meyendorf in 1981.
Finding sources can sometimes be a stress in itself. There are many places through Queen’s to find sources, most obviously being the library. If you use the online QCAT through the library website, and search for what you are looking for, QCAT will give you books available through the library as both physical books and online e-books. Other good places to look for secondary sources is JSTOR, which Queen’s students have access to. Google Scholar and Google Books are also good methods of finding both primary and secondary sources. Another source through the library is Summon. It allows you to see all the online, and in print sources available to the library. Online Archives such as the Queen’s University Archives or the Library and Archives Canada, are good places for finding primary sources as they often have a lot of their material digitized, and they are very easy to contact to get more information.
Next, you must formulate your arguments. A lot of time, the standard idea is that there are three body paragraphs and thus three points of argument. This isn’t always the case. Your essay can have as many arguments as you see fit, depending on the assignment, of course. However, because your arguments are what proves your thesis and what makes your point, the arguments you make must be relevant to your thesis in order to be considered valuable to your essay, this is very important! Don’t be afraid to write down many possible arguments and pick the best from those.
Now, it is time to develop your thesis. This can be the most intimidating part of the whole process. However, you mustn’t scare yourself! What your thesis is there to do, is to show the “what,” the “how” and the “why” of your essay in one to two sentences. So, what your essay is talking about, how it will prove it, and the significance of the topic. An example would be:
“This essay will discuss the political, economic, cultural, artistic, and ecclesiastical relationship between the Byzantine Empire and Russia, along with the lasting effect left on Russia and its people by Byzantium.”
In this thesis, the “what” is the relationship between Byzantium and Russia; the “how” is politically, economically, culturally, artistically, and ecclesiastically; and the “why” is to show the relationship and lasting effect between the Byzantines and the early Russians.
The introduction paragraph is what you must do next. This paragraph includes your thesis and a brief overview of what you will cover. For example,
“The histories of the Byzantine Empire and Russia intermingle heavily from the beginning of the Rhos to the fall of Constantinople. This essay will discuss the political, economic, cultural, artistic, and ecclesiastical relationship between the Byzantine Empire and Russia, along with the lasting effect left on Russia and its people by Byzantium. Politically, Russia and the Byzantine Empire created treaties and developed important trade routes as a way to maintain their mutual welfare which engendered the arrangement of marriages between imperial families. Culturally, Russia received a writing system from a Byzantine scholar, which led to the import of translated literature. Artistically, Russia developed its style of art, icons and architecture from the Byzantine artistic style. Ecclesiastically, Russia inherited Eastern Orthodoxy and religious order from Byzantine religious authority. The Byzantine Empire and Russia have an interwoven history that endured to the fall of Constantinople and beyond.”
Finally, you can move onto writing the body paragraphs. Each body paragraph should be a coherent coverage of one of your arguments. These can also follow the “what/how/why” format. The what is the main idea that you will be argued; the how is the proof or evidence to back up your argument; and the why is the commentary outlining the significance of the point and evidence. Keep in mind while you are writing your paragraph, that the sentences that you are writing are relevant to your point and make sense in your argument. You don’t want to let a sentence branch away from your argument and lead you to argue about a tangent that isn’t important. Make sure that all your points and comments and observations line up with your point and what you are trying to argue in order to be coherent. Also, make sure that they aren’t too long, it’s okay to break up an argument into more than one paragraph to keep things organized.
The last thing you will need to write is your conclusion paragraph. This is similar to your introduction paragraph because you restate your thesis and what you have covered in this essay. Taken from the same essay as before, the conclusion paragraph looks as follows:
“The histories of the Byzantine Empire and Russia relate to one another from the beginning of known Rhos activity to the fall of Constantinople and beyond. Politically, Russia and Byzantium created treaties as a way to maintain the welfare of both Russia and the Empire. Along with this came politically swayed marriages and the founding of important trade routes along the Dnieper. Culturally, Russia inherited an alphabet, and with that came translated written work. Artistically, Russian inherited and copied art, icons and architecture from the Byzantines. Ecclesiastically, Russia received Eastern Orthodoxy and religious order from Byzantine religious authority. This essay has discussed the political, economic, cultural, artistic, and ecclesiastical association between the Byzantine Empire and Russia along with the lasting effect left on Russia and its people by the Byzantine Empire well into the Early Modern period.”
To end this article, here is some advice from some of our lovely professors:
“I suppose ... formulate a problem, a question, before you formulate a thesis. Write it out. Perfect it as a grammatical question. Your thesis is the answer to that question. As I’ve said, a lot of students try to write an essay based on a ‘topic’ rather than a problem or question. Otherwise, advise students that they need to learn how to outline properly. A lot of students are pretty haphazard about that. A good outline, structuring the essay, is crucial. It allows you to slot in the evidence you want to use, right onto the outline. Then when you write you can concentrate on the writing, rather than a. hunting around for evidence, or b. trying to figure out ‘what I’m going to say next’ on the fly.”
Professor Jeffrey Collins
"I would say the most important thing to keep in mind is that you are writing so that another person can read the essay and understand you. All of the rules for how history essays are supposed to be written (introduction, thesis statement, topic sentences), are all just ways of trying to make sure another person can understand what you're saying. You put the main argument of the paper in one sentence at the beginning so that your reader can see right away what you're going for. You signal the topic at the beginning of each paragraph so that your reader doesn't get lost. Even citations are a way of communicating with your reader. With each footnote, you're saying, "Look, I didn't just make this statement up, I got [it] from somewhere, and here's where you can find it." Sometimes at university, it can seem like the way to be smart is to be complicated and hard to understand. But actually, the hardest thing to do is to make your thinking clear enough that another person can follow you.”
Dr. Abigail Agresta
Care to look into it further?https://www.queensu.ca/history/undergraduate/academic-resources-writing
Essay courtesy of me, Shannyn Bald :)