Essay Writing - Part Two

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Notes on Writing
Explain Things Clearly
It is very important to remember that real people, not abstract nouns, are the actual cause of historical events. For example, the sentence "Industrialisation swept across Europe in the nineteenth century" is misleading on several grounds. Grammaically, Industrialisation is not something like a plague of a hurricane; it cannot literally 'sweep' anywhere. So here the author is speaking metaphorically. Is this then a good metaphor? No. What the author of the sentence really means is that, across Europe, millions of people were engaged in building factories and railways; that more and more people now worked in factories with machines, and that the common experience of urban life was radically different for these people that it had been for their grandparents. This type of metaphor is bad for a number of reasons; first it conceals the experience of these people. Worse, by making Industialisation sound like a force of nature, it conceals the political nature of the phenoenon. Finally, the sentence is bad because of its hidden assumptions about causation. It implies, first, that this particular historical change was inevitable, and, second that this change did indeed have the nuetral qualities of a force of nature, instead of being something actively created by specific groups of people, and in this case for profit.

Grammer and Style
Sentences
Keep your sentences short and to the point. use active rather than passive sentences. e.g. "Leibovitz took the photo" (active). "The photo was taken by Leibovitz" (passive). The subject of the sentence must agree in tense, number (singular or plural) and voice; avoid switching from "It says" to "They say" halfway through a sentence. Just because a phrase has some kind of verb in it does not mean it is a sentence. For example: "Combining the two forms in a new way" is not a sentence. This phrase could probably be linked to the previous sentence with a semi-colon (;) or made to stand on its own, e.g. "He/She combined the two forms in a new way."

This is not a trivial matter; sentences are units of sense and logic. If your essay is not expressed in sentences, your writing will not make sense and your points will be confused and confusing. Everyone talks naturally in short sentences, we do not mix up tenses and number. As a test, try reading your essay aloud. Never write anything you can't say.

Paragraphs
Paragraphs are the next unit of sense; a way of organising your thouts typographically, making your argument easier to follow. Typically made up of about three or four linked sentences, paragraphs are used to develop and idea, or present a logical sequence of data. The following sections of this booklet are examples of paragraphs.