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Essay Writing for this Course Classes in the Humanities all plan, in some way, to help you develop your writing skills. Many careers you might pursue are heavily dependent upon your ability to argue your point of view. We all know everyone has a point of view and has the right to express that view in a socially recognizable manner, and many important issues on which we have an opinion require far more than 140 characters to be expressed effectively. That is why we still study the essay form of writing in Humanities courses. The essay is a form of writing that reaches back to 1580, when French philosopher Michele de Montaigne first published his Essays on topics such as “Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes,” “Of Cannibals,” and “Of the Inconvenience of Greatness.” Montaigne’s object was to express himself to people he would never meet through his writing. When you can express yourself in a way that any person who might pick up your paper will easily understand you, writing can make you influential among colleagues and fellow members of your community. We all ‘know how to write,’ but there is a mile of difference between being able to write a 5-sentence profile description of ourselves and being able to write a 5-page paper that tells others whom we don’t know what we think on a particular topic. In other words, writing is a skill with many levels, just like math. Immediately, we may think that higher level writing is a matter of knowing more vocabulary words, as in the difference between (2 + 2 =4) and (9u – 4x = 14u + 6x). Higher level writing is more complex, but it is not more advanced simply because of its complexity. Amazing sentences may be simple, such as: “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.” Likewise, think of how famous (2+2=4) is, as far as equations go! Learning how to write essays at a higher level is not very difficult once you know the components of a basic 3-5-page essay. There are 10, which we can briefly describe right here, then it’s just a matter of practice! As you see below, each one of these components counts for an even 10% of the final essay grade, so each one is important. They are color-coded to match the grading rubric below. 1) Thesis/Purpose: In the first paragraph of every academic essay you write, you need a thesis, which states the whole point of the essay. A thesis must be something another reasonable person could disagree with. It is a point of view on an issue. The thesis is not usually the first sentence because you need to give the reader a few sentences to get their bearing before you state your point. It is like meeting a stranger for the first time: if you do not explain why you are approaching someone before laying into your point, they

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might be confused. Alternatively, if you approached a stranger and took forever to get to the point, you also would seem fishy or bothersome. The best time to give the thesis is near the end of the introductory paragraph. The clearest, best theses for short essays often take the form: “In this paper, I will argue that...because...”. Notice that a good thesis states not just what you want to argue, but why (...because...). 2) Organizational Statement: This is the least known about component of a great essay. Ninety-five percent of essays miss this sentence, but all ninety-five would get significantly better marks overall if they had not missed it. The organization statement tells your reader (to whom you have just appropriately introduced yourself) the steps you will take in proving your thesis statement. After your thesis, you will need to help the reader look ahead.

For instance, if you were arguing that the American Revolution did not significantly affect the character of the French Revolution, even though the latter happened soon after the American Revolution, you would say something like this: “First, I will look at the consequences of the American Revolution in Europe, and then the consequences in France more specifically, and finally, I will show that these consequences in France were not the primary reasons for the revolution there, even though they were present in the political atmosphere at the time.”

When you include an organizational statement, you will be expected to follow that path in the rest of your paper, so you may have to revise it after you are all finished. Thus, this may be the last sentence of the paper you write chronologically. Keep in mind, the best papers are often written ‘out of order.’ 3) Reasoning: Reasoning is the way your thought pushes the essay along—not your Tone, that is below—but your ‘train of thought’. When the reader encounters the author’s Reasoning, it feels like the author is trying to convince you of something (namely, the thesis). Reasoning shows how you think through a problem, step-by-step, and it is what the Organizational statement spells out in very broad strokes. Reasoning can also be understood as the order in which the author presents evidence from different sources to ‘prove their case’. Reasoning can be very formulaic, like in ‘compare/contrast’ –type papers or a ‘pro/con/decide’ –type paper. Or, it might be much more complex. Good reasoning just ‘makes sense’ to a reader, even if they disagree with the position being argued. This is the gold standard. 4) Evidence: Evidence and Reasoning are related because arguments and quotes from other sources need to be integrated into your own writing as voices to support or (in the best essays) challenge your thesis. But quotes from other sources are something that you, the author, chooses to put forward as evidence. No argument or quote from another text proves your point all by itself. So, you want

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to 1) choose your quotes carefully, checking the assignment to see how frequent quotes should be and the sources you need to use. It’s often a good idea to type out the quotes you know you want to use first and make writing the process of linking them up. And 2) you want to make sure you both introduce you quote before, and give an explanation of what you think it means after you quote it.

For instance, perhaps you are writing about and essay arguing against censorship in contemporary movies and you write: “Censorship in this instance is clearly wrong. “Know thyself” (Plato 288).” This will be ineffective because the reader does not know whose voice that was (Plato, like many authors, writes in the voices of different characters). Nor will the reader be able to understand what you mean by including the quote as part of your argument. Instead, the better way to incorporate this authoritative voice is to say something like this: “Censorship is clearly wrong. Socrates, who was Plato’s teacher, would have disagreed with the idea that today’s movies should be censored. As Plato recounts in his Apology, Socrates thought that the divine mission of his life could be summed up by the phrase “Know thyself,” and thus no one else should rightly decide for others what experiences they should be allowed to encounter in life.”

5) Organization: A third component of your argument is how effectively it is laid out. This is similar to Reasoning but it looks at the paper as a whole and considers whether the author is fully focused and conscious in his/her/their train of thought. Can the reader tell that the author knows why he/she/they are writing this paper? Even a broken clock is right twice a day, as they say, but it’s far better if the author demonstrates that she knows where she is at every moment throughout the paper. Organization, when fully-developed and consciously employed in an essay can make all the difference. It is what some call the ‘rhetoric’ of a paper, but in the reader’s experience, good organization is received as harmony: it makes an argument ring like a grandfather chime.

Here, you want to focus on transitions especially. If you have just finished explaining the consequences of the American Revolution and want to turn to France specifically (steps 1 and 2 of the Organizational Statement above), you should not just change subject in the next paragraph; segues are important to keep your reader following you. At the top of the new paragraph, you might consider writing something like this: “Although the British were clearly unamused by the loss of the Americas, and the Germans and Italians seemed simply amused by it, the French had serious doubts about the ideals the signers of the Declaration seemed to be espousing.” Sentences that help the reader remember what they just read and how it leads to the next step of the Organizational Statement help your Reasoning shine through.

6) Implications/Consequences: This is your conclusion paragraph, which everyone knows you need to include in every paper, just like a Thesis Statement. The conclusion is often approached as the third step in a 3-step process: 1) say what you’re going to say, 2) say what you want to say, and 3) say what you said. If this is all a conclusion is, though, why would we need it? Third time’s a charm? Your

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message will finally stick? No, a good conclusion will re-state the thesis, of course, but it will also attempt to give a way forward into other questions or issues that were not on the horizon until you wrote the present paper. Implications and consequences are almost never given to you in a prompt or assignment; you have to make them up on the basis of your experience arguing the thesis you chose. This is how writing helps our thinking develop, and how others get good ideas on what to write on next. This is how a good essay is able to become a conversation. When you re-state your thesis, you should take into account all the evidence you presented in the paper, which the reader had not yet seen when you first proposed your thesis. Help the reader tie it all together to prove your point. After that, you should ‘think out loud’ about new questions you have and where others might continue helping you think about your topic (that is, without actually using the phrase ‘thinking out loud’ in your paper). 7) Academic Tone: Tone is something you hear in pieces of writing, but it’s hard to identify in any one specific part of a piece of writing. Sometimes when we are anxious about writing, or about sounding intelligent, we overshoot the ‘tone’ mark and end up sounding like we are holding a pipe in one hand, and a Shakespeare skull in the other. But this attitude, like all our habits in writing, is a learned affect, absorbed from the textbooks, texts, or other sources which we have been assigned. It is a kind of mirroring technique that we learn to slowly and grow into. Pay attention to comments from your readers on this one because it is something that must be mediated and modulated progressively over time, like learning to sing death metal. Good Tone is difficult. Some of the most common pitfalls of tone are slipping into addressing the reader as “you” and addressing yourself, the author, as “me”. Writing can make deep connections with others, but you are probably not friends with your readers, and the point you are making, in any case, is not personal. Do remember, however, that using “I” when saying things like “I think, therefore, I am” is completely accepted in philosophical essays. You are arguing for you own point of view, so you have to be in there somewhere! 8) Citations: Philosophy, like all independent disciplines has its preferred style of citation, which for this class will be the newly-updated MLA. See Purdue OWL for the correct style of formatting: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/2/ The most basic points are the following. When you cite an outside source, whether by quoting or relaying an argument you found there, you must cite that source immediately after using a set of parentheses in the following form: (Plato 288), where Plato is the author’s (last) name and the page from the text you are using. This in-text citation goes after the quotation marks and before the period. For instance, you might write: “Socrates, Plato’s teacher, believed that the most important task is to “Know thyself” (Plato 288).” If the author’s name is in the sentence already, you do not need to include it again in the citation. For instance, you might write: “Plato tells that Socrates’ most important task was to know himself (288).”

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MLA also requires a separate Works Cited page at the end of the essay. Common MLA forms of citation are: a) Print Book:

In-text: ...(Palmer 54).

Palmer, Donald. Does the Center Hold?: An Introduction to Western Philosophy. 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2016.

b) Translated Print Book:

In-text: ...(Foucault 100).

Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Translated by Richard Howard, Vintage-Random House, 1988.

c) Article in a Scholarly Journal:

In-text: ...(Bagchi 44).

Bagchi, Alaknanda. "Conflicting Nationalisms: The Voice of the Subaltern in Mahasweta Devi's Bashai Tudu." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 41-50.

d) Scholarly Journal Article accessed online (through JSTOR, Etc.):

In-text: ...(Best and Marcus 9).

Best, David, and Sharon Marcus. “Surface Reading: An Introduction.” Representations, vol. 108, no. 1, Fall 2009, pp. 1-21. JSTOR, doi:10.1525/rep.2009.108.1.1

e) Essay/Story/Poem in an edited Collection:

In-text: ...(Kincaid 306).

Kincaid, Jamaica. “Girl.” The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Short Stories, edited by Tobias Wolff, Vintage, 1994, pp. 306-07.

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f) Song:

In-text: ...(Beyoncé, 2016).

Beyoncé. “Pray You Catch Me.” Lemonade, Parkwood Entertainment, 2016, www.beyonce.com/album/lemonade-visual-album/.

g) Tweet:

In-text: ...(@tombrokaw).

@tombrokaw. “SC demonstrated why all the debates are the engines of this campaign.” Twitter, 22 Jan. 2012, 3:06 a.m., twitter.com/tombrokaw/status/160996868971704320.

h) TV Episode in a Series watched on Netflix:

In-text: ...(“94 Meetings”).

“94 Meetings.” Parks and Recreation, created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, performance by Amy Poehler, season 2, episode 21, Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, 2010. Accessed 4 May 2009.

i) YouTube Video:

In-text: ...(“8 Hot Dog Gadgets”).

“8 Hot Dog Gadgets put to the Test.” YouTube, uploaded by Crazy Russian Hacker, 6 June 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WblpjSEtELs.

j) Online Magazine Article without pages:

In-text ...(Taylor, “Fitzcarraldo”).

Taylor, Rumsey. “Fitzcarraldo.” Slant, 13 Jun. 2003, www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/fitzcarraldo/. Accessed 4 May 2009.

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Sample Works Cited in MLA format (may appear at the bottom of last page, or on its own final page):

Works Cited

Dean, Cornelia. "Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet." The New York Times, 22 May 2007,

www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/science/earth/22ander.html?_r=0. Accessed 12 May 2016. Ebert, Roger. Review of An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim. rogerebert.com, 1 June

2006, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/an-inconvenient-truth-2006. Accessed 15 June 2016.

Gowdy, John. "Avoiding Self-organized Extinction: Toward a Co-evolutionary Economics of

Sustainability." International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007, pp. 27-36.

An Inconvenient Truth. Directed by Davis Guggenheim, performances by Al Gore and Billy West,

Paramount, 2006. Leroux, Marcel. Global Warming: Myth Or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology. Springer, 2005. Revkin, Andrew C. “Clinton on Climate Change.” The New York Times, 17 May 2007,

www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/1194817109438/clinton-on-climate-change.html. Accessed 29 July 2016.

Shulte, Bret. "Putting a Price on Pollution." US News & World Report, vol. 142, no. 17, 14 May 2007, p.

37. Ebsco, Access no: 24984616. Uzawa, Hirofumi. Economic Theory and Global Warming. Cambridge UP, 2003.

From Purdue OWL: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/12/

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9) Clarity: Finally, we come to the polishing of the essay. Clarity and Mechanics both deal with syntax, or how your individual sentences are put together. Like Academic Tone, clarity is something that develops from experience, and you will need to take cues from your readers about when you are not bringing your point across clearly. We all think we have expressed ourselves clearly, but we are often wrong. Clarity is something the author ultimately does not get to judge because it is about the success of communication. However, as a way to start thinking about clarity, try to write each sentence knowing why you are writing it. If you check yourself while writing this way, you will likely minimize questions in your reader’s mind about what you are driving at. 10) Mechanics: Paradoxically, Mechanics are simultaneously the least and most important components of an essay. They are the least important because they deal small things like comma rules, capitalization, which/that, who/whom rules, etc. Many of these can be easily corrected. Bear in mind, Word is getting better at catching these all the time, so pay attention to grammar check as your proofread (the blue double line or green squiggly line). That’s right, always proofread your paper, which means planning to finish a draft of it early. Those small errors, while easily fixable, might bring you grade down a half letter if you don’t take the time fixing them. Finally, be sure to put a full heading and title at the top of your essay on the first page and add page numbers including your last name at the top right. The heading is double-spaced, four lines, left justified:

[Document Header] Your Last Name 1

Your Name Professor Smith PHL 2010-0XX Day Month Year

Your Excellent Title

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Here is the paper rubric. You will see that all 10 components are laid out here, along with the language that your professor or TAs will use to determine whether your work is an A paper, B paper, etc., on each of the components.

Opening: 10-9 points 8 points 7 points 6 & below

Thesis/Purpo se

1) Fully articulates what the context of the argument will be; 2) fully articulates in one sentence what “I will argue...”; 3) Stays on topic, arguing this thesis every step of the way.

1) Generally articulates what the context of the argument will be; 2) fully articulates in one sentence what “I will argue...”; 3) generally stays on topic, offers some critical analysis, and is not over simplified.

1) Offers little or no context for the argument; 2) vaguely or partially articulates what is being argued; 3) offers little or no critical analysis and/or presents over simplified thinking.

1) offers no context for the argument; 2) may not articulate a primary argument anywhere; 3) offers little or no critical analysis and/or presents over simplified thinking.

Organizational Statement

1) Presents a clear & direct statement/framework at the beginning that tells the reader each step the paper will take, often in one sentence; 2) the reader should be able to anticipate how the paper unfolds, step- by-step, and why.

1) Presents a general statement/framew ork at the beginning that tells the reader how the paper will go, often in one sentence; 2) the reader should be able to anticipate how the paper unfolds, step-by-step, but

1) Presents a vague or partial statement/framew ork at the beginning that tells the reader some of the things the paper will discuss, possibly in multiple sentences; 2) the reader may have to infer how the paper will unfold,

1) Presents no statement/framewo rk; 2) the reader may understandably be unable to make an inference about how the paper will proceed, or why it should.

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may not understand why.

but may not understand why it would.

Argument: 10-9 points 8 points 7 points 6 & below

Reasoning

1) Train of thought exhibits substantial depth, fullness, and complexity of thought; 2) Chooses the best evidence to support that train’s path; 3) Expresses views without resorting to discriminatory, inappropriate, or troubling arguments and topics.

1) Train of thought exhibits a preponderance of depth, fullness, and complexity; 2) Demonstrates general comprehension of the material with less than ideal evidence; 3) Expresses views without resorting to discriminatory, inappropriate, or troubling arguments and topics.

1) Train of thought exhibits little depth, fullness, and/or complexity; 2) Demonstrates some comprehension of the material with simplistic or repetitive use of evidence; 3) Thinking may express slightly discriminatory, socially offensive, and/or illogical views throughout the paper.

1) Train of thought exhibits no depth, fullness, and/or complexity; 2) Demonstrates little or no comprehension of the material that is contradictory, repetitive, or irrelevant evidence; 3) Thinking is driven by discriminatory, socially offensive, and/or illogical views.

Evidence 1) Seamlessly incorporates and explains the relevance of arguments and quotations from other sources accurately (including some counter-arguments); 2) uses a variety that meet the requirement of the assignment, or according to professor’s instructions.

1) Incorporates and explains the relevance of arguments and quotations from other sources appropriately; 2) uses more than

1) Incorporates arguments and quotations from other sources without appropriate contextualization or explanation of

1) Fails to identify or include arguments or quotations from outside sources, fails to address any counter-argument, and offers little

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one source, technically meet the requirements of the assignment, or is in the spirit of the professor’s instructions.

their relevance; 2) uses one source, technically meet the requirements of the assignment, but is generally perfunctory.

explanation; 2) Little or no source evidence is used.

Organization

1) The argument’s focus is abundantly clear to the reader; 2) paragraphs build upon each other, and logical, fluent transition sentences are used between each step.

1) The argument’s focus is generally clear to the reader; 2) the use of transition sentences lends a sense of progression and coherence.

1) The argument’s focus is unclear to the reader; 2) some, mostly formulaic transitions are used, providing little or no sense of progression for the reader.

1) Transitions and sense of progression are absent.

Conclusion: 10-9 points 8 points 7 points 6 & below Implications/ Consequences

1) Offers a clear re-statement of the argument that shows how the thesis has been argued/proved; 2) thinks ‘out loud’ about the next thing to question, assuming the current thesis has been proved; 3) no over simplifications are present.

1) Offers some re- statement of the argument that shows how the thesis has been argued/proved; 2) does not think ‘out loud’ about the next thing to question, assuming the current thesis has been proved;

1) Simply re-states the thesis with little or no reflection on the meaning of it, or its logical consequences; 2) oversimplified and does not add anything new to the paper.

1) Offers poor or partial re- statement of the thesis with little or no reflection on the meaning of what was argued, or its logical consequences; 2) oversimplified and does not add

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3) one over simplification may be present.

anything new to the paper.

Disciplinary Concerns:

10-9 points 8 points 7 points 6 & below

Academic Tone

1) The author’s tone is mature, consistent, and not grandiloquent; 2) specialized terms are appropriately introduced, defined, and used accurately.

1) The author’s tone is usually appropriate; 2) specialized terms are usually introduced, defined, and used accurately.

1) The author’s tone is inconsistent, and may lapse into colloquial forms of address, like ‘you’ and ‘me’ (recognizing that ‘I’ is always appropriate for philosophical writing); 2) specialized terms are used superficially.

1) The author’s tone is superficial and stereotypical, reading more like oral address than academic essay; 2) specialized terms, if present, are typically misused.

Citations

1) Cites and formats sources accurately and consistently in text; for this course, we follow the current MLA guidelines: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/ 747/2/ ; 2) includes complete works cited; 3) one or two errors may be present.

1) Generally cites and formats sources accurately, but displays consistency; 2) includes complete works cited; 3) several patters of error may be present.

1) Attempted, but awkward use of citation styles; 2) incomplete work cited or no works cited present; 3) Inaccurate references and/or patterns of error may be present.

1) Fails to cite and format sources accurately, if at all; 2) no works cited may be present; 3) overall poor attempt to show consistent citation.

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Syntax: 10-9 points 8 points 7 points 6 & below

Clarity

1) The author consistently phrases his/her/their thoughts clearly; 2) as a reader, I do not have to work to understand any sentences.

1) The author usually phrases his/her/their thoughts clearly; 2) as a reader, I have to do some work to understand a few sentences.

1) The author is, at times, wordy and may use unclear phrasing/vocabular y; 2) as a reader, I have to do too much work to understand sentences.

1) The author is frequently wordy and frequently uses unclear phrasing/vocabular y; 2) as a reader, I can’t typically follow what the author is saying.

Grammar/ Mechanics

1) Paper contains very few sentence level errors (not including citation issues); 2) No errors obscure the author’s meaning; 3) full heading, title, page numbers present.

1) Paper contains infrequent sentence level errors (not including citation issues); 2) No errors obscure the author’s meaning; 3) missing heading, title, or page, etc.

1) Paper contains a wide range of errors (not including citation issues); 2) One or two errors might obscure the author’s meaning.

1) Contains consistent error patterns that impede comprehension.

Approx. Totals:

100-90 89-80 79-70 69 & below

Original document created by Dr. Robert Leib, 2017; based on rubric developed by Dr. Jeffrey R. Galin, et al. for Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) at FAU

[email protected]; https://fau.academia.edu/RobertLeib