Guide to Writing Papers

Underlying Principles

• An essay has a goal: to give your reader good reasons to agree with you about something.
• Even if an assignment has come to you in terms like "analyze" or "explore" or "discuss", which don't necessarily seem to aim at demonstrative proof, you will write a stronger paper if you plan for persuasion.

Think strategically

1. Perform your analysis. You need to understand, fully, how the problems and the evidence you're studying work. (If your ideas like to come to clarity as you're writing, start writing now. You will be able to adapt some of this material to fit in to the main body of your paper once you've got it framed up.)
2. Boil down the results of your analysis to a single, central point. It will be the issue about which you should try to persuade your reader.
3. What does your reader need to understand in order to be able to agree that your point is valid? Make a list of relevant pieces of evidence, and explain why each helps support your point. (Refer to what you thought or wrote at step 1).
   • Some arguments need to line up several steps of reasoning from the evidence to your conclusions. Treat each stage of the argument as a subsidiary point, of which you will need to persuade your reader in order to get to your central point, which ties the whole paper together. You may want to sketch a flow-chart.
4. Does your list of supporting evidence take account of all the evidence that relates to your central point, or is there also some contrary evidence? If so, you need to show that it does not refute your central point. Make a list, and explain why each piece of contrary evidence does not overturn your main line of reasoning. (Refer to what you thought or wrote at step 1).
5. Organize the main body of your argument, incorporating both supporting and contrary evidence.
6. Review your main body. Readjust it as necessary to meet its goals well:
   • Does it take all the relevant evidence into account, explaining how it helps or, at least, does not harm your central contention?
   • Is the evidence set forth clearly enough for your expected reader to know what you're talking about?
   • Does your reasoning from the evidence make good sense? Is the logic clear?
   • Does the argument keep focused on the ultimate goal you're trying to prove?
7. Set your central point and your argument supporting it in context: why should your reader care to read your paper? Write an introduction that draws the reader in to your topic.
8. Why does your central point matter? Write a conclusion that sends your reader out from your paper, a wiser and better person (as far as the topic permits) for having considered your arguments.
9. Review the whole paper. Does it hang together? Readjust as necessary.
10. Perform housecleaning, and polish as necessary:
    • Proofread. Is everything spelled and formatted correctly?
    • Do all the words actually mean what you want them to be saying? If you feel the tiniest sliver of a shadow of a doubt, check a dictionary. Remember, spell-checkers only catch things that they aren't programmed to recognize as words.
    • Does all the grammar work correctly?
    • Can anything be said more smoothly and directly? Long, awkward sentences can strangle even a logically cogent argument. Too many abstract nouns waft it into irrelevance. Passive verbs lumpishly trip it up. You want simple, vivid language, to pack a wallop.
    • Proofread again.

Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.