Writing an essay can be one of the most daunting parts of every class. They do not have to be as scary as they may seem. Here are some of the easiest tips to help you through it.
Don’t procrastinate
Easier said than done, right? You’ll be surprised at how easy it can be to write a paper when you take it one paragraph at a time. The day that you get your essay assignment, begin planning. Sometimes the hardest part can be choosing a topic and figuring out what you are going to write about. Most people learned how to outline a paper in high school but blew it off as unimportant, but take advantage of it and make a timeline to actually write out a part of your outline every day. If you are working on your paper in sections, you won’t be drinking red bull at 2 a.m. crying over your laptop.
Know your formats
APA and MLA aren’t as terrifying as they may seem. You want to avoid plagiarizing at all costs, so knowing the difference of these formats and when to use them are extremely important. Although there are hundreds of specific rules for them, here are the basics: In MLA your parenthetical citation should be (Author Last Name Page#). The period goes on the outside of the parenthesis and there is only a space between the last name and page. In APA, the parenthetical citation should look like this: (Author Last Name, Year, p. Page#). If you don’t have a page number, just leave it blank, don’t make one up.
Terrified of a Works Cited or References page? Avoid using Easybib. Try Calvin College’s Citation Generator instead. Also note that if your school has access to different databases they often have a button to cite it automatically, take advantage of that!
Write in third person
Unless it’s a fiction piece or a personal narrative, do not say I, my, me, you, or we. Nothing makes a persuasive paper worse than saying, “I believe.” It’s your opinion, your name is on the work, you don’t need to state it again. Own your opinion! If you believe that the best color of the rainbow is red, make that sound like a fact instead. You also don’t want to address the reader as you and ask rhetorical questions. It takes away from the focus of the essay and when directly saying “you,” it can sound offensive, or put the reader into a group of people they don’t fit in. Simply changing “you” to “students” or “the community” can make your essay a lot clearer.
Know how to find reliable websites
It is easy to simply Google the topic you are researching, but it makes your research so much harder in the long run. While Wikipedia may be easy to use to find out about Simone Bile’s gymnastics career, it isn’t going to cut it for a scholarly essay. Most schools have a set of databases to find scholarly journals, statistics, experiments, and reports; take advantage of these. If you don’t know how to access these resources, ask the librarian. They will be more than happy to help. If you are set in your Google searching ways, try Google Scholar. It’s just like Google except the results are mostly peer-reviewed research articles. These look much more impressive on a References page and can provide you with more accurate research and ideas. Using these resources often give you an automatically generated citation. If not, it is much easier to find the information you need to cite the source.
Proofread your essay
When you hit that final period of your essay, it can be easy to just want to save it and be done, but don’t let that be the final button you press. Read your essay out loud to yourself. It may sound silly but sometimes your eyes miss things when they are skimming through an essay that you’ve already gone over. When you read it aloud it forces you to pay more attention to details. After you think that your paper is A+ material, have another set of eyes look over it. Many colleges have a program to get your essays peer reviewed. If not, have somebody in your class read it. Something that makes sense in your mind may need to be clarified for the audience. Even if the person reading it only finds one misplaced comma, it is worth it. Having somebody read over your essay can also help you stop stressing over your professor reading it because the first person to read it isn’t grading it.
Most importantly, try to pick something you are interested in. If you have freedom to write about different topics, use that to your advantage. It is easier to write 10 pages about something you have experienced or have an interest in. Do not add the pressure of trying to become engaged with something you could not care any less about. If you have questions about the process or citations, ask your professor before it is due, they’ll be happy to know that you are already putting an effort into it and they may have some valuable resources to share.
In addition, here are some great resources to help you on your writing journey this school year:
Purdue OWL - This website can help you with everything you need to know about formatting in MLA and APA. They also have great grammar guides.
MLA Style Guide - This website gives you a play by play on how to use their format in your essay.
APA Style Guide - If you really want to get in depth about APA formatting.
University of Wisconsin Writer's Handbook- From professional writing to literary analysis, they have some information on everything.
KniteCite Citation Service - an easy to follow citation generator that allows you to plug in the needed information. It goes in depth about what kind of source you are citing so that nothing gets overlooked.
