Tips and the Like for Future Essays
Here are some tips to help you with future essays. They are mostly stylistic matters, designed
to help you write essays which look more like academic history. These points are not
exhaustive, just a few hints.
Prose
-As it says in the Style Guide, avoid contractions. It may sound strange to your ears to write
the words out in fall, but its effect cannot be underestimated, so this is not advice to ignore.
-The first time you mention a person, be they an historian or an historical figure, use their full
name (unless the name is really well-known, like Trotsky, or Marx). After that, just use their
surname. So: Jason Pullin argued that…. Pullin’s argument did not consider…
-Avoid sentences which are just a quotation. They look messy. ‘Messy sentences are
something to be avoided.’ So don’t put whole sentences in quotation marks like I did just
there, but put something else there as well. As Thomas Bray has argued, ‘this way is better.’
-When you mention books or films, use italics; for articles, use quotation marks. So, you
would refer to the book, The Return of Martin Guerre, but the article, ‘A Review of Martin
Guerre’. At no point should you write ‘The Return of Martin Guerre’.
-Another point from the Style Guide: unless you are dealing with years or you have a lot of
messy numbers together, write the numbers out. So: by 1989 there were three hundred
universities offering courses in the history of medicine, BUT, coal production climbed from
3013 tonnes per year to 4367 tonnes per year, peaking at 987 tonnes per month.
-Make sure that you use adjectival phrases properly, with correct placement of the hyphen,
e.g. women who lived in the twentieth century were twentieth-century women, the plans with
good intentions were well-intentioned plans, this is a hastily-written book, etc.
Engagement
-It is a higher-level skill to put different historians in conversation, and to show HOW
interpretations differ. At degree level, you should have an awareness of WHY they disagree,
e.g. different sources, different agendas, different theories. Alongside this, you should be able
to insert your own voice, and show what personally add to the debates.
-If you bring in scholars from other fields, show an awareness of what their disciplinary
background means for their work. Why might an anthropologist, or a sociologist, or an
economist, or a literary critic all view the same topic differently?
-Your own voice should be what leads the essay, so avoid using a large number of long
quotations from other historians. On the whole, if you can put their thoughts more succinctly
or more clearly, then use your own words, but still make sure that you cite them! If they have
used a particularly snappy phrase, or the phrase has become influential, e.g. ‘the medium is
the message’, then it is useful to go for the direct quote.
Structure
-Your introduction should set up the essay by giving the reader the information they need to
follow your analysis, e.g. the topic, important definitions, the limits of the essay. It should
include a clear indication of what your argument is going to be.
-Your conclusion should provide a good summary of the points you’ve covered, and is a good
opportunity to demonstrate some literary skill. The conclusion may also point the way
towards future scholarship, e.g. while this essay has argued that crime was highly gendered in
the early-modern period, it is still unclear how this interacted with issues of class.
-Aim for clear sign-posting. It should be clear to the reader where the essay is going, and
what it looks to achieve. When you proof-read the essay, this may seem a little obvious to
you, but you need to give the marker that guidance.