Essay Tips for the Rest
of Your Life!
Mr. Feraco
6 November 2007
The Top Five
 All of you will receive a sheet with a “Top Five”
section along with your essays.
 Those five tips are meant to help highlight
tendencies you may not have noticed, or areas you
can strengthen with practice
 Don’t worry when you see them – everyone has one!
 Each list contains variations of the following tips;
even if you don’t have these specific tips on your
list, they’re all worth remembering!
 Take notes…
MLA Goodness
 Most of you formatted your
essays pretty well; I do realize
that some of you aren’t familiar
with MLA, which is why it’s a
good idea to practice now!
 Before you submit your final
draft to turnitin.com on
Thursday/Thursday night,
make sure the following are
present:  
 Page numbers
 Heading (date in proper
format + period)
 Indentation for each
paragraph
 Italicized essay title
 Underlined book title
 Appropriate block quotes
and citations
MLA Goodness
While you should be sure to include
everything I mentioned on the previous
slide, you should also avoid:
Blank lines between your heading, title, and essay
Odd spacing/tabbing between paragraphs
Placing your header on the right side of the page
Thesis Goodness
 Your thesis must:
Contain the specific purpose for your essay – the point
you’re trying to prove, the topic you’re exploring, etc.
Be clear and concise; an overly wordy or confusing thesis
will disrupt the reading experience
Be original; if the point you’re making has already been
made a hundred times before, why bother writing three
pages about it?
Address the prompt. (If you can choose from several
prompts, your thesis should indicate which you’ve chosen)
Originality
All of you know what plagiarism is at this
point; plagiarized papers aren’t crimes of
ignorance. (Well, they are, in a way…)
Write your own papers – don’t “write them with
someone else.” Why would I want to grade two
highly similar essays?
Make your citations clear – don’t even paraphrase
without mentioning your source!
Sources
Use proper sources
NO SparkNotes, MegaEssays, BookRags,
PinkMonkey, etc. may be used
NO Wikipedia entries may be used
NO clearly amateur sources; for the Matrix essay,
writings that have been published online are OK,
provided that they’re clearly drawing from other
sources themselves (wild speculation is not good
source material)
Length Issues
Minimum page length means minimum page
length – it’s not optional!
For example, you won’t earn higher than a C on
this paper if you turn in something that isn’t at
least four pages.
Remember, a B is an “above-average” paper, and an A is
“absolutely outstanding – a cut above”
A paper that can’t even bother to meet the minimum
page length is neither above-average nor absolutely
outstanding
So Should I Pad My Papers?
 No.
 If you are struggling, don’t repeat yourself, don’t
write “filler,” and don’t start trying to mess with
your spacing.
Do some more research so you can explore the points
you’re trying to make in greater depth.
After all, a “four-page paper” is two single-spaced pages
(which is why I always write my papers in single-spaced
format at first – it feels shorter!), or roughly 85 lines long.
That’s about 28 lines per movie (not to mention block
quotes)!
You guys are fairly talkative – I’m pretty sure you can
come up with a couple of minutes worth of material from
each movie (and that’s how long it takes to read 28 lines
aloud – a couple of minutes).
Good Research Will Always Save You
 You’re supposed to research your subject as you
write so your essays won’t be shallow.
 Who wants to read a surface-level critique of “The
Matrix?” I can just pull up a movie review and call
it a day. (They watch the films from the audience’s
perspective; you’re English students, and you can
do better!)
 We’re trying to express original thoughts in our
papers – and we can only do that by digging below
the surface (which represents the obvious).
Good Research Will Always Save You
Not only is original thought more interesting
to read, but it’s more fun to write as well
Let’s face it – it’s more fun to produce something
you’re proud of than something you just finished
to get a grade.
What’s more, if you only write in order to earn a
grade, you’ll earn a better one by working harder,
writing better, and digging deeper.
Good Research Will Always Save You
 Research provides you with a second foundation for
your writing
We all head into our essays with preconceptions – whether
they be our opinions about a topic, our interpretations of
what we just read/heard/saw, etc. – and most people write
their essays as a way of further justifying these
preconceptions.
The truly wonderful thing about research is that it can both
support your views and adjust them; in other words, your
opinions and ideas can change for the better if you gain
more knowledge!
Think of the information you know when you first sit
down to write as a primary foundation – and think of the
information you discover through research as its twin!
Using Your Research
 Your main point should be clear – and you should
prove something conclusive with your writing.
 To that end, it’s important to remember that clarity
is more critical to a paper than anything outside of
the main argument; if a writer doesn’t express
himself or herself clearly, the essay becomes nearly
impossible to read!
 This doesn’t just apply to sentence mechanics
(although it does apply to that), but to the
issues/topics/works you’re exploring.
 Your research makes it easier to make clear points
by providing a framework for your thoughts.
While Using Research
That framework is most valuable when it’s
on the written page – which means, at some
point, that you need to insert someone else’s
words within your own.
Those quotes add legitimacy to your
argument or analysis (depending on which
type of paper you’re writing)
But how do you go about doing this?
Quote Insertion
Quotes should never be blankly inserted into
an essay.
Quotes should not need to be followed by
sentences summarizing and explaining them.
Quotes should never be followed directly by
another quote; your words should always
separate one quote from another.
Example of Quote Insertion
 However, many of the alterations Pound makes to his
material cannot be traced back to linguistic
misunderstandings; rather, they stem from his decision to
serve as an “inspired but unreliable translator” (Kenner 199).
In The Pound Era, Hugh Kenner argues that Pound’s
seemingly haphazard translation style in Cathay is in fact
meticulous and calculated, and that the translations
themselves give him the means to his ultimate end: To force
himself to “rethink the nature of an English poem” (199)
through the simultaneous application of three literary
principles.
 Notice that I never interrupted the flow of my words in
order to include the quotes
 They simply belong where they belong within the sentences
Example of Paraphrasing and Quotes:
 Roland Barthes draws an important distinction between
what he deems “classical” and “modern” language. He
defines classical language – the language used in poems
before the Modernist movement – as having continuous,
linear meaning. Meaning and context are important, the
syntax is “proper” – going from one end of the sentence to
the other, front to back – and readers can understand the
familiar flow of the language. Modern language, therefore,
strips its words of their meanings in order to give each one
“a magical power; it has become complete in itself, a
revelation in its own recesses…It is a mark of such words
that we cannot read them, but they read us, they affront us
by presenting their significance in relation to themselves.”
 (It’s usually a good idea to cite your paraphrases as well as
your quotes!)
What Else Do Those Slides Show?
As you may have already guessed, I tend to
write longer, complicated sentences.
I’ve been practicing with shorter sentences for a
while now.
It never hurts to have both!
Also, the first slide shows why you need a
clear and fairly specific thesis
The paper was written for a Pound expert who
already understood the subject well; how many of
you could have guessed that the paragraph
contained my thesis?
Why Do We Need a Specific Thesis?
 Besides the fact that you need to focus on something
in order to write well, your paper should be
structured in a way that encourages the reader to
continue
A poorly-structured essay forces the reader to go in reverse,
to check what they’ve already read in order to find their
way again
A good thesis should contain elements from the ideas that
form the structure of your body paragraphs – but it doesn’t
have to include everything!
Here’s an Example from the Juniors!
“Even though many are in the mindset that
homework helps reinforce students,
homework should be banned in schools all
across the country because students consider
it busy work, it causes stress, and it does not
cause significant academic improvement.”
What’s Good About That Thesis?
We know what the paper will be about
We know how the five paragraphs will be
structured
We know the author’s stance
What Should Be Fixed?
It’s really, really long.
It’s overly specific!
What links exist between those topics?
If you can find links, you can shorten your
thesis!
Tomorrow:
Lots more!