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Shorter Essays
Nyah
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've a rather odd assignment due in the near future. I suppose it isn't all that odd, considering it's causing me some trouble so I've apparently a lot to learn here.
It's a short essay, a comparison of two historical documents. To be precise, it's a paltry 700-800 words. I thought this was going to be easy, as I'm used to 4500-5000 word essays.
It's not. I literally do not have enough words to fit everything I'd like into this project.
Anyone with experience in the Social Sciences/Humanities like to give me a couple tips? Can I "dumb down" my language to be more concise? General themes I should focus on?
It's the first essay I'm writing for this prof, so I've no prior experience to styles he'd prefer and whatnot, so general tips are best.
(If anyone cares, the documents are Burns' Intellectuals as Agents of Change, and Schultz's Crisis of Empire. But I doubt anyone cares)
It's a short essay, a comparison of two historical documents. To be precise, it's a paltry 700-800 words. I thought this was going to be easy, as I'm used to 4500-5000 word essays.
It's not. I literally do not have enough words to fit everything I'd like into this project.
Anyone with experience in the Social Sciences/Humanities like to give me a couple tips? Can I "dumb down" my language to be more concise? General themes I should focus on?
It's the first essay I'm writing for this prof, so I've no prior experience to styles he'd prefer and whatnot, so general tips are best.
(If anyone cares, the documents are Burns' Intellectuals as Agents of Change, and Schultz's Crisis of Empire. But I doubt anyone cares)
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lol nub!
What would probably help is starting with an outline. Get short, concise statements about what is alike and what isn't and flesh those out into entire sentences. Try to look for the biggest similarities and differences and cover those very well, I doubt he expects you to go very in-depth in only 800 words so don't try and cram everything in there because I doubt it can be done. Good luck.
Are you trying to be pithy? What pointless advice...
I going to rewrite my outline while I make myself some dinner.
Hopefully I'll be able to cut it down.
Asking for a lax limit is also out of the question, as one of the prof's stated goals is to make us pick and choose what is really significant of this article.
That is. Topic, example, discusion, summary.
Make you sure none of sentances are wasted material.
Also write out a plan of what topics you want. Each topic should be around 100-120 words. This gives you 4 to 5 topics. This lets you choose the big ones. Then use your reamining words (around 200) and split them for your intro and conclusion.
The important thing is to look at each paragraph after you write it and ask yourself. "Is this sentance dead weight?"
Also check to see if quotations are included in the word count. They usually aren't but if you are number critical it's best to make sure.
Satans..... hints.....
Having the gift of the gab on the page can be a blessing and a curse. It's easy to write long essays, but they can often be rambling with little point. Having a short, concise essay allows you to focus and forces you to bring out your important points without beating around the bush.
I'm older and trained in writing technically, so a lot of my 1st draft is already past the first filter stage. But I still write more than I need to just to get the ideas out in front of me, and then chop and slice and combine. Believe me, it's a LOT easier to write more and then edit, than it is to magically come up with more.
Decide on two things, leave it at that, and then write as you naturally would. Then go back and cut out what is unnecessary.
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I faced the same problems before, and when I do this I notice that I add alot of stuff that can be taken out or at the least edited.
If you leave yourself enough time to do the editing, you shouldn't have any difficulties.
And to end it off, a quote:
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead." Mark Twain
wowowowow, i bet you get all the ladies.
anyways duder, he's right. i'm a senior history major, and i've typed up a ton of these kind of essays. 700-800 words isn't that much to work with, so don't use flowery language like "pithy" or superfluous words like "superfluous". keep reminding yourself it's a history paper, not prose, so what you're going for is clarity above all else.
basically you've got 4 pages to work with, double spaced, so your paper structure should probably look something like this:
1. an introduction that both introduces both documents in their historical context and also states your thesis (if you want a good historical paper, you should come up with an argument as to why you feel the way you do. there's no debating this. in a comparison paper it doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking, obviously, but you should state how, why, and in what context you are comparing the two documents)
2. a few paragraphs that VERY briefly summarize and then analyze the content of the first document in the parameters that you set in your thesis. for instance, if you claim that both document A and document B are similar because they were both written by authors with a military background in a time of war, that's how you'll want to examine the first document (of course, your thesis doesn't have to be about how they are similar, it can be about virtually anything, just as long as you have one that puts both documents in the same context).
3. a few paragraphs analyzing the second document, as above, except you'll want to include elements from the first document.
4. overall analysis of your thesis using evidence from the two documents to support it.
5. conclusion
honestly, in a bare bones essay, you should be able to do all that in 4-5 pages. you say you have a hard time making an essay short, but really, if you can't fit all that you want in, you need to start thinking about what information is most relevant to your argument and what isn't.
also, if it's just a short essay like this, i'm pretty sure your history prof isn't going to get all worked up about it. just remember:
BE CLEAR
BE CONCISE
CITE YOUR SHIT (never, ever, EVER let an idea or theme go uncited; you probably already know this, but use MLA style for the shorter history papers, Turabian style for the longer ones)
finally, history paper writing is never some easy peasy crap you can breeze through. always remember that you're trying to make an argument, and the best way to do that is include good bits of relevant information and to be as clear and concise as possible.
Exactly. 700 words is Intro, 3 Points, and a Conclusion. The tendency is to over explain your points, creating more verbage than is needed. Or rather, my tendency. This goes in with everyone else saying write just a bit more then you need and parse it back.
Edit: Also, if you'd like a hand, pm me the lot, I will gladly bitchslap it until it fits neatly in the palm of your hand.
I went through the paper a few times, rewriting sentences to get it the most concise possible.
I think it turned out quite well, though very packed. I don't feel as if I had enough explanation of my analysis, though most of the thing I've excluded are fairly obvious connections.
Annnndd....
I do! But I am very pretty.
Thanks for the advice everyone, it helped.
I also had a lecturer in university who had us write incredibly short essays, and he swore by Richard Lanham's "Paramedic Method". There's an overview here that should get you started.