On Writing an Essay

by R. Thomas Berner

NOTE: This essay about writing essays will help you construct weekly short and lengthier essays for your Text Reaction Reports, Review Questions, and Supplemental Notes Discussions. Berner’s essay is useful to return to from time to time until the recommendations become second nature.

If memory serves, George Orwell once wrote an essay titled "Shooting an elephant." I'd rather write an essay than shoot an elephant. I don't like to kill; I do like to write. So here is a brief essay on writing an essay, intended to help you write your weekly essays.

An essay, my dictionary says, is "a short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author." You should take two points from that definition: Single subject and personal view.

"Single subject" has been taken care of for you. You're writing an essay every week about mass communications and while you should be comparing and contrasting the weekly topics with previous topics, that doesn't mean you're not writing about a single subject.

"Personal view" requires some explanation because many people, when they see such a phrase, believe it to mean what they think or feel. That's incorrect. Personal view does not mean your uninformed opinion merely strewn across the screen. It does mean your analytical view based on research, perhaps some additional insight gleaned from The New York Times or some other database. To avoid the mix-up between feelings and analysis, write in the third person rather than the first. Don't tell us what you think. "I think" is a crutch, not an analytical tool. If you write "I think," delete it from the sentence and see if the sentence isn't stronger. If it's not, then you haven't really presented an informed analysis. (You don't see "I think" and "I believe" in this essay, do you?) 

A good essay is composed of three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning and the end are usually no more than one paragraph. However short they may be, the beginning and the end must meet certain criteria. The beginning should boldly state your point in two or three sentences. We've already read the same chapters so we don't need a recapitulation. That would be a book review. Let us know in calm, clear sentences what the essay is going to be about. And be sure that is what the essay is about. I've read many an essay that should have started with the final paragraph and gone on from there. In other words, the idea worth developing was at the end of the essay. 

The middle is the longest part. That's where you analyze the topics of the week and bring in examples. Don't regurgitate what we've already read ourselves. Again, analysis, critical thinking, new insights—all are the stuff of a good essay. 

And the ending must logically flow from the middle. It should summarize the essay and bring it to a sensible close. Don't raise new ideas in the conclusion. Finally, you should critically examine what you've written. Stop run on sentences. Repair mechanical faults. Ensure the integrity of paragraphs. Examine the essay's beginning to see that it makes the point you want to make. Re-check your examples. Cast a critical eye everywhere. Reflect and revise. That's how you write an essay.