16c How to write well in an essay

I can give you tips to improve the clarity of your writing, but the best way to become a good writer is to expose yourself to good writing. Often, I have to say, theologians are terrible writers – or, their work is read by us in translation from German or Latin. You aren’t going to learn to write from them. You are, however, going to improve your ability to write by picking up a George Eliot novel, or a Jane Austen, or an Ernest Hemingway. (Find the English or History major in your class and ask them what they are reading!)

And anyhow, as a developing pastor-theologian, you should be cultivating the reading life. A young pastor I know has committed himself to reading for an hour a day – theology mostly, but certainly not only. While his example is outstanding, I am alarmed when I ask theological students in interviews whether they consider themselves a reader or not to find that most say ‘not really’. I am alarmed because these are people who are going to have words as the tools of their trade – shouldn’t they take every opportunity to sharpen them?

So what I am asking here is for a lifestyle choice. Become a reader – not because you will kick it in your theology essays, but because you will be a much better minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ if you are.

17. The art of signposting

The greatest essays come off because they are an integrated whole. They keep the reader's attention the whole way through - not because they have sparkling prose (though that's nice) but because they connect the ideas together well.

That is: they keep reminding the reader where they are in the argument, so the chances of getting lost are minimised. This is of course a very helpful discipline for the writer, because it asks her to ask herself - 'where am I up to? What does this bit contribute to the whole of the essay?'

There are a couple of ways to do this.

1) use headings. I used to be opposed to headings in essays, chiefly because I was a snob about such things. ('Surprise me', I hear you say). But I have changed. The use of a few headings can, with a minimum of words, communicate to the reader the structure of your piece quite brilliantly and elegantly. Now, I don't mean that every paragraph should have a heading. I would also counsel against points and subpoints and futher subpoints. That's just confusing. But if there are five identifiable phases of your essay, why not signpost them with a system of headings? It's economical and it keeps everyone up to speed.

2) use summative sentences. You may have just stepped your way through a very complex argument involving exegesis, historical theology and a jab an Eberhard Jungel for good measure. But when you come to a section break, don't assume that I have followed this all the way through - or that I can see what it contributes to the whole. Tell me.

They say when you begin to act that you should overact - that the stage requires you to magnify your actions so that the audience knows clearly what you are doing. Likewise, in an essay, you need to overact a bit: telling me explicitly what each bit of your essay has just done in a brief summative statement.

3) using questions that flow. A great way to ensure continuity is to introduce the next section of your piece with a question that comes out of the previous bit - which may also have been introduced by a question. Paul does this in his letters to brilliant effect - 'What shall we say then: shall we go on sinning, that grace may abound?' And you can follow his argument by stages because he signposts it with questions which he then proceeds to answer.

16.b How to write well in an essay

(for regular readers, I am importing material from a previous short post just for tidiness' sake).

An essay is an attempt to find some clarity of thought on a subject. The following list of words are obstacles in the way of clarity of thought. When you find yourself using them, catch yourself and ask 'what am I really trying to say here?' - and then say that instead, without the bad word.

1. important (in what way? to whom?)

2. helpful (who is being 'helped'? helpful to do what exactly? 'helpful' is a word that preachers should stop using, too)

3. significant (to whom? so what?)

4. useful (how? who cares? useful for what purpose?)

5. interesting (how so? I am not interested at the moment just because you say this is interesting...)

Remember, these are tips rather than rules: but I notice how often these words become a shorthand for 'I don't quite know what to say here'. In particular, an essay calls you to make judgements - which many of us are afraid to do. What does 'useful' commit you to? Nothing at all! Scrub it and find something better to say.

Don't be afraid of metaphors either, or of using visual language to describe what you are doing in your argument. It is amazing to reflect on how prominent metaphors have been in advancing discoveries in the world of science. This is because metaphors have the power to yolk ideas together in new ways and thus show us something we haven't seen before. Don't be over the top with it, of course; and don't used tired metaphors that have become stock-in-trade. But a fresh image will open up all kinds of possibilities of thought.

Now I am afraid that I have to have a word with you about punctuation. I'm really not a punctuation fascist. Well, I used not to be, until I had to mark lots of theology essays. And I discovered: it just is simply the case that bad punctuation is a threat to civilisation itself. We punctuate our sentences for the same reason that we use cutlery and wear pants. Take the comma, for example: mostly, people just fill up a pepperpot with commas and then grind them over the page, so that they fall at random. Writing ought to have commas, they think. So, commas it shall have!

Now there are different schools of comma usage. I am a comma minimalist. Mostly, I think you can do without most of the ones we commonly use. I am not going to go through the uses of the comma here because you can easily find help on the web. (My favourite is http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/.) Do yourself the favour of checking those out before you go comma sprinkling.

Likewise, do check out the rules for using apostrophes (notice, not 'apostrophe's). This one is dead easy and should take you a minute to learn. It becomes confusing to read work in which plurals and possessives are all mixed up. And it look kinda highschoolish!

The best advice with punctuation is to use your ears - but not always. And when in doubt, see if a full stop will help things.

16.a How to write well in an essay

The medium of expression for your essay is the written word, in the form of the traditional 'essay' or 'research paper' or whatever your institution labels it.

I assume, pretty much, that if you are going into Christian ministry and you have chosen to study theology, then you don't mind a few words here and there. In fact, I reckon it is part of your vocation to be a student of words. You will be exercising teaching gifts using words. So knowing how to communicate in written language is skill worth honing.

It is all about judging what register to use in the right situation. What do I mean? Register is basically how you pitch your langauge according to the context. Is it highly formal? Is it chatty? Is it conversational? That will be a factor of the register.

The essay is an exercise in formal writing in an academic setting. That is, you are seeking as much precision as you can muster and assuming that your audience is a very well educated person in the field that you are writing in. You can use technical langauge, complex sentences, and elevated vocabulary - in fact, you ought to. You can assume that your reader will work hard to try and understand you.

You are aiming to be persuasive - but you are not in the pulpit. Many theological students find it hard to step out of the pulpit, I've noticed! Persuasion in this instance doesn't mean the kind of hyped-up rhetorical language you might use in a sermon. In fact, the opposite is true here: you need to keep the emotive impact of your words in check. Persuasion is by dint of reasoning here. Leave the hyperbole for Sunday.

But none of this absolves you of your responsibility to be as clear as you possibly can. Clarity doesn't mean simplicity, or dumbing-it-down. It doesn't mean writing a conversational way. But it does mean making your sentences hang together well, making your paragraphs clearly about something and giving us an obvious sense of where you are going in the essay. You aren't out to win a Pulitzer prize, here. It doesn't need to be fancy prose. But is amazing how a bit of attenton to the writing really helps the essay - because to write well is the think well.

So, my first piece of advice will be: re-read your work, aloud if you can. And ask yourself: is it clear to me what I mean? If you can't follow what you are saying don't expect that I will. You need to use your ears: does it sound right? That's always a good first test of your writing.

There a couple of the things you can do to make your writing more clear:

1) See if you can cut your sentences in half. Sometimes sentences just try to do too much, and the structure of the sentence can't bear the weight of meaning your are forcing on it. The full stop (period) is your friend.

2) take care how you use the 'connector' words: but, yet, however, therefore, nevertheless. These words are important cues to the reader. But they can also be completely confusing, especially if they are used in a haphazard fashion.

NB 'however' is not a conjunction. You don't use it in the middle of a sentence to co-ordinate two thoughts. It is an adverb, and usually goes first or second in a sentence and is followed by a comma.

3) Start each paragraph with a sentence indicating what the paragraph is about. End each paragraph by saying what you have just concluded from the paragraph.

4) prefer active to passive. This hint is a standard of writing textbooks everywhere. It isn't a 100% rule. But you save words by using the active. For that reason I say to you that yes, you CAN use 'I' in an essay. The reason professors don't like I is that we are not much interested in your feelings: 'I feel that xyz'; nor in your opinions: 'I think that xyz'. We don't want to know what you feel. We want to know the truth!

The problem is that not using I results in all kinds of contortions that just sound wrong: 'In this essay it will be shown that'.... Yuck. Errgh. I think it is perfectly acceptable to say what you are doing: 'I will show that...'.

And it is clear.

(To be continued)

15. Why presentation matters, and how to make it work for you

Now I am a person who likes to think I can see past a person's halitosis, bulbous proboscis and liver spots to their true character. I don't like to think I am swayed by outward appearances.

Truth is, I am.

This is true as a marker, as well. I do not take marks off for shoddy presentation. But I am sure that shoddy presentation affects how I perceive the essay, and how I perceive the efforts of the author, even if subconsciously. So - make presentation work for you, not against you.

Partly, this is just a courtesy of communication. You have been asked to communicate in a certain way, and it is just polite to do so. Most theological colleges will have pretty strict guidelines about how you present your essay - how you format your footnotes, and so on. Find out what they are - and (I dunno, here's a novel idea) follow them. If you can't follow them: then at least be self-consistent - that creates a better impression than a random formatting performance!

So then: a couple of tips on formatting and presentation:

1) don't save paper. With electronic submission of assignments it is ridiculous to see tiny fonts and tiny margins on an assignment. It costs nobody anything to make it look much more readable! Even if you are submitting your work on paper, a couple of extra pages isn't going to destroy the Amazon. Most colleges like double spacing and, if printed out, single sided.

2) author-date or ...? Often you are allowed a choice of formatting for references. People from a science background prefer the author-date system, with the reference placed in the text in brackets instead of using a footnote (though it can be used in a footnote as well). This is becoming popular in Biblical Studies as well. My preference, personally, as an Arts graduate, is for the humanities style of referencing, in which you give a footnote and then a full reference the first time you use a text (abbreviated on subsequent uses).

I am not going to go into the details of explaining them here, because each institution will have its own way of requiring you to do this. If you have the freedom to use the author-date, and it works for you - feel free. Whatever you do, don't use endnotes - the references should be on the page where they are made. Otherwise it is just a source of marker grumpiness.

3) Reference styles An earnest plea: do take care to follow the guidelines in citing books and articles and other works. Usually, if you mention a book, you italicise the title. If it's an article, you put it in inverted commas. Simple. I would say that a quarter of students don't do this - why? Baffling.

4) Font Now, this is a bit controversial. Use a serif font - because it looks smarter. By which I mean - more intelligent. I am dead serious here. You might be a fan of Arial or Calibri. That's great for you. But if you want to look like a scholar, use a font with the little curly bits. Even boring ole Time is fine. Or Garamond, Bookman, Perpetua, Constantia. Don't make it a silly font, of course, and only use one font in your whole piece. But make it a serif font. Academic studies have been carried out on this which show that the perception of your piece as a piece of scholarship is affected by the font you choose! Of course, as a marker I pay no conscious attention to the font you choose. But...

5) Paragraphs I usually like to right and left justify my writing so that you get a nice square block of text. To me, only left justifying looks untidy. But do allow for a space inbetween paragraphs. Not a huge gap, such that they look disconnected. But make for a gap nonetheless. I personally don't think an indent in a paragraph of type looks tidy, and if you have a spacing, it is unnecessary.

Oh, and do make your paragraphs of roughly even length - they should be between 2 and 5 sentences long. If one paragraph is a monster, consider chopping it in half. There's almost always a way to do this.

6) Attend to punctuation and spelling For some people, it seems, puncuation and spelling don't matter a great deal. Again, they are not essential to the content of your essay. But in the days of spell checkers and so on, there really is no excuse for persistently bad spelling. I'll have somethings to say about punctuation in a later section. But just to give you a taste: remember, there's a huge difference between 'Let's eat, Grandma' and 'Let's eat Grandma'....

7) Print it nicely If you are printing it out, can you find a printer which doesn't produce a faded line down the middle of the page?

8) Use a clear and consistent system of headings You don't have to use headings at all, of course. But if you do, make them neat and tidy. Don't make them excessively large, or colourful. If your text is 12 point, make them at most 14 point. Otherwise they shout at the reader.


Presentation is all about not distracting your reader. Why wouldn't you go and preach in a gold lame t-shirt and g-string combo? Because I think it would be rather diverting... Presentation is about focusing attention on the content of your essay and, strangely, not on your presentation. None of these rules of presentation make your essay a successful essay. But it is interesting that it is almost always the case that the best essays are also nicely presented. I think it reveals something about your state of mind as your approach the essay.

14. The classic introduction

Have you ever been speed dating? No, I didn't think so. Me neither. But the point of speed dating is to get a quick but true glimpse of someone: an introduction to them. Introductions open little windows on the souls of others so we can catch a glimpse of what might be inside. They are a beginning, perhaps.

Or maybe, they are enough: we all hope that we are good enough to make a rapid judgment about someone so that we can screen out any psychopaths that might really not be good people to get to know; but the trouble with this is that psychopaths, it turns out, are by definition extraordinarily good at the kind of superficial charm that you don’t notice is superficial until you scratch below the surface and discover something really alarming, like a collection of stuffed animals, or the entire Barry Manilow back catalogue.

By then it is usually much too late.

So it is with your essay. Not the psychopath bit. Your introduction is meant to serve as a window into the rest of the piece. And it has three important functions:

1) Your introduction should set the scene and frame the question. Briefly show that you have understood the question and why it is a question worth asking. Who is asking it? Why should we care? What is at stake? There needs to be a bit of drama here - a sense of conflict even. In a couple of crisp sentences tell us where the question has come from and why the reader has to read on. Be a bit alluring. Flirt with me!

2) your introduction should state your answer to the question. I'm sorry, but unless you are some kind of essay writing genius, this is a rule I pretty much insist upon. Most of us don't have the skill to create the kind of essay that only reveals its answer to the question at the end. This isn't a whodunnit. If you tell me upfront what the endpoint is, I'll have a way of making sense of what comes next in the essay. I'll have a point on which to hang all your loose ends, and it won't look like your essay is meandering. It gives it focus.

3) your introduction should give an indication of how you are going to answer the question. Yep, tell me your method. What's the procedure that's going to follow? Again, you can do this in summary form of course. But be explicit about what you are doing: first this, then this, and lastly this.

I cannot tell you what a difference this makes to the essay. If you have a good introduction you'll write a good essay, pretty much. It is that simple. So why do 70% of students not do it? They write no introduction. Or they only do one of the above. Then they wonder why no one asks them on a date...

13. Types of argument for your essay

Talking about quotations is getting ahead of ourselves though.

Let's say that you've begun researching the topic area, you've made some extensive notes and now you are feeling that the time has come to write. What are you going to write?

Remember at this stage what I said in the beginning: an essay is an argument about something trying to show your skills in the analysis of texts and the synthesis of ideas. That is to say: you need to argue something. Before you start writing ask yourself this absolutely crucial question: what am I arguing for? What thesis am I proposing and defending?

It will help you no end if you sit down, right now, and nut out a single sentence - a sentence that is clear to you, and that takes a position. Be a little bit brave even. Go on - what's life for, if not to live a little dangerously?

Actually, I am quite serious: a little courage in framing your argument is a good thing. You can always modify your statement as you go along. What you are putting up is a working thesis - that is, it is something for your essay to lean against while you write it. You may at the end of the process come back and change your thesis entirely.

Now, consider these two images:

On the right you have the classic on/off switch. It only has two positions: on and, well, off. You can switch it on. And you can switch it off. That's really all it does.

On the left is another design classic: the volume knob. It has 10 numbers which indicate a spectrum of positions. (It may even have 11, but that's another story, one about Marshall stacks, and so on.

Now: you might be a personality that prefers everything in the world to be a matter of on or off. Yes or no. Black and white (you knew I was going to say that, right?).

But the thing is that in an argument in which you are trying to convince the marker of your ability to make subtle distinctions, your really have to operate as if the world had volume knobs on it rather than on/off switches. That is: there may be degrees of certainty, elements of moderation, and many other ways of sitting between the extremes on a spectrum that give your essay greater persuasive power. This is partly because sitting at one extreme is often claiming far too much than you can possibly establish in your short piece.

Let me take you back to one of our sample questions:

Is ‘conscious eternal torment’ the only sound Biblical and theological description of the nature of hell?

You can see that this question is actually inviting you to take an extreme position - the word 'only' is the giveaway. But it would be a bit of a trap to accept that invitation. It would show a degree of analytical sophistication if you were rather to argue that (if this is your opinion) 'conscious eternal torment' is the most convincing interpretation of the Biblical material. Instead of using your on/off switch, you've used your volume dial - and you've settled on a 9 on that dial perhaps, but you've used a much more nuanced way of measuring the results of your study.

How are you going to argue for your thesis? Arguments can take various shapes. Here are some:

1) the cumulative argument is an argument that is in effect constituted by a list of points that do not necessarily relate to one another but that, when added all together, make the case. Because you don't have to say how the points relate, the cumulative argument is a very simple form to use - it works well in exams especially. Its weakness is that it doesn't make for a logical whole; and if you don't treat each piece of evidence carefully, it can look like each piece has equal weight - which is unlikely. The other problem is how you might deal with objections and counterarguments - but you can do this under each point as you go through.

2) the sparring partner argument is an argument in which you chiefly wrestle with the argument of another in a critical way. What you need to do here is offer an in depth AND FAIR exposition of their work and then engage with it, modifying it as you see fit. Don't worry about originality - even a small adjustment can be a new perspective on the problem. Your wrestle with the sparring partner may lead to fresh insights. It could be that the thinker is from a very different perspective than your own - and adapting their work critically leads to a very provocative synthesis. The danger of course is that you become intimidated or overwhelmed by the sparring partner.

3) the thesis proposed and dissected argument is one that I have found theologian John Webster using. He starts with a detailed proposition and then takes it apart element by element, before putting it back together at the end. This argument can be aesthetically quite tidy and also means that you concentrate on concepts that hang together rather than bits from here and there.

4) the evaluate the alternatives on the table argument immediately plunges you into the tradition of the discussion of the matter at hand and shows your awareness of the secondary literature discussion. You can explain each alternative, offer an evaluation according to strengths and weaknesses, and then offer your own synthesis, or choose the strongest option. The danger is that if you don't do a good job of describing the alternatives the whole thing looks like a mess.

TIP: you know those 'Three/Four/Five Views On' books? Do take great care when using these: they are designed for people just like you and they are inviting you to take a huge shortcut. Some students think they can do their entire research from one of these books. The essays are inevitably of uneven quality in these books. And what's more: I think they leave students feeling completely confused. I know I feel confused...

Well, that'll do for the moment. Are there any other argument types that I could add to this list?