When You Are Reviewing the Style of an Essay What Are You Looking for?

10 things to practise earlier yous submit your essay

Final typhoon checklist

Y'all accept finished your essay and you think information technology is ready for submission. Now become through the checklist below, as information technology should assistance you spot possible flaws in your essay before submitting information technology. You are also strongly advised to have the essay ready between 24 and 12 hours before the last submission deadline (ideally, if not before), as some of the "things" in this checklist require reading the essay a few times.

Read your essay for references

ane. Check you have referenced every idea that is not yours

Your marker will look for your own individual vocalisation and original ideas equally well as appointment with secondary sources. Y'all take to be particularly conscientious in differentiating what you have quoted or paraphrased from somewhere else, and what is actually your own opinion. It likewise has to appear clear to the marker whether you are paraphrasing a source or quoting straight from information technology.

2. Check your references are authentic and correct

Whether you lot choose to use MLA or Chicago (footnotes and bibliography), make certain you are following your referencing fashion closely. If you lot are in doubt, you should ask one of your tutors.

Is your bibliography in order?

iii. Check you lot have referenced primary sources as well

This may announced obvious, but make certain you have referenced chief sources too, and the editions you lot are using. If you are quoting from a play, indicate where in play that detail line is from (eg Act I, Scene Two, ll. 123-38); if from a novel, the page number will suffice.

It may exist useful to divide your bibliography in "principal" and "secondary" sources, and have the master sources listed beginning.

Read your essay for style

iv. Edit for grammar and spelling

Look for mistakes in sentence structure, and typos.

v. Edit for syntax and punctuation

Exercise the sentences menstruation as y'all read them? Is the connexion between sentences and besides that between clauses clear? Information technology may help to read your essay out loud, or but the sentences that look dubious. Your argument will announced much weaker if the logical links between sentences are not clear. If they are not articulate to you, they will not be articulate to your reader either.

Is a semi-colon actually the punctuation mark y'all need to separate those two clauses?

six. Edit for fashion and vocabulary

Avoid vague words and wide, banal generalizations, ie 'Sappho'southward poetry is beautiful', 'The Odyssey is the most famous volume in the history of Western literature', 'No woman was free to human action in Aboriginal Rome'. Consider whether the words you accept picked at central moments in your argument are the best possible words y'all could use.

Is the register you have used similar to what you would meet in scholarly essays? Check if you take used any colloquial words or phrases, equally those are by and large non appropriate for a university essay.

Read for argument and construction

7. Edit for structure

Is any paragraph in your essay longer than a page? If so, it may need cutting or re-formulating. About of the times, long paragraphs read better when they are split into ii shorter ones.

8. Check the flow of your argument

Does your argument menses naturally from 1 paragraph to the next? Is your statement clearly laid out from the first? Are you making it clear when you are disagreeing with a source or an interpretation?

9. Re-read your introduction

Your introduction should exist neither besides short nor too long; ideally, you would aim it to be around 300-500 words (NB: this will depend on the overall length of your essay). Go far sound interesting: your introduction is the first affair your marker volition read and it will shape their judgement of your essay as they keep reading it. Of form, an academic essay is not a tricky web log post, but in that location are many ways in which you can make the first paragraph interesting, such as using a nice quotation from the primary source or one of the secondary sources you accept read, or for instance engaging actively with the essay question/championship. The other thing that the introduction should do is give a sense of what is going to happen in the actual body of your essay: this should non be a summary of your arguments (you practice not desire to give besides much away from the very starting time!), but information technology should give the marker a skilful grasp of your essay theme and statement.

ten. Re-read your conclusion

Practise not think of your determination as the moment when y'all submit your essay in sighs of relief (well, information technology may be that too!), but rather equally the culmination of your argument, when the whole of your essay comes together. It is not enough to write "In conclusion" to conclude. Your conclusion is besides not the same every bit your introduction, although yous may want to draw on what you mentioned there and create connections. Similarly as with your introduction, your conclusion is ultimately the last thing your mark volition read and you should want to impress them a little. Specially, you want them to experience you have reached a conclusion, rather than simply found 1.

This article is available to download for gratuitous as a PDF for use as a personal learning tool or for use in the classroom as a teaching resource: 10 Things To Do Earlier Y'all Submit Your Essay (PDF , 810kb)

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Source: https://www.york.ac.uk/english/writing-at-york/writing-resources/10-things-before-you-submit-your-essay/