There are many guides available to help you with essay-writing. Here are some that are easy to get:
- The Modern Humanities Research Association puts out an excellent booklet on writing: The MHRA Style Guide. You can buy it in print (cheap), read it online, or download their free PDF version. Unlike the other guides mentioned here, the MHRA guide is only about the mechanics of writing, spelling, punctuation, footnotes, and bibliographies. It does not help with how to assemble your ideas, or plan an essay. But since it's free as a PDF, just get it. It will help you organize your writing and answer questions about silly details like what English words should have capital letters, or how to put together your bibliography.
- One of my other favourites is the long-established students' guide published by the UK's Open University,
- The Arts Good Study Guide by Chambers and Northledge (2nd ed., 2008). It's clearly printed, well-written, and realistic. See the copy at archive.org (first ed., but still good).
- The sister volume, The Good Study Guide (2005), was also excellent, but it's hard to get now (amazon). At archive.org. Or the epub torrent.
- The University of Southampton has a Study Skills Handbook by Barbara Allan that addresses essay-writing in chapter 7. Chapter 13 on Reflection is unusual and rather good, I think. Free online PDF.
- Two more very short ones:
- Many students whose mother tongue isn't International English have difficulty with "a" and "the", the definite and indefinite articles. There is some excellent online help here at englishpage.com.
It doesn't matter which
There are many other writing guides, each with their own genuine virtues. For example, the Oxford Essential Guide to Writing or The Economist Style Guide, or Kate Turabian's famous A Guide for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. They're all excellent. The most important thing is not which one you get, but that you get one, absorb its messages and put them into practice.
How to begin
Many guides to writing suggest that you should begin by having a question, and then doing some research, organising your notes, and then writing your essay. Or some variant of this procedure. I am not sure I agree.
I think it's important to start with a question, yes. But sometimes the best way to begin can be to actually sit down and start writing or typing. Write a sentence, or two, or a paragraph, about the question. Then you will begin to feel how much you know and can say, and how much you need to go and read in order to be able to write the next sentence.
The great cultural historian Peter Burke made some interesting remarks about his own process of thinking and writing in this 2004 interview (from 3min 11sec). He goes to his desk in the morning and writes. No preliminary reading. Then, in the afternoon, he goes to the library. For Burke, writing precedes reading.
