Essays

A basic requirement of any essay assigned in my classes is that it must fulfill the assignment: it must be on the assigned topic (or on one of theassigned topic options), and it must be within a the assigned length limits (a "500-word essay" in this class means 400-600 words). If in my judgment theessay is not on the assigned topic, or if the essay is either less than 400 words or more than 600 words, then the essay does not fulfill the assignmentand does not qualify for a passing grade. In such cases, a student may have the opportunity to revise or repeat an assignment once in order to submit anessay that does fulfill the assignment.


PROPORTIONS OF ESSAY intro: body: conclusion = 1:3:1

Essays in this course must follow a conventionalpattern of organization and development for short (500-word) academic essays: an introductory paragraph, a body (usually two or three paragraphs), and aconclusion paragraph. The relative lengths of these three essay parts are roughly 1:3:1. In other words, the body should be the largest section of theessay--at least twice as long, and probably three times as long, as either the introduction or the conclusion


The introduction (one paragraph)should be relatively short: an introduction is, after all, a set-up, a preliminary element intended to prepare the reader for something else: the rest ofthe essay.


The body (usually two or three paragraphs) should be the longest part of the essay--because it is in the body that support for the