Part 1 - Research

"When you take stuff from one writer it's plagiarism; but when you take it from many writers, it's research."
-- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

Focus

There are those who say that before you can research or write, you must first choose a focus and stick to it. While that is good advice in some cases, there are times when your focus should change during the research process. For example, you might decide to write on a topic only to discover a more interesting, more relevant, or more easily researched topic while trying to find materials on the original topic. For this reason, you should not submit a proposal for an essay (if required) or otherwise make your focus concrete until you've done some preliminary research. That doesn't mean reading every book on the subject; rather, you should ascertain what sort of materials are available on the subject at all. When you do your basic search, keep in mind the following indications:

• If you find an endless supply of possible sources right away, your topic is too broad, and you'll have to dig down into the subject more deeply to find a more suitable focus.
• If you can't find any possible sources after a serious search, your topic may be too narrow or too new. While this could serve as an excellent topic for a thesis in that it provides opportunity for original study, it is probably going to be inappropriate for an early-university or high school essay.
• The Internet is a fabulous source of knowledge. It is also a fabulous source of utter nonsense. If all of your sources are Internet-based and you can't find any book sources, you have to seriously consider the validity of the subject matter for a university essay. Even cutting-edge technology has books and articles available that describe the basics of the technology.
• If all of the sources seem to be written by the same person or group of people, you must again seriously consider the validity of the topic. It might be too narrow, or it might be generated by 'crackpots,' or it might be a great topic that has not been written about often enough. Discuss the topic with your teacher/professor.
• If you find a good source, search again under the author's name in case they have another useful book that you didn't find in the first search.

How To Write An Essay

When I was in university, I helped friends by typing and proofreading their essays. I found that most people's writing was decent, but a few had managed to get through high school without learning how to construct a basic paragraph, let alone an entire essay. That was Ontario, where, at the time, high school went to grade 13 and the education system was fairly good. Now I live in the US, where high schools seem to churn out graduates that, for the most part, don't seem to know how to construct an essay. So many students making so many of the same errors must be indicative of a failing by the school system and not a lack of intelligence or ability in the students.

Thus, as a service to my husband's students who sometimes have to write essays, as well as a service to the greater Internet community beyond, I have put together the following tips and instructions on how to construct a good essay for a university class.