Write an Essay

Tips on writing that all-important A-grade college essay

Avoid abstract terms when writing an essay — be as specific as you can.

Avoid abstract terms when writing an essay — be as specific as you can.

You must constantly fight against your style becoming too abstract or difficult to read. You can do this by making your information specific, keeping your sentences under control, using active verbs and giving examples. Here’s a typical example:

Abstract
This demonstrates an understanding of the history, diversity and commonality of the peoples of the nation, the reality of human interdependence, the need for global cooperation, and a multicultural perspective.

Guard against this style and try to develop the skill of writing in specifics. What does diversity and commonality of peoples mean? What is the reality of human interdependence? What does the writer mean by global cooperation? Every reader will have a different ideaof what multicultural perspective means.

Whatever your subject, edit you writing to keep your writing style as clear as possible. Here’s an example from an engineering student describing the need to limit the transfer of data during naval combat.

Although the redraft has to use the word limiter twice, cutting down on words such as device, interface and system and nonspecific phrases such as hyper accelerated interfacing, open-ended limiter and multiplied abilities, the style becomes clearer and more readable without loss of content.

Original

Redraft

All combat systems installed on ships and fighters must have a working limiter device. The limiter device regulates the direct interface pilots have with their ships. Without such regulation, ships systems as well as the ship’s pilot would overload each other with massive amounts of data transfer. When in normal operation the limiter device keeps the ship-pilot interfaces to a suitable level. In rare cases of emergency, the limiter can be set to allow hyper accelerated interfacing. Any ship running with an open-ended limiter will have multiplied abilities but will take constant damage even to the point of its destruction.

All ships and fighters must have a working limiter to control communication during combat. This regulates the communication to stop vast amounts of data swamping either the pilot’s combat screens or the ship’s command center. In an emergency, the limiter can allow either the pilot or the ship to transmit more information. But without a limit on transferring combat data, there is an ever-present danger of the enemy succeeding in destroying the ship the fighters are defending.