Writing History Essays

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Writing History Essays
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Formatting

• 5-6cm margin
• Double-spaced
• Times New Roman 12 pt

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Writing Style

• Formal, not conversational
• Absolutely NO personal pronouns
• Consistency British or American spelling
• Past tense
• Conventions
• Five-Year Plan (FYP)
• Dates 1 August 2006

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Punctuation

• Easy on the commas!
• Reduce number of colons and semi-colons
• Brackets aim to never use them
• Shorter sentences

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Paragraphs

• Paragraphs are more than a sentence
• Discusses one theme/idea mini-essay
• Introductory sentence
• Main body evidence/example and analysis
• Concluding sentence sums up paragraph and leads
  on to the next

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TEAR

• T Topic Sentence
• E Evidence
• A Analysis
• R Relevance

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Connecting words

• For smoothness in between and within paragraphs
• In addition (not also)
• However (not but)
• Nevertheless
• Moreover

• Therefore
• Subsequently
• Furthermore
• Conversely

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Content

• Thematic vs. chronological approach
• Evidence vs. emotion

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Referencing

• Footnotes
• Bibliography

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Plagiarism

• Definition
• Plagiarism is academic dishonesty. It is the
  deliberate use of anothers words or ideas
  without acknowledging or referencing.
• The Community Agreement
• See various universities websites for details on
  how to avoid, especially Yale University
  finding your voice