Essay Writing Guidelines

1. Always begin your essay with a “mapping” introductory paragraph. This paragraph will outline the way you intend to respond to the question and give both you and your reader a clear idea of what is to come. This is always time well spent as it will help you organize your thoughts, and your reader will appreciate the clarity it lends to your essay.
2. Along the same lines, make sure your argument has a logical progression and you are presenting the evidence you have gathered in a logical format, with points building on previous arguments.
3. Never use the first person in a scientific communication. Also, experimental results are always presented in the past tense. Be aware of your sentence structure – poor grammar will detract from an otherwise thoughtful statement.
4. Each paragraph should have a clear topic sentence so the reader knows the purpose of the paragraph and why it is important to your thesis.
5. Never let graphs or diagrams stand alone. Always have an introductory sentence about what the graph says and an interpretive sentence about what it means and why it is relevant to your thesis. A reader is not going to take the time to work out the details contained within a graph that is presented without explanation.
6. Never let evidence stand alone. The point of an essay is to show how you understand the experimental work that has been done, not just to regurgitate studies you’ve memorized. Briefly summarize the results of the study and then clearly integrate what they mean into your overall argument.
7. General rule in scientific communication: tell them what you’re going to say, say it, then tell them what you said. That may seem redundant but clarity and structure are very important in building a logical argument. Good content will be lost in a poorly structured essay.
8. For ease of marking, please hand in typed, double-spaced essays (graphs may be hand-drawn but captions should be neatly printed). Thank you!
9. Time-saving tip: once you identify a drug/brain region/behavioural task, abbreviate it and then use the abbreviation throughout the rest of your paper. This will save you time and an examiner will still know what you mean.
10. Use transition words at the beginnings of sentences to show how the information contained therein is related to a previous sentence, e.g. “Similarly, heroin self-administration…” or “In contrast, so-and-so found that…”
11. Paragraphing – clearly delineate new ideas and new lines of evidence in separate paragraphs. Make paragraphs small – otherwise you’ll lose your reader’s interest! Have a clear goal in mind for what each paragraph will demonstrate and how that will fit into the overall structure of the essay.
12. Be wary of using phrases like “this evidence leads to the conclusion” or “this evidence shows.” One (or even a few!) studies rarely prove something conclusively, and the only person with the point of view to interpret it as such is the author of the original paper. Use “this evidence suggests” or “strongly suggests” or “provides support for x theory” or “so and so demonstrated.” Also avoid the use of “points toward,” as it sounds awkward and can be stated more elegantly.

smurfy murphy harvard smurf