Guidelines for Essaywriting

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As a student, you get to write many things: essays, papers, research proposals, application letters, and so on and so forth. Each of these products requires a different approach, and even two essays may show a widely varying approach. There are many handbooks that help improve students' writing and I am not attempting here to replace any of them, nor am I suggesting in any way that my advice is to be preferred over that given in aforementioned handbooks. What I attempt here, is to provide anybody, but students in particular, with some short guidelines to help them with writing any piece of text. These guidelines are purposefully short and by no means comprehensive, in order to make them easy to browse through, either before or during the writing and editing process.

The Essays part of this site contains most of the essays that I have written over the past three years. They are mostly on literature, but some of them deal with subjects ranging from the death penalty to what tacking about on a three-masted schooner actually is all about. They are mostly on this site to be used as pieces of text that can be critically examined, since there are plenty of mistakes in them just waiting to be discovered. All these essays are complete and exactly the way they were when I handed them in. Where possible, I have put up a link to the poem, short story, etc., that an essay deals with, at the bottom of that page.

The contents of the Guidelines revolve around two main themes, being clarity and credibility. My main source of information for writing these guidelines has been the course Academic Writing, which I followed at the English Department of the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. My tutor, Dr. R. E. Lankamp, has provided me with much advice, furthermore he has been so kind as to read through the advice given in the guidelines, in order to check it for fallacies, for this I am very grateful. The book used in the Academic Writing course, which has greatly helped me organize my ideas, is the 8^th edition of The practical Guide to Writing: with Readings and Handbook by Sylvan Barnet, Marcia Stubbs, and Pat Bellanca, available through Longman. It gives detailed and readable information and provides many assignments aimed at improving writing skills, getting used to editing your own work, avoiding fallacies in your writing, etc.

The Links part of this site repeats all links that appear throughout the site, furthermore, I have put up some links to other sites that offer tips for writing.

Perhaps a bit of information about myself is in place here as well. My name is Maarten de Bruin, I'm 23 years old, and a third-year student of English at the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. Leiden is also the place where I currently live.



	Guidelines for Essaywriting Home As a student, you get to write many things: essays, papers, research proposals, application letters, and so on and so forth. Each of these products requires a different approach, and even two essays may show a widely varying approach. There are many handbooks that help improve students' writing and I am not attempting here to replace any of them, nor am I suggesting in any way that my advice is to be preferred over that given in aforementioned handbooks. What I attempt here, is to provide anybody, but students in particular, with some short guidelines to help them with writing any piece of text. These guidelines are purposefully short and by no means comprehensive, in order to make them easy to browse through, either before or during the writing and editing process. The Essays part of this site contains most of the essays that I have written over the past three years. They are mostly on literature, but some of them deal with subjects ranging from the death penalty to what tacking about on a three-masted schooner actually is all about. They are mostly on this site to be used as pieces of text that can be critically examined, since there are plenty of mistakes in them just waiting to be discovered. All these essays are complete and exactly the way they were when I handed them in. Where possible, I have put up a link to the poem, short story, etc., that an essay deals with, at the bottom of that page. The contents of the Guidelines revolve around two main themes, being clarity and credibility. My main source of information for writing these guidelines has been the course Academic Writing, which I followed at the English Department of the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. My tutor, Dr. R. E. Lankamp, has provided me with much advice, furthermore he has been so kind as to read through the advice given in the guidelines, in order to check it for fallacies, for this I am very grateful. The book used in the Academic Writing course, which has greatly helped me organize my ideas, is the 8^th edition of The practical Guide to Writing: with Readings and Handbook by Sylvan Barnet, Marcia Stubbs, and Pat Bellanca, available through Longman. It gives detailed and readable information and provides many assignments aimed at improving writing skills, getting used to editing your own work, avoiding fallacies in your writing, etc. The Links part of this site repeats all links that appear throughout the site, furthermore, I have put up some links to other sites that offer tips for writing. Perhaps a bit of information about myself is in place here as well. My name is Maarten de Bruin, I'm 23 years old, and a third-year student of English at the University of Leiden, in The Netherlands. Leiden is also the place where I currently live.