8. Getting it back

Here is a summary of things to keep in your mind about writing an essay. When I mark an essay, they are the things that I particularly look out for:
• Use of critics (ie don't slavishly agree with them)
• Range of reference to literary texts, including obscure ones
• Clear and perceptible structure
• Interesting ideas tied in to quotations
• The paragraph:
1. Length
2. Topic sentence
3. First sentence, last sentence
4. First paragraph (sets out themes)
• List of works consulted (properly styled)
• Quotations properly laid out, and references styled properly
• One side of the paper only
• Spelling and punctuation

9. Two how-to-do-it books
MLA Handbook for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations , (New York: MLA, 1977) Gen. Ref. Z 253.
This is the most useful text to buy. It has notes on everything you need, including how to do indented outlines. It's not as full or as easy to understand as the next title below, but it's all there.
Update (27/3/99): you don't have to buy it any more. It's here, in a really helpful frame format. This is wonderful. All students should use this site all the time.
Kane, Thomas S, The Oxford Guide to Writing , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
This book has it all: how to make an indented outline, how to spell, how to punctuate, how to write a paragraph, how to take notes, how to sharpen your pencil--everything. The bad news is that (a) it's rather American, and (b) it's out of print. Go and look at the short loan copy and photocopy anything you find useful. It's of particular use if you have any punctuation problems. 

10. Read a different poem every day.
Finally. One of the key attributes of success in an English course is knowledge of a wide variety of styles, periods, and topics in English Literature. Here is a painless way of learning this. Subscribe to this site and they will email you a different poem every day. Take time every day to read the poem, think about it, and post a short comment on their bulletin board. The site is frustrating and often bizarre, but the exercise is the most useful single thing I can think of at the moment for an English student to do.

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Style is not something I can prescribe in a set of notes like this. Write well: if you have any problems in this direction, it is for your tutor to tell you about them. But here are a few random points instead.
Register
This is what linguists call a style appropriate to the occasion. Be aware: a certain scholarly gravity is called for. Not too heavy so that it's uninteresting. But avoid colloquial abbreviations: should not, not shouldn't. Jokes are hazardous: if they don't [do not follow my practice as regards don't] work, they can cost you a lot. Avoid them, on the whole: or at least don't be jokey. Don't for goodness sake imitate the way I'm writing here, either the rather flippant colloquial style or the somewhat overbearing tone, or the numbered subheadings. This is an essay on how to write a literary essay, not a literary essay.

Quotations
Firstly, quote sufficiently but not too copiously. Not more than a third of a (handwritten) page at the very outside, and usually just a few lines at a time. It's your thought, not the quotation, that is the point. On the other hand, never forget that your ideas should be tied firmly into the text, and that you should demonstrate this by quotation. Secondly, always give page numbers for your quotations: you will need to know where to find them again.

Short paragraphs
No short paragraphs.

Length
A non-assessed essay should be about six sides of handwritten or four sides of typed A4 at least.

Copy it
Always make a photocopy of any essay you do before you hand it in. Academics are very unreliable, and not uncommonly lose essays.

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4. Reading, making notes, having ideas
When you have found the books and articles you are going to read, you will need to read them. Here are the golden rules:

•  Always carry a notebook

• Always read interactively

• File and rewrite the notes so you can find them again

• Make a bibliography

I will explain. The key is: you are in the business of making a collection of your ideas (do I have to say it again?) about literary texts. These can come to you at any time. If you don't write them down, you will probably forget them. If you do write them down, you will probably think of some more ideas while you are writing. Write them down too. It doesn't matter if they don't seem very good: just write them down. Carry one of those spiral-bound shorthand notebooks at all times, and, if an idea comes to you, however intimate or urgent the accompanying moment, write it down. No-one need ever see this notebook, so you need feel no self-consciousness about what you write in it. This is perhaps the most useful attribute of the shorthand notebook: it beats the censor. The censor is the cause of writer's block: the small voice inside your head that tells you that what you're writing is rubbish. In your notebook you can ignore that voice, and as a result you will accumulate ideas. Some will be good, some bad; when you re-read the notes you can sort out one from the other more rationally than while under the stress of creative writing. Thus the censor has been by-passed.

3. Collecting the material
The first task is to get the material together. The material comes in two kinds: primary and secondary sources. Primary sources in this case are literary texts: the actual material that you work on. Secondary sources are works of criticism. Here is your Second Important Message:
(ii) It is always better to read an original text and refer to it than to read and refer to a critic.
The more literary texts you read and can refer to the better. You can't possibly read too many. Remember, the key to your essay is the number and quality of your ideas about literary texts. If you casually refer, from at least an apparent position of familiarity, to some obscure literary text, you will win the admiration of your marker. If you refer to a critic, particularly an obscure one, the chances are his or her eye will glaze over. There are exceptions to this rule, which I will mention later, but the basic principle is extremely important: original texts are better than critics, and you can't know too many. Whereas it is possible to get a first class degree and never to have read any critics at all.

3.1 What are critics for?
The short answer: to be disagreed with. A longer answer: reading critics can give you an idea of what the state of critical opinion is about a literary text, to save you re-inventing the wheel and coming up with some brilliant original perception that William Empson thought of sixty years ago. Reading critics means that you can start at the coal face rather than have to dig your own mine. Secondly, they can stimulate your ideas. But the thing to remember is: only your ideas obtain merit. Therefore, never, ever, quote a critic just to agree with him or her. Always, under all circumstances, quote a critic in the following form: Leavis says x, but I disagree as follows. Or: Leavis says x, and this is very true, but I would develop his thought as follows. Never, NEVER: as Leavis says, followed by a quote, followed by nothing. This is very common in undergraduate essays, and it is simply a waste of space.

3.2 Books and articles
A secondary point about critics. They publish in two forms, books and articles. You should be familiar with the library electronic catalogue and the ways of searching it, in order to find books: it's not difficult, and if you don't know how to do it by now go immediately and find out. If you have a problem, ask a librarian, they'd be happy to help. Just spend half an hour simply playing with the library computer, finding out what it can do. But: books are not usually much use. They're usually out, as you will surely have discovered by now. And you gain no special merit points for having read them, because so has everyone else.

Articles are a different matter. Articles in academic journals are (a) not normally read by undergraduates, and therefore (b) normally on the shelves. They are more work to track down, but success will be rewarded by the admiration of your examiner, because undergraduates aren't expected to know about such things. And they are full of interesting, original, and up-to-date ideas about literary texts, that, maybe, your examiner won't even have heard of (but don't count on this: stealing ideas is heavily penalized). Also of dross and garbage, of course. But this is good too, because you'll have plenty to disagree with.

The way to get hold of articles is to go to the library and play with the CD ROM workstation. There's one on every main floor. I can't tell you here how to work it: find out, it's not difficult, and, as before, a librarian will be glad to help you; also there are copious instructions. Spend some time playing with it: the database you want is called the MLA Index. You will come up with a lot of titles that aren't in the library, which is very frustrating, but from every search you will find at least a few relevant articles, and some of these will be valuable. This is almost guaranteed.
Note: this information is now out of date. There is a wonderful database called BIDS that lists articles published since 1981. It's on the Web; it's easy to search, very user-friendly, and it emails you the list of articles you are interested in. Remarkable. You need to go to the equally friendly Information Desk in the Main Library to get a login and password first.

3.3 Using the World Wide Web
The Web is rapidly becoming a fantastic resource: easily available, full of material, and with an an answer to every question. However, there are problems, and you should use the Web carefully.

In other words, the essay must be well structured (i.e. organized) and presented in a way that the reader finds easy to follow and clear: it must look tidy and not present any obstacles to the reader. It must have a clear readable interesting style. But, above all, it must consist of your ideas about literary texts. This is the centre of it: this, and this only, gets the marks. Not quotes from critics, not generalisations at second hand about literary history, not filling and padding; your thoughts, that you have had while in the act of reading specific bits of literary texts, which can be adduced in the form of quotations to back up your arguments.

2. Why write in this way?
2.1 Learning how to write professionally
In the English Department you learn how to respond to literary texts. This is an interesting and worthwhile thing to do, but unless you become a teacher of English remarkably few people in later life will be interested in your thoughts about Jane Austen. What they will be interested in (I'm talking about potential employers now, but not only them) is your ability to talk, to think, and to write. This part of the course is where you learn to write: professionally. The guidelines that follow tell you how to do it, or rather how to learn to do it.

They set a higher standard than is usually asked of a first year undergraduate essay in this Department. This is for the following reasons. (1) I think it's my job to offer you the best advice I can, not to tell you how to get by. (2) If you learn what these guidelines teach, you will get better marks in all the essays you do from now on until finals. You will surprise the markers with the quality of your presentations, by producing a better quality than they expect. (3) You will learn a skill, a not-very-hard-to-learn skill, that will last you for the rest of your life.