We have compiled this guide to essay writing skills, including structuring essays, reports and dissertations, to help you in planning and producing your essay. We hope that you find it helpful - please let us have any comments and suggestions you may have for improving this free study area. If you would like to print out this free essay writing guide, click here (opens in a new window).

On this page:
Evaluating the Question
Sourcing and collecting material
Reading, making notes and generating ideas
Referencing and bibliography
Spelling and punctuation
Other essay writing resources

Evaluating the question
It is important to assess, before anything else, what it is you are being asked to do. The directives in essay questions are often very specific and require that you deal with the question in a particular way. For example, if you are asked to 'analyse' something, you should approach the question by breaking the issue into components parts, examining each critically and critically and minutely. If however you are asked to 'compare' a number of things, you will be expected to identify clearsimilarities and differences between each, and perhaps to reach conclusions about which is preferable.

A very good guide to these directives can be found in the Law Essays UK Study Area: Interpreting Essay Questions.

Sourcing and collecting material
Most universities will give you library access, which means you have a wealth of material available to you - your search should not be limited to books, but also may include journals/periodical collections, theses, videos, DVDs, e-books, e-journals, access to electronic resources and databases.

With so much material available to you, translating your essay question into a search strategy or statement is an important first step in tracking down the information you need. Your development of a search strategy must start with thinking about the kinds of words related to your topic that you might expect to find in books or in newspaper articles. A good search statement can be applied to whichever sources you might decide to use, such as specific computer databases or library catalogues.

The next step will be to decide, based on your formulated search statement, which will be the most relevant, appropriate resources in your subject area. For example, if your search statement was:

I want to find out about the consequences, harm, risk or side effects - of giving or denying the MMR vaccination, either as a triple vaccine or as three single injections, to children

You might be looking for:

Once you have a clear idea of what you need to know about your topic to deal with the assignment posed, you will be able to look more closely at the individual resources available to you, such as database, to see what information they contain. You will need to weigh up the relevance of the information you find, and develop a critical awareness of the positions represented in what you read - in some cases, authors may be explicitly expressing a particular viewpoint but in others there may be hidden bias, which can be misleading.

Don't forget that one of the best ways to source relevant material for your essay is to ‘snowball’ your reading: i.e. to use the footnotes and bibliographies of the books you already have to extend your reading list on a subject. Your reading lists will already include many of the most important writers; by checking their bibliographies and works cited in those articles, you will have access to the most up-to-date writing on the topic.

Reading, making notes and generating ideas
Your search for relevant information for your essay will undoubtedly generate a mass of material and so it is essential that you develop concise note taking skills. A good place to start is to make a document on your computer just for source material, but divide it into the parts of your essay (for example, if you are writing a dissertation, you may wish to include sections such as introduction, background, methodology, literature review, evidence, conclusion and recommendations). Into this, copy all good sections, quotes, statistics and other useful source material that you find, making sure that you note where you found each piece of information. Each source can be placed into the section (introduction, conclusion etc) where you are most likely to use it. This will give you a rough framework for when you begin writing and will help you form a direction of where your essay is likely to go, based on your findings.

Some key points to bear in mind when taking notes for your essay are as follows:

As you read and note sources, you may find that ideas and questions come to you which you may want to address later. Add a box to your source document for these so you can clearly distinguish them from other people's material.

Referencing and Bibliography
There are two main methods of referencing articles in published journal and book publications. These are known as the Harvard (author-date) and Vancouver (author-number) reference systems. Many universities have specific variations within these general conventions and you should check with your university whether a specific referencing style is required.

There are two British Standards that outline referencing styles. They use an author-date format:

Other Useful Essay Writing Resources: