Making History

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Writing Guide

So What?

Make sure the essay very near both the beginning and the end makes it very clear what the reader is to take away as the main points. In other words, the essay needs to very obviously answer the SO WHAT question.

History

  • Historical summary or historiographical claims must include parenthetical citations to reputable sources with precise and unambiguous citations (author, date, and page)
  • Statements that are not common knowledge must have citations; you can can provide a single citation for a paragraph if you are paraphrasing 1 or 2 sources
  • Do not lose the thread of HISTORIOGRAPHICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Paragraphs

First sentences

Informative first sentences have a clear progression through the essay.

Paragraph lengths

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with long paragraphs, but long paragraphs are quite difficult to read on a screen, and are also rather off-putting to new readers confronted with a wall of text.

Focused paragraphs

Especially since you’ll be paying attention to paragraph lengths, try to identify whether paragraph has an obvious point. Paragraphs are visual representations of ideas, so each paragraph should have one main idea connected to what comes before and after it.

Just say no to strangers

People or events who are not adequately introduced should be either linked to Wikipedia pages (or even better digital sources). Ideally all people and their key work (usually there is just one under discussion) will be linked to more extensive biographies and have a short introductory blurb in the text itself.

Here’s an example of expanding an important point that is way too compressed into something longer but much clearer. Obviously you’re not going to do this sort of thing for every sentence, but if you can do it for the most important points, future readers will get a lot more out of these guides—and come away with a very different perspective and appreciation of history!

Before

Augustine’s City of God made history of human affairs seem less relevant because we are all simply living out God’s preordained plan.

After

St. Augustine (354–430), regarded as one of the most important Church fathers and early Christian theologians, suggested that the history of human affairs was less relevant than Biblical history because humans are simply living out God’s preordained plan. This view emerges in part from his classic work City of God, written to show that Christianity was not responsible for the fall of Rome, and which emphasizes how we are merely passing through the temporal and corrupt Earthly City on our way (with proper behavior) to the eternal and perfect City of God. —

Images and Captions

  • We all agreed that images make the essays WAY more interesting. Let’s aim for 3-5 images per essay.
  • Images are related to nearby text
  • Images are provocative and engage the reader
  • Captions should be more than a simple label of what the image is, but how what the image is or what it represents is significant to historiography
  • Appropriate formatting for section headings
  • No overuse of bold or italics
  • Effective use of hyperlinks to related pages, including the linked text and external site

General Readability

Our essays need to be skimmable. That is, if someone is quickly scrolling through the page and glancing at headings, a sentence here and there, and images/captions, they should still learn something.

If you’ve followed the guide, this should already be in place, but make sure your essay has:

  • Clear narrative thread
  • Meaningful headings that help guide the reader
  • Paragraph first sentences indicate paragraph topic; new ideas should get new paragraphs
  • Paragraphs and sections smoothly transition from one to another
  • Text should be free of typos, sentence fragments, and simple sentences
  • Scanning through only images and captions makes a useful point
650 words.