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, 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!

General Writing Advice

  • Have a clear idea of where the reader will be in terms of understanding your topic, and decide what will be useful for them (and what you’re capable of doing), and plot the steps along the way. This helps with general essay structure.
  • Give specific examples to illustrate your broader claims.
  • Weed out the fluff! Target very broad claims that don’t say anything interesting and specific detail that doesn’t serve a direct purpose.
  • Bring in other course topics! USE THE REPOSITORY!!
  • Highlight continuities and discontinuities within historiography. Go beyond noting they exist, but give a sense of their impact.

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, make sure paragraphs have 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

Do not mention people who do not figure prominently in your essay (unless just mentioning them parenthetically as examples). Ideally all people and their key work (usually there is just one under discussion) will be linked to more extensive biographies like Wikipedia pages AND have a short introductory blurb in the text.

Be explicit

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 at least 3-5 images per essay. More is fine if they aren’t getting in the way of the text.
  • Images should be related to nearby text. Don’t spend time on precise alignment, since web layouts are screen specific.
  • Images should be 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

Bibliographies

To establish trustworthiness, you need to demonstrate the breadth of your research, which is why a significant bibliography is required. To generate this, you can right-click on your Zotero collection where you’ve been collecting sources and select Generate Bibliography from Collection. Select Chicago Full Note Bibliography

SUMMARY: 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. And hopefully will be inspired to read more carefully.

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

  • Clear narrative thread
  • Meaningful headings that help guide the reader
  • Paragraph first sentences that clearly indicate paragraph topic; new ideas should get new paragraphs
  • Smooth transitions between paragraphs and between sections
  • Clear and readable text that’s free of typos, sentence fragments, and simple sentences
  • Captions that make useful points about your topic (not just the image), even if just skimming through them.
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