Essay Writing Notes

7 April 2004

________________
F. J. Looft
WPI ECE Department
ECE box # - 007

fjlooft@ece.wpi.edu

ECE 1111 - Intro. to Essay Writing

Prof. S. L. Cake

The opinions and suggestions in this document are those of the author. However,
since the author is probably the one who is grading your essay, it is
probably a good idea to pay close attention to those opinions.

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I. INTRODUCTION
This document is a collection of suggestions and recommendations to help you create a well written
essay. What it is not is a magic formula. If you follow the recommendations and suggestions below,
your essay will almost certainly be better organized, but your essay may not read any better. Why?
Because in the end it takes effort to write anything, and more effort to write anything well. The better
something reads, the more work that went into it.
After the mechanics of a writing style have been addressed, perhaps the most important aspect of creating
a well written document is learning how to edit. Make no mistake about it, editing is hard work. It
requires that you put yourself in the role of an educated, but probably naïve reader who is reading your
document for the first time. This means that the reader does not have the advantage of your previous
knowledge, does not know what is being presented next in your essay, and most certainly does not
understand all the background material you worked very hard to learn.
Does this mean that you need to write your essay for “everyman”? Absolutely not! What you do want to
do is pick your audience. A technical document written for a general audience will be very different than
the same document written for an audience of peers in your technical area.
Without trying to create a complete style or exposition guide, I have tried to compile in this document
some of the more obvious problems that students encounter when writing an essay. Regardless, in the
end I am sure that there will be topics that you believe were left out and topics you wish I had addressed 1 .
As you read this document, it is important to remember that the vast majority of the material presented
below is based on common student mistakes. Consequently, consider the material presented below as
corrective material. This means that if you are reading this document as a result of working on an essay I
assigned, then the “suggestions” and “recommendations” are in reality “requirements”. Read them
carefully!

A Word about Academic Honesty and Plagiarism

Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Here are two examples, both of which stretch the point but give a sense
of what is, and what is not plagiarism.

Example 1
You write a lengthy essay. In fact, your essay is 10 pages long and your teacher finds that that you
copied, without citing the source, exactly one-paragraph in the essay. This is plagiarism and could earn
you at the very least, the suspicions of your teacher who now does not trust your writing, and at the worse
could result in you failing the assignment or course.

Example 2
You write a lengthy essay which starts out as follows…. “The material presented below is excerpted
verbatim from [cited reference]”. The essay goes on for 10 pages with the material exactly copied from
the cited source. This is not plagiarism. Your approach to writing this document will not earn you any
points with your teacher, but it is not plagiarism.

Citing Sources
If in doubt cite the source of the material you are using. Even if you paraphrase material in your own
words, cite the source. When in doubt, talk to your professor. Using figures from outside sources

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If you have suggestions, send them to me at: fjlooft@wpi.edu

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without proper credit is, perhaps, one of the most obvious and overlooked forms of plagiarism that I find
when reading project essays. The bottom line is,

• if you borrow or copy text, a figure or a table make absolutely sure you cite the source. If you
do not cite the source of the text, a figure or table, that is plagiarism.

Citations contained in your essay should have the citation as part of a sentence - the period for the
reference should be after the reference (Looft, 1841).Ósuch as shown here!

Finally, make sure you read the WPI academic honesty code. This code and the judicial actions that work
with the code can be found at the following web location.

http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/Policies/Judicial/

II. THE MECHANICS OF AN ESSAY

This section is focused on the mechanical details of an essay, not grammar, style or other related aspects
of writing. A poorly presented essay can cause a reader to disregard even a well written essay.

The Cover Page

An acceptable cover sheet is on the first page of this document. Note that this cover sheet has the
following attributes.
• easily identifiable title
• date
• Author name, box number, email and space for the author to sign
• Course number and title
• instructor’s name

Organization
The first thing you should do is ask the course instructor what his/her preferences are. Once you have
fully understood what your instructor wants, then you will be able to create a essay that is appropriate to
your situation.

Mechanics
Below are a list of issues that make the difference between a essay that is well organized, and one that is
not.
1. Headings - Use them! For a short essay, you really don’t need to number more than one major
section deep (1. Introduction, 2. Background, 3. Methods, and so forth). For long essays or project
reports, a few sections deep (outline style) is nice, but don’t get carried away.
• Left Justify all headings
• Use reasonable fonts. Double underlined, dark, italics, 24 point is overkill.
• Headings can be used to effectively transition between topics and organize your report.
• Major sections should probably start on a new page.

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2. Figures and Tables should never be split across a page. If a table or figure is too big for a single
page, reformat the figure or table into two or more figures or tables and then split it across multiple
pages.
• Make absolutely sure you leave at least one-inch margins around all edges of any large figure.
• Every figure needs a caption and a figure number, and needs to be referenced by that figure
number in the text prior to the figure being presented in the essay.
3. Consider using bullets or a list for itemizing facts, requirements, goals and other items. The
following example illustrates how easily bullets can be used to item information and, from the
reader’s perspective, how much easier it is to understand and visually remember the same material.

[old] The overall goal of this project was …., To accomplish this, we needed to implement attitude sensing
and determination in order to get an understanding of the type of movement the payload experiences during
its flight. We also needed to gather GPS information for tracking and positioning as well as temperature
information. All …. [and so on]

[new] The overall goal of this project was …., To accomplish this goal, we needed to design a system that
could be used to measure, process, store and transmit the following data.
a. satellite attitude in three dimensions
b. satellite dynamic movement (rotational, swinging, perhaps extracted from attitude data)
c. satellite geolocation
d. temperature at multiple points internal to the satellite

4. With respect to the format of the essay;

• I prefer 0.8” top and bottom margins, and 1” left and right margins. The left margin is
particularly critical since that is where the essay binding is located. Figures, text, tables and
other material that encroaches into this area is often masked by the binding.
• Using 1.5 line spacing is ok, but a bit wasteful. A 1.2 - 1.3 line spacing is just about right (e.g.
this document's spacing)
• Figures that are printed in landscape should have the binding edge at the top of the figure, not the
bottom which seems to be what most students use.
• Similarly, every single figure or table should be fully self contained and have a figure caption
that explains what the figure is about.
• I like 11 point type. Twelve point type is a bit “big” in my opinion. Ten point type is a bit
small. I also prefer Times New Roman, not Arial except for special notes, figure captions or
other special application. For comparison, the primary text in this document is in 11 point,
Times New Roman.
• Page numbers - a critical error often encountered, don't forget them!
• Left and Right justification is preferred.

III. WRITING STYLES AND GRIEVOUS ERRORS

The material presented below is not organized by any particular importance.
1. Superlatives are often not appropriate when describing a technical project, particularly if you are
describing objectives or goals. Examples from various essays include the following.
• “the next big development” (big? relative to what? words like significant or noteworthy are
more appropriate)

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 • “the system runs faster” (faster than what, a cat? a snail? use quantitative measures such as “20%
faster” so that you can be judged on your accomplishments and whether you met the goal)
• “a nicer design” (does it dress well?)
• “an easier design” (did someone else design it .... but it is really more complex?)

2. Assigning action to an object that does not warrant action is not appropriate.
• “the IC determines” (it would be better to say “the IC is used to determine” or “the IC was
configured to determine” - ICs by themselves are dumb and don’t know anything!)
• “the encoder is aware” (aware? how about “the encoder is used to determine” )
• “the nature of the sensor” (a good natured sensor? Never ran into one on the street. How about
“the performance characteristics of sensor”)
• “the chip analyzes” (only if it is alive, but the chip could be used to analyze or the chip is
programmed to analyze or….)

3. Do you know the different between can and may? The former is “ability” while the latter is
“permission”.
• “It was important to decide if the circuit may work in our situation.” Does the circuit need
permission to work?

4. Avoid truly meaningless words and phrases.

• “downside of the approach” - of what? How about “the problem with this approach”
• “negative impact” - imprecise meaning and used too often, would you say “positive impact”?
hmmmm, you probably would. How about “would result in a unit that weighed more” or some
other comment that correctly conveys the thought you are tying to express
• “main area” - the word main implies an order or ranking so use words such as “primary”, “most
important”, “most crucial to correct system operation” and so forth
• “large component of the design” - large? bigger than a bread box? smaller than an ant? how
about words like “important”, “critical”, “difficult” and so forth to describe the component?
• “like” - don’t use this word in your spoken language either!, ever!
• “it” “they” - delete them from your vocabulary! “it worked well” is meaningless, especially if
you have talked about multiple topics the reader will not be able to figure out what “it” actually is
- so say what “it” is - “the new circuit design” for example
• “we needed to gather GPS information” - sounds like the students on this team are hunter-
gatherers, it would be better if they needed to identify “pertinent technical specifications”,
“procure specifications for” or something similar
• "a circuit needed to be designed" or "data needed to be collected" - guess what, circuits and
data are not alive, and as a result don't "need" anything, try saying something like this "we
designed" or "in order to meet the specifications, we decided that we needed to redesign.."

Of course, there are billions of other words that you need to use or not use as appropriate. Careful editing
will help you identify the words you want to change because their meaning is inappropriate or vague.

5. Don’t forgot that every essay must have an introduction and summary.

6. Paragraphs should address only a single subject. This is one of the most common mistakes students
make when writing a essay. If every single sentence in a paragraph does not relate directly to the

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 subject of the first sentence, then it is highly likely that the sentence in question contains a new
subject, or an inappropriate digression on the subject, and should be moved to a new paragraph.

7. Complete the thought. This can be subtle or obvious but is often a problem when writing about a
topic you are intimately familiar with. Consider the following examples and the missing text [in
brackets].

NASA uses the ACCA algorithm to [identify and] determine the ratio of cloud cover to non-cloud cover
[pixels] in an image …

RCC technology does not have the ability to support … because of the current [internal routing and memory]
capacity [limitations] of FPGAs.

Figures and Diagrams

1. Block diagrams are very useful when explaining designs. Of course, the diagrams are only useful if
you reference them prior to your description, not at the end of a description!

2. Figures needed to be actively referenced in the text and prior to describing them.

[Bad Example] The circuit for the system uses a clock edge in conjunction with the data availability
signal to strobe the data into the latches. Once the data is strobed in, the clock is de-asserted and the
data can be removed (Figure 3.2). (the reader has to go back and re-read the description because you
pointed out the figure after the description)

[Good Example] As shown in Figure 3.2, the circuit for the system uses a clock edge in conjunction
with the data availability signal to strobe the data into the latches. Once the data is strobed in, the clock
is de-asserted and the data can be removed. (the reader can now follow along as you describe the
figure and only has to read the description once)

Editing Abbreviations - when you get your essay back with marks on it!
¶ or P new paragraph needed, or change of paragraph topic
§ new section needed or major change of topic that would benefit from a new section
ww wrong word
slang meaning either slang, or poor phrase choice
aarrgh I think you can figure this out!
? I usually just put in a question mark when I don’t understand the subject (for example,
you used a word such as “the” or “it” and the subject is not obvious.
eh? Used for a variety of reasons including i) text doesn’t make sense, ii) you may have cut
and pasted something that doesn’t fit or seems incorrect, or even iii) it is late at night, I’m
tired of reading and editing, and my threshold for trying to understand what you wrote
just bottomed out.
tense Usually because you are using present tense and I believe you should have used past
tense.
ς or ζ delete this word or delete this space
rj, lj right (left) justify (generally, I like double justification, looks more professional to me)
Δ more space

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IV. SUMMARY
Ask for help if you need it. The WPI Writing Resources Center on the second floor of the Project Center
is a wonderful resource for those that have difficulty with writing.

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