drafting the essay

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8.3 Drafting

Learning objectives.

• Identify drafting strategies that improve writing.
• Use drafting strategies to prepare the first draft of an essay.

Drafting is the stage of the writing process in which you develop a complete first version of a piece of writing.

Even professional writers admit that an empty page scares them because they feel they need to come up with something fresh and original every time they open a blank document on their computers. Because you have completed the first two steps in the writing process, you have already recovered from empty page syndrome. You have hours of prewriting and planning already done. You know what will go on that blank page: what you wrote in your outline.

Getting Started: Strategies For Drafting

Your objective for this portion of Chapter 8 “The Writing Process: How Do I Begin?” is to draft the body paragraphs of a standard five-paragraph essay. A five-paragraph essay contains an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. If you are more comfortable starting on paper than on the computer, you can start on paper and then type it before you revise. You can also use a voice recorder to get yourself started, dictating a paragraph or two to get you thinking. In this lesson, Mariah does all her work on the computer, but you may use pen and paper or the computer to write a rough draft.

Making the Writing Process Work for You

What makes the writing process so beneficial to writers is that it encourages alternatives to standard practices while motivating you to develop your best ideas. For instance, the following approaches, done alone or in combination with others, may improve your writing and help you move forward in the writing process:

• Begin writing with the part you know the most about. You can start with the third paragraph in your outline if ideas come easily to mind. You can start with the second paragraph or the first paragraph, too. Although paragraphs may vary in length, keep in mind that short paragraphs may contain insufficient support. Readers may also think the writing is abrupt. Long paragraphs may be wordy and may lose your reader’s interest. As a guideline, try to write paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than the length of an entire double-spaced page.
• Write one paragraph at a time and then stop. As long as you complete the assignment on time, you may choose how many paragraphs you complete in one sitting. Pace yourself. On the other hand, try not to procrastinate. Writers should always meet their deadlines.
• Take short breaks to refresh your mind. This tip might be most useful if you are writing a multipage report or essay. Still, if you are antsy or cannot concentrate, take a break to let your mind rest. But do not let breaks extend too long. If you spend too much time away from your essay, you may have trouble starting again. You may forget key points or lose momentum. Try setting an alarm to limit your break, and when the time is up, return to your desk to write.
• Be reasonable with your goals. If you decide to take ten-minute breaks, try to stick to that goal. If you told yourself that you need more facts, then commit to finding them. Holding yourself to your own goals will create successful writing assignments.
• Keep your audience and purpose in mind as you write. These aspects of writing are just as important when you are writing a single paragraph for your essay as when you are considering the direction of the entire essay.

Of all of these considerations, keeping your purpose and your audience at the front of your mind is the most important key to writing success. If your purpose is to persuade, for example, you will present your facts and details in the most logical and convincing way you can.

Your purpose will guide your mind as you compose your sentences. Your audience will guide word choice. Are you writing for experts, for a general audience, for other college students, or for people who know very little about your topic? Keep asking yourself what your readers, with their background and experience, need to be told in order to understand your ideas. How can you best express your ideas so they are totally clear and your communication is effective?

You may want to identify your purpose and audience on an index card that you clip to your paper (or keep next to your computer). On that card, you may want to write notes to yourself—perhaps about what that audience might not know or what it needs to know—so that you will be sure to address those issues when you write. It may be a good idea to also state exactly what you want to explain to that audience, or to inform them of, or to persuade them about.

Writing at Work

Many of the documents you produce at work target a particular audience for a particular purpose. You may find that it is highly advantageous to know as much as you can about your target audience and to prepare your message to reach that audience, even if the audience is a coworker or your boss. Menu language is a common example. Descriptions like “organic romaine” and “free-range chicken” are intended to appeal to a certain type of customer though perhaps not to the same customer who craves a thick steak. Similarly, mail-order companies research the demographics of the people who buy their merchandise. Successful vendors customize product descriptions in catalogs to appeal to their buyers’ tastes. For example, the product descriptions in a skateboarder catalog will differ from the descriptions in a clothing catalog for mature adults.

Using the topic for the essay that you outlined in Section 8.2 “Outlining” , describe your purpose and your audience as specifically as you can. Use your own sheet of paper to record your responses. Then keep these responses near you during future stages of the writing process.

My purpose: ____________________________________________

____________________________________________

My audience: ____________________________________________

Setting Goals for Your First Draft

A draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is not the final version. The step in the writing process after drafting, as you may remember, is revising. During revising, you will have the opportunity to make changes to your first draft before you put the finishing touches on it during the editing and proofreading stage. A first draft gives you a working version that you can later improve.

Workplace writing in certain environments is done by teams of writers who collaborate on the planning, writing, and revising of documents, such as long reports, technical manuals, and the results of scientific research. Collaborators do not need to be in the same room, the same building, or even the same city. Many collaborations are conducted over the Internet.

In a perfect collaboration, each contributor has the right to add, edit, and delete text. Strong communication skills, in addition to strong writing skills, are important in this kind of writing situation because disagreements over style, content, process, emphasis, and other issues may arise.

The collaborative software, or document management systems, that groups use to work on common projects is sometimes called groupware or workgroup support systems.

The reviewing tool on some word-processing programs also gives you access to a collaborative tool that many smaller workgroups use when they exchange documents. You can also use it to leave comments to yourself.

If you invest some time now to investigate how the reviewing tool in your word processor works, you will be able to use it with confidence during the revision stage of the writing process. Then, when you start to revise, set your reviewing tool to track any changes you make, so you will be able to tinker with text and commit only those final changes you want to keep.

Discovering the Basic Elements of a First Draft

If you have been using the information in this chapter step by step to help you develop an assignment, you already have both a formal topic outline and a formal sentence outline to direct your writing. Knowing what a first draft looks like will help you make the creative leap from the outline to the first draft. A first draft should include the following elements:

• An introduction that piques the audience’s interest, tells what the essay is about, and motivates readers to keep reading.
• A thesis statement that presents the main point, or controlling idea, of the entire piece of writing.
• A topic sentence in each paragraph that states the main idea of the paragraph and implies how that main idea connects to the thesis statement.
• Supporting sentences in each paragraph that develop or explain the topic sentence. These can be specific facts, examples, anecdotes, or other details that elaborate on the topic sentence.
• A conclusion that reinforces the thesis statement and leaves the audience with a feeling of completion.

These elements follow the standard five-paragraph essay format, which you probably first encountered in high school. This basic format is valid for most essays you will write in college, even much longer ones. For now, however, Mariah focuses on writing the three body paragraphs from her outline. Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” covers writing introductions and conclusions, and you will read Mariah’s introduction and conclusion in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” .

The Role of Topic Sentences

Topic sentences make the structure of a text and the writer’s basic arguments easy to locate and comprehend. In college writing, using a topic sentence in each paragraph of the essay is the standard rule. However, the topic sentence does not always have to be the first sentence in your paragraph even if it the first item in your formal outline.

When you begin to draft your paragraphs, you should follow your outline fairly closely. After all, you spent valuable time developing those ideas. However, as you begin to express your ideas in complete sentences, it might strike you that the topic sentence might work better at the end of the paragraph or in the middle. Try it. Writing a draft, by its nature, is a good time for experimentation.

The topic sentence can be the first, middle, or final sentence in a paragraph. The assignment’s audience and purpose will often determine where a topic sentence belongs. When the purpose of the assignment is to persuade, for example, the topic sentence should be the first sentence in a paragraph. In a persuasive essay, the writer’s point of view should be clearly expressed at the beginning of each paragraph.

Choosing where to position the topic sentence depends not only on your audience and purpose but also on the essay’s arrangement, or order. When you organize information according to order of importance, the topic sentence may be the final sentence in a paragraph. All the supporting sentences build up to the topic sentence. Chronological order may also position the topic sentence as the final sentence because the controlling idea of the paragraph may make the most sense at the end of a sequence.

When you organize information according to spatial order, a topic sentence may appear as the middle sentence in a paragraph. An essay arranged by spatial order often contains paragraphs that begin with descriptions. A reader may first need a visual in his or her mind before understanding the development of the paragraph. When the topic sentence is in the middle, it unites the details that come before it with the ones that come after it.

As you read critically throughout the writing process, keep topic sentences in mind. You may discover topic sentences that are not always located at the beginning of a paragraph. For example, fiction writers customarily use topic ideas, either expressed or implied, to move readers through their texts. In nonfiction writing, such as popular magazines, topic sentences are often used when the author thinks it is appropriate (based on the audience and the purpose, of course). A single topic sentence might even control the development of a number of paragraphs. For more information on topic sentences, please see Chapter 6 “Writing Paragraphs: Separating Ideas and Shaping Content” .

Developing topic sentences and thinking about their placement in a paragraph will prepare you to write the rest of the paragraph.

The paragraph is the main structural component of an essay as well as other forms of writing. Each paragraph of an essay adds another related main idea to support the writer’s thesis, or controlling idea. Each related main idea is supported and developed with facts, examples, and other details that explain it. By exploring and refining one main idea at a time, writers build a strong case for their thesis.

Paragraph Length

How long should a paragraph be?

One answer to this important question may be “long enough”—long enough for you to address your points and explain your main idea. To grab attention or to present succinct supporting ideas, a paragraph can be fairly short and consist of two to three sentences. A paragraph in a complex essay about some abstract point in philosophy or archaeology can be three-quarters of a page or more in length. As long as the writer maintains close focus on the topic and does not ramble, a long paragraph is acceptable in college-level writing. In general, try to keep the paragraphs longer than one sentence but shorter than one full page of double-spaced text.

Journalistic style often calls for brief two- or three-sentence paragraphs because of how people read the news, both online and in print. Blogs and other online information sources often adopt this paragraphing style, too. Readers often skim the first paragraphs of a great many articles before settling on the handful of stories they want to read in detail.

You may find that a particular paragraph you write may be longer than one that will hold your audience’s interest. In such cases, you should divide the paragraph into two or more shorter paragraphs, adding a topic statement or some kind of transitional word or phrase at the start of the new paragraph. Transition words or phrases show the connection between the two ideas.

In all cases, however, be guided by what you instructor wants and expects to find in your draft. Many instructors will expect you to develop a mature college-level style as you progress through the semester’s assignments.

To build your sense of appropriate paragraph length, use the Internet to find examples of the following items. Copy them into a file, identify your sources, and present them to your instructor with your annotations, or notes.

• A news article written in short paragraphs. Take notes on, or annotate, your selection with your observations about the effect of combining paragraphs that develop the same topic idea. Explain how effective those paragraphs would be.
• A long paragraph from a scholarly work that you identify through an academic search engine. Annotate it with your observations about the author’s paragraphing style.

Starting Your First Draft

Now we are finally ready to look over Mariah’s shoulder as she begins to write her essay about digital technology and the confusing choices that consumers face. As she does, you should have in front of you your outline, with its thesis statement and topic sentences, and the notes you wrote earlier in this lesson on your purpose and audience. Reviewing these will put both you and Mariah in the proper mind-set to start.

The following is Mariah’s thesis statement.

Here are the notes that Mariah wrote to herself to characterize her purpose and audience.

Mariah chose to begin by writing a quick introduction based on her thesis statement. She knew that she would want to improve her introduction significantly when she revised. Right now, she just wanted to give herself a starting point. You will read her introduction again in Section 8.4 “Revising and Editing” when she revises it.

Remember Mariah’s other options. She could have started directly with any of the body paragraphs.

You will learn more about writing attention-getting introductions and effective conclusions in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” .

With her thesis statement and her purpose and audience notes in front of her, Mariah then looked at her sentence outline. She chose to use that outline because it includes the topic sentences. The following is the portion of her outline for the first body paragraph. The roman numeral II identifies the topic sentence for the paragraph, capital letters indicate supporting details, and arabic numerals label subpoints.

Mariah then began to expand the ideas in her outline into a paragraph. Notice how the outline helped her guarantee that all her sentences in the body of the paragraph develop the topic sentence.

If you write your first draft on the computer, consider creating a new file folder for each course with a set of subfolders inside the course folders for each assignment you are given. Label the folders clearly with the course names, and label each assignment folder and word processing document with a title that you will easily recognize. The assignment name is a good choice for the document. Then use that subfolder to store all the drafts you create. When you start each new draft, do not just write over the last one. Instead, save the draft with a new tag after the title—draft 1, draft 2, and so on—so that you will have a complete history of drafts in case your instructor wishes you to submit them.

In your documents, observe any formatting requirements—for margins, headers, placement of page numbers, and other layout matters—that your instructor requires.

Study how Mariah made the transition from her sentence outline to her first draft. First, copy her outline onto your own sheet of paper. Leave a few spaces between each part of the outline. Then copy sentences from Mariah’s paragraph to align each sentence with its corresponding entry in her outline.

Continuing the First Draft

Mariah continued writing her essay, moving to the second and third body paragraphs. She had supporting details but no numbered subpoints in her outline, so she had to consult her prewriting notes for specific information to include.

If you decide to take a break between finishing your first body paragraph and starting the next one, do not start writing immediately when you return to your work. Put yourself back in context and in the mood by rereading what you have already written. This is what Mariah did. If she had stopped writing in the middle of writing the paragraph, she could have jotted down some quick notes to herself about what she would write next.

Preceding each body paragraph that Mariah wrote is the appropriate section of her sentence outline. Notice how she expanded roman numeral III from her outline into a first draft of the second body paragraph. As you read, ask yourself how closely she stayed on purpose and how well she paid attention to the needs of her audience.

Mariah then began her third and final body paragraph using roman numeral IV from her outline.

Reread body paragraphs two and three of the essay that Mariah is writing. Then answer the questions on your own sheet of paper.

• In body paragraph two, Mariah decided to develop her paragraph as a nonfiction narrative. Do you agree with her decision? Explain. How else could she have chosen to develop the paragraph? Why is that better?
• Compare the writing styles of paragraphs two and three. What evidence do you have that Mariah was getting tired or running out of steam? What advice would you give her? Why?
• Choose one of these two body paragraphs. Write a version of your own that you think better fits Mariah’s audience and purpose.

Writing a Title

A writer’s best choice for a title is one that alludes to the main point of the entire essay. Like the headline in a newspaper or the big, bold title in a magazine, an essay’s title gives the audience a first peek at the content. If readers like the title, they are likely to keep reading.

Following her outline carefully, Mariah crafted each paragraph of her essay. Moving step by step in the writing process, Mariah finished the draft and even included a brief concluding paragraph (you will read her conclusion in Chapter 9 “Writing Essays: From Start to Finish” ). She then decided, as the final touch for her writing session, to add an engaging title.

Writing Your Own First Draft

Now you may begin your own first draft, if you have not already done so. Follow the suggestions and the guidelines presented in this section.

Key Takeaways

• Make the writing process work for you. Use any and all of the strategies that help you move forward in the writing process.
• Always be aware of your purpose for writing and the needs of your audience. Cater to those needs in every sensible way.
• Remember to include all the key structural parts of an essay: a thesis statement that is part of your introductory paragraph, three or more body paragraphs as described in your outline, and a concluding paragraph. Then add an engaging title to draw in readers.
• Write paragraphs of an appropriate length for your writing assignment. Paragraphs in college-level writing can be a page long, as long as they cover the main topics in your outline.
• Use your topic outline or your sentence outline to guide the development of your paragraphs and the elaboration of your ideas. Each main idea, indicated by a roman numeral in your outline, becomes the topic of a new paragraph. Develop it with the supporting details and the subpoints of those details that you included in your outline.
• Generally speaking, write your introduction and conclusion last, after you have fleshed out the body paragraphs.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

How to Write an Essay

Use the links below to jump directly to any section of this guide:

Essay Writing Fundamentals

How to prepare to write an essay, how to edit an essay, how to share and publish your essays, how to get essay writing help, how to find essay writing inspiration, resources for teaching essay writing.

Essays, short prose compositions on a particular theme or topic, are the bread and butter of academic life. You write them in class, for homework, and on standardized tests to show what you know. Unlike other kinds of academic writing (like the research paper) and creative writing (like short stories and poems), essays allow you to develop your original thoughts on a prompt or question. Essays come in many varieties: they can be expository (fleshing out an idea or claim), descriptive, (explaining a person, place, or thing), narrative (relating a personal experience), or persuasive (attempting to win over a reader). This guide is a collection of dozens of links about academic essay writing that we have researched, categorized, and annotated in order to help you improve your essay writing. 

Essays are different from other forms of writing; in turn, there are different kinds of essays. This section contains general resources for getting to know the essay and its variants. These resources introduce and define the essay as a genre, and will teach you what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab

One of the most trusted academic writing sites, Purdue OWL provides a concise introduction to the four most common types of academic essays.

"The Essay: History and Definition" (ThoughtCo)

This snappy article from ThoughtCo talks about the origins of the essay and different kinds of essays you might be asked to write. 

"What Is An Essay?" Video Lecture (Coursera)

The University of California at Irvine's free video lecture, available on Coursera, tells  you everything you need to know about the essay.

Wikipedia Article on the "Essay"

Wikipedia's article on the essay is comprehensive, providing both English-language and global perspectives on the essay form. Learn about the essay's history, forms, and styles.

"Understanding College and Academic Writing" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This list of common academic writing assignments (including types of essay prompts) will help you know what to expect from essay-based assessments.

Before you start writing your essay, you need to figure out who you're writing for (audience), what you're writing about (topic/theme), and what you're going to say (argument and thesis). This section contains links to handouts, chapters, videos and more to help you prepare to write an essay.

How to Identify Your Audience

"Audience" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This handout provides questions you can ask yourself to determine the audience for an academic writing assignment. It also suggests strategies for fitting your paper to your intended audience.

"Purpose, Audience, Tone, and Content" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

This extensive book chapter from Writing for Success , available online through Minnesota Libraries Publishing, is followed by exercises to try out your new pre-writing skills.

"Determining Audience" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This guide from a community college's writing center shows you how to know your audience, and how to incorporate that knowledge in your thesis statement.

"Know Your Audience" ( Paper Rater Blog)

This short blog post uses examples to show how implied audiences for essays differ. It reminds you to think of your instructor as an observer, who will know only the information you pass along.

How to Choose a Theme or Topic

"Research Tutorial: Developing Your Topic" (YouTube)

Take a look at this short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to understand the basics of developing a writing topic.

"How to Choose a Paper Topic" (WikiHow)

This simple, step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through choosing a paper topic. It starts with a detailed description of brainstorming and ends with strategies to refine your broad topic.

"How to Read an Assignment: Moving From Assignment to Topic" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Did your teacher give you a prompt or other instructions? This guide helps you understand the relationship between an essay assignment and your essay's topic.

"Guidelines for Choosing a Topic" (CliffsNotes)

This study guide from CliffsNotes both discusses how to choose a topic and makes a useful distinction between "topic" and "thesis."

How to Come Up with an Argument

"Argument" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

Not sure what "argument" means in the context of academic writing? This page from the University of North Carolina is a good place to start.

"The Essay Guide: Finding an Argument" (Study Hub)

This handout explains why it's important to have an argument when beginning your essay, and provides tools to help you choose a viable argument.

"Writing a Thesis and Making an Argument" (University of Iowa)

This page from the University of Iowa's Writing Center contains exercises through which you can develop and refine your argument and thesis statement.

"Developing a Thesis" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page from Harvard's Writing Center collates some helpful dos and don'ts of argumentative writing, from steps in constructing a thesis to avoiding vague and confrontational thesis statements.

"Suggestions for Developing Argumentative Essays" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

This page offers concrete suggestions for each stage of the essay writing process, from topic selection to drafting and editing. 

How to Outline your Essay

"Outlines" (Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill via YouTube)

This short video tutorial from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows how to group your ideas into paragraphs or sections to begin the outlining process.

"Essay Outline" (Univ. of Washington Tacoma)

This two-page handout by a university professor simply defines the parts of an essay and then organizes them into an example outline.

"Types of Outlines and Samples" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL gives examples of diverse outline strategies on this page, including the alphanumeric, full sentence, and decimal styles. 

"Outlining" (Harvard College Writing Center)

Once you have an argument, according to this handout, there are only three steps in the outline process: generalizing, ordering, and putting it all together. Then you're ready to write!

"Writing Essays" (Plymouth Univ.)

This packet, part of Plymouth University's Learning Development series, contains descriptions and diagrams relating to the outlining process.

"How to Write A Good Argumentative Essay: Logical Structure" (Criticalthinkingtutorials.com via YouTube)

This longer video tutorial gives an overview of how to structure your essay in order to support your argument or thesis. It is part of a longer course on academic writing hosted on Udemy.

Now that you've chosen and refined your topic and created an outline, use these resources to complete the writing process. Most essays contain introductions (which articulate your thesis statement), body paragraphs, and conclusions. Transitions facilitate the flow from one paragraph to the next so that support for your thesis builds throughout the essay. Sources and citations show where you got the evidence to support your thesis, which ensures that you avoid plagiarism. 

How to Write an Introduction

"Introductions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page identifies the role of the introduction in any successful paper, suggests strategies for writing introductions, and warns against less effective introductions.

"How to Write A Good Introduction" (Michigan State Writing Center)

Beginning with the most common missteps in writing introductions, this guide condenses the essentials of introduction composition into seven points.

"The Introductory Paragraph" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming focuses on ways to grab your reader's attention at the beginning of your essay.

"Introductions and Conclusions" (Univ. of Toronto)

This guide from the University of Toronto gives advice that applies to writing both introductions and conclusions, including dos and don'ts.

"How to Write Better Essays: No One Does Introductions Properly" ( The Guardian )

This news article interviews UK professors on student essay writing; they point to introductions as the area that needs the most improvement.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

"Writing an Effective Thesis Statement" (YouTube)

This short, simple video tutorial from a college composition instructor at Tulsa Community College explains what a thesis statement is and what it does. 

"Thesis Statement: Four Steps to a Great Essay" (YouTube)

This fantastic tutorial walks you through drafting a thesis, using an essay prompt on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as an example.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) walks you through coming up with, writing, and editing a thesis statement. It invites you think of your statement as a "working thesis" that can change.

"How to Write a Thesis Statement" (Univ. of Indiana Bloomington)

Ask yourself the questions on this page, part of Indiana Bloomington's Writing Tutorial Services, when you're writing and refining your thesis statement.

"Writing Tips: Thesis Statements" (Univ. of Illinois Center for Writing Studies)

This page gives plentiful examples of good to great thesis statements, and offers questions to ask yourself when formulating a thesis statement.

How to Write Body Paragraphs

"Body Paragraph" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course introduces you to the components of a body paragraph. These include the topic sentence, information, evidence, and analysis.

"Strong Body Paragraphs" (Washington Univ.)

This handout from Washington's Writing and Research Center offers in-depth descriptions of the parts of a successful body paragraph.

"Guide to Paragraph Structure" (Deakin Univ.)

This handout is notable for color-coding example body paragraphs to help you identify the functions various sentences perform.

"Writing Body Paragraphs" (Univ. of Minnesota Libraries)

The exercises in this section of Writing for Success  will help you practice writing good body paragraphs. It includes guidance on selecting primary support for your thesis.

"The Writing Process—Body Paragraphs" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

The information and exercises on this page will familiarize you with outlining and writing body paragraphs, and includes links to more information on topic sentences and transitions.

"The Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post discusses body paragraphs in the context of one of the most common academic essay types in secondary schools.

How to Use Transitions

"Transitions" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill explains what a transition is, and how to know if you need to improve your transitions.

"Using Transitions Effectively" (Washington Univ.)

This handout defines transitions, offers tips for using them, and contains a useful list of common transitional words and phrases grouped by function.

"Transitions" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

This page compares paragraphs without transitions to paragraphs with transitions, and in doing so shows how important these connective words and phrases are.

"Transitions in Academic Essays" (Scribbr)

This page lists four techniques that will help you make sure your reader follows your train of thought, including grouping similar information and using transition words.

"Transitions" (El Paso Community College)

This handout shows example transitions within paragraphs for context, and explains how transitions improve your essay's flow and voice.

"Make Your Paragraphs Flow to Improve Writing" (ThoughtCo)

This blog post, another from academic advisor and college enrollment counselor Grace Fleming, talks about transitions and other strategies to improve your essay's overall flow.

"Transition Words" (smartwords.org)

This handy word bank will help you find transition words when you're feeling stuck. It's grouped by the transition's function, whether that is to show agreement, opposition, condition, or consequence.

How to Write a Conclusion

"Parts of An Essay: Conclusions" (Brightstorm)

This module of a free online course explains how to conclude an academic essay. It suggests thinking about the "3Rs": return to hook, restate your thesis, and relate to the reader.

"Essay Conclusions" (Univ. of Maryland University College)

This overview of the academic essay conclusion contains helpful examples and links to further resources for writing good conclusions.

"How to End An Essay" (WikiHow)

This step-by-step guide (with pictures!) by an English Ph.D. walks you through writing a conclusion, from brainstorming to ending with a flourish.

"Ending the Essay: Conclusions" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This page collates useful strategies for writing an effective conclusion, and reminds you to "close the discussion without closing it off" to further conversation.

How to Include Sources and Citations

"Research and Citation Resources" (Purdue OWL Online Writing Lab)

Purdue OWL streamlines information about the three most common referencing styles (MLA, Chicago, and APA) and provides examples of how to cite different resources in each system.

EasyBib: Free Bibliography Generator

This online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. Be sure to select your resource type before clicking the "cite it" button.

CitationMachine

Like EasyBib, this online tool allows you to input information about your source and automatically generate citations in any style. 

Modern Language Association Handbook (MLA)

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of MLA referencing rules. Order through the link above, or check to see if your library has a copy.

Chicago Manual of Style

Here, you'll find the definitive and up-to-date record of Chicago referencing rules. You can take a look at the table of contents, then choose to subscribe or start a free trial.

How to Avoid Plagiarism

"What is Plagiarism?" (plagiarism.org)

This nonprofit website contains numerous resources for identifying and avoiding plagiarism, and reminds you that even common activities like copying images from another website to your own site may constitute plagiarism.

"Plagiarism" (University of Oxford)

This interactive page from the University of Oxford helps you check for plagiarism in your work, making it clear how to avoid citing another person's work without full acknowledgement.

"Avoiding Plagiarism" (MIT Comparative Media Studies)

This quick guide explains what plagiarism is, what its consequences are, and how to avoid it. It starts by defining three words—quotation, paraphrase, and summary—that all constitute citation.

"Harvard Guide to Using Sources" (Harvard Extension School)

This comprehensive website from Harvard brings together articles, videos, and handouts about referencing, citation, and plagiarism. 

Grammarly contains tons of helpful grammar and writing resources, including a free tool to automatically scan your essay to check for close affinities to published work. 

Noplag is another popular online tool that automatically scans your essay to check for signs of plagiarism. Simply copy and paste your essay into the box and click "start checking."

Once you've written your essay, you'll want to edit (improve content), proofread (check for spelling and grammar mistakes), and finalize your work until you're ready to hand it in. This section brings together tips and resources for navigating the editing process. 

"Writing a First Draft" (Academic Help)

This is an introduction to the drafting process from the site Academic Help, with tips for getting your ideas on paper before editing begins.

"Editing and Proofreading" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page provides general strategies for revising your writing. They've intentionally left seven errors in the handout, to give you practice in spotting them.

"How to Proofread Effectively" (ThoughtCo)

This article from ThoughtCo, along with those linked at the bottom, help describe common mistakes to check for when proofreading.

"7 Simple Edits That Make Your Writing 100% More Powerful" (SmartBlogger)

This blog post emphasizes the importance of powerful, concise language, and reminds you that even your personal writing heroes create clunky first drafts.

"Editing Tips for Effective Writing" (Univ. of Pennsylvania)

On this page from Penn's International Relations department, you'll find tips for effective prose, errors to watch out for, and reminders about formatting.

"Editing the Essay" (Harvard College Writing Center)

This article, the first of two parts, gives you applicable strategies for the editing process. It suggests reading your essay aloud, removing any jargon, and being unafraid to remove even "dazzling" sentences that don't belong.

"Guide to Editing and Proofreading" (Oxford Learning Institute)

This handout from Oxford covers the basics of editing and proofreading, and reminds you that neither task should be rushed. 

In addition to plagiarism-checkers, Grammarly has a plug-in for your web browser that checks your writing for common mistakes.

After you've prepared, written, and edited your essay, you might want to share it outside the classroom. This section alerts you to print and web opportunities to share your essays with the wider world, from online writing communities and blogs to published journals geared toward young writers.

Sharing Your Essays Online

Go Teen Writers

Go Teen Writers is an online community for writers aged 13 - 19. It was founded by Stephanie Morrill, an author of contemporary young adult novels. 

Tumblr is a blogging website where you can share your writing and interact with other writers online. It's easy to add photos, links, audio, and video components.

Writersky provides an online platform for publishing and reading other youth writers' work. Its current content is mostly devoted to fiction.

Publishing Your Essays Online

This teen literary journal publishes in print, on the web, and (more frequently), on a blog. It is committed to ensuring that "teens see their authentic experience reflected on its pages."

The Matador Review

This youth writing platform celebrates "alternative," unconventional writing. The link above will take you directly to the site's "submissions" page.

Teen Ink has a website, monthly newsprint magazine, and quarterly poetry magazine promoting the work of young writers.

The largest online reading platform, Wattpad enables you to publish your work and read others' work. Its inline commenting feature allows you to share thoughts as you read along.

Publishing Your Essays in Print

Canvas Teen Literary Journal

This quarterly literary magazine is published for young writers by young writers. They accept many kinds of writing, including essays.

The Claremont Review

This biannual international magazine, first published in 1992, publishes poetry, essays, and short stories from writers aged 13 - 19.

Skipping Stones

This young writers magazine, founded in 1988, celebrates themes relating to ecological and cultural diversity. It publishes poems, photos, articles, and stories.

The Telling Room

This nonprofit writing center based in Maine publishes children's work on their website and in book form. The link above directs you to the site's submissions page.

Essay Contests

Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards

This prestigious international writing contest for students in grades 7 - 12 has been committed to "supporting the future of creativity since 1923."

Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest

An annual essay contest on the theme of journalism and media, the Society of Professional Journalists High School Essay Contest awards scholarships up to $1,000.

National YoungArts Foundation

Here, you'll find information on a government-sponsored writing competition for writers aged 15 - 18. The foundation welcomes submissions of creative nonfiction, novels, scripts, poetry, short story and spoken word.

Signet Classics Student Scholarship Essay Contest

With prompts on a different literary work each year, this competition from Signet Classics awards college scholarships up to $1,000.

"The Ultimate Guide to High School Essay Contests" (CollegeVine)

See this handy guide from CollegeVine for a list of more competitions you can enter with your academic essay, from the National Council of Teachers of English Achievement Awards to the National High School Essay Contest by the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Whether you're struggling to write academic essays or you think you're a pro, there are workshops and online tools that can help you become an even better writer. Even the most seasoned writers encounter writer's block, so be proactive and look through our curated list of resources to combat this common frustration.

Online Essay-writing Classes and Workshops

"Getting Started with Essay Writing" (Coursera)

Coursera offers lots of free, high-quality online classes taught by college professors. Here's one example, taught by instructors from the University of California Irvine.

"Writing and English" (Brightstorm)

Brightstorm's free video lectures are easy to navigate by topic. This unit on the parts of an essay features content on the essay hook, thesis, supporting evidence, and more.

"How to Write an Essay" (EdX)

EdX is another open online university course website with several two- to five-week courses on the essay. This one is geared toward English language learners.

Writer's Digest University

This renowned writers' website offers online workshops and interactive tutorials. The courses offered cover everything from how to get started through how to get published.

Writing.com

Signing up for this online writer's community gives you access to helpful resources as well as an international community of writers.

How to Overcome Writer's Block

"Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block" (Purdue OWL)

Purdue OWL offers a list of signs you might have writer's block, along with ways to overcome it. Consider trying out some "invention strategies" or ways to curb writing anxiety.

"Overcoming Writer's Block: Three Tips" ( The Guardian )

These tips, geared toward academic writing specifically, are practical and effective. The authors advocate setting realistic goals, creating dedicated writing time, and participating in social writing.

"Writing Tips: Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block" (Univ. of Illinois)

This page from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Center for Writing Studies acquaints you with strategies that do and do not work to overcome writer's block.

"Writer's Block" (Univ. of Toronto)

Ask yourself the questions on this page; if the answer is "yes," try out some of the article's strategies. Each question is accompanied by at least two possible solutions.

If you have essays to write but are short on ideas, this section's links to prompts, example student essays, and celebrated essays by professional writers might help. You'll find writing prompts from a variety of sources, student essays to inspire you, and a number of essay writing collections.

Essay Writing Prompts

"50 Argumentative Essay Topics" (ThoughtCo)

Take a look at this list and the others ThoughtCo has curated for different kinds of essays. As the author notes, "a number of these topics are controversial and that's the point."

"401 Prompts for Argumentative Writing" ( New York Times )

This list (and the linked lists to persuasive and narrative writing prompts), besides being impressive in length, is put together by actual high school English teachers.

"SAT Sample Essay Prompts" (College Board)

If you're a student in the U.S., your classroom essay prompts are likely modeled on the prompts in U.S. college entrance exams. Take a look at these official examples from the SAT.

"Popular College Application Essay Topics" (Princeton Review)

This page from the Princeton Review dissects recent Common Application essay topics and discusses strategies for answering them.

Example Student Essays

"501 Writing Prompts" (DePaul Univ.)

This nearly 200-page packet, compiled by the LearningExpress Skill Builder in Focus Writing Team, is stuffed with writing prompts, example essays, and commentary.

"Topics in English" (Kibin)

Kibin is a for-pay essay help website, but its example essays (organized by topic) are available for free. You'll find essays on everything from  A Christmas Carol  to perseverance.

"Student Writing Models" (Thoughtful Learning)

Thoughtful Learning, a website that offers a variety of teaching materials, provides sample student essays on various topics and organizes them by grade level.

"Five-Paragraph Essay" (ThoughtCo)

In this blog post by a former professor of English and rhetoric, ThoughtCo brings together examples of five-paragraph essays and commentary on the form.

The Best Essay Writing Collections

The Best American Essays of the Century by Joyce Carol Oates (Amazon)

This collection of American essays spanning the twentieth century was compiled by award winning author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates.

The Best American Essays 2017 by Leslie Jamison (Amazon)

Leslie Jamison, the celebrated author of essay collection  The Empathy Exams , collects recent, high-profile essays into a single volume.

The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (Amazon)

Documentary writer Phillip Lopate curates this historical overview of the personal essay's development, from the classical era to the present.

The White Album by Joan Didion (Amazon)

This seminal essay collection was authored by one of the most acclaimed personal essayists of all time, American journalist Joan Didion.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (Amazon)

Read this famous essay collection by David Foster Wallace, who is known for his experimentation with the essay form. He pushed the boundaries of personal essay, reportage, and political polemic.

"50 Successful Harvard Application Essays" (Staff of the The Harvard Crimson )

If you're looking for examples of exceptional college application essays, this volume from Harvard's daily student newspaper is one of the best collections on the market.

Are you an instructor looking for the best resources for teaching essay writing? This section contains resources for developing in-class activities and student homework assignments. You'll find content from both well-known university writing centers and online writing labs.

Essay Writing Classroom Activities for Students

"In-class Writing Exercises" (Univ. of North Carolina Writing Center)

This page lists exercises related to brainstorming, organizing, drafting, and revising. It also contains suggestions for how to implement the suggested exercises.

"Teaching with Writing" (Univ. of Minnesota Center for Writing)

Instructions and encouragement for using "freewriting," one-minute papers, logbooks, and other write-to-learn activities in the classroom can be found here.

"Writing Worksheets" (Berkeley Student Learning Center)

Berkeley offers this bank of writing worksheets to use in class. They are nested under headings for "Prewriting," "Revision," "Research Papers" and more.

"Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism" (DePaul University)

Use these activities and worksheets from DePaul's Teaching Commons when instructing students on proper academic citation practices.

Essay Writing Homework Activities for Students

"Grammar and Punctuation Exercises" (Aims Online Writing Lab)

These five interactive online activities allow students to practice editing and proofreading. They'll hone their skills in correcting comma splices and run-ons, identifying fragments, using correct pronoun agreement, and comma usage.

"Student Interactives" (Read Write Think)

Read Write Think hosts interactive tools, games, and videos for developing writing skills. They can practice organizing and summarizing, writing poetry, and developing lines of inquiry and analysis.

This free website offers writing and grammar activities for all grade levels. The lessons are designed to be used both for large classes and smaller groups.

"Writing Activities and Lessons for Every Grade" (Education World)

Education World's page on writing activities and lessons links you to more free, online resources for learning how to "W.R.I.T.E.": write, revise, inform, think, and edit.

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4b. Drafting

Drafting is the point in the writing process at which you compose a complete first version of an essay. There are as many ways to write a first draft as there are essays in the world. Some academic writers begin their drafts with body paragraphs and work backwards to their introduction while others feel the need to develop a solid introduction before launching into the body of the essay.  The best advice offered by most professional writers is to try not to worry too much about how unprepared, disorganized, repetitive, or uninspired a first draft might feel because relatively few of us can sit down and compose an entire essay (or even email) that is ready to be published in a single draft.  As students, it can be easy to overlook the fact that the books and articles we read for class have been revised and edited many times and with the support of many people prior to publication. Your instructors will expect you to perform the role of both writer and editor before turning in your final draft.

As you dive into the drafting stage of the writing process, the following advice may come in handy when you are facing the pressure of deadlines and grades:

Begin with the part of your essay you know the most about or feel least nervous about.

• Having an outline allows you to start with the third, fifth, or second paragraph of an essay without worrying how it will flow with the rest. Your initial paragraphs may vary in length or contain insufficient reasoning or evidence as you draft. Topic sentences, transitions, and other details can be cleaned up later. Be sure to cite sources even if you’re unsure what quotation or other evidence you might include to reduce your formatting time later (and help you avoid unintentional plagiarism).

Just do it!

• Hesitation can be a writer’s worst enemy. Facing a blank page can feel like a climbing to the top of a diving platform and being too wary to jump or being unable to choose a restaurant for dinner.  Although every good writer should be self-critical at times, try to remember that a first draft can be terrible and still be very useful. Try not to look back or doubt your ideas – there will be time for that later. Treat your drafting sessions like freewriting and do not worry about transitions, spelling, punctuation, and other mechanics.

Leave yourself a short note or comment at the end of each writing session .

• Every writer has picked up something they wrote a day or week ago and wondered what the heck they were thinking. Take an extra minute at the end of a writing session to leave yourself a short note or comment to remind yourself where you hope to pick up or anything you need to look up. Notes and comments can also be useful if you feel a sentence in your paragraph may be tangential or incomplete and you want to come back to it later.

Pace yourself and take breaks .

• Essays take time to develop. Hopefully, you can find a place to write where you are comfortable and able to avoid distractions. Turn off your phone and try not to have an internet browser open unless citing evidence.

Be reasonable with your goals .

• Begin each writing session by taking a moment to consider how long you plan to write and what you hope to accomplish. Plan breaks to stretch and rehydrate. Holding yourself to a goal for each session will help you stay on track toward your deadlines and give you a sense of achievement. Rewarding yourself after each successful writing session can be useful motivation as well.

Keep your audience, purpose, and task requirements in mind .

• By the time we get several paragraphs or hours into a writing task, we can become so attached to our own ideas and writing style that we lose track of our audience and purpose. Asking yourself “who will be reading this essay?” and “how will it be assessed?” or “what is my overall purpose?” can help you keep an eye on the big picture. Checking assignment guidelines will help guide your work and help you ensure that your draft meets an instructor or editor’s expectations.

The Value of First Drafts

A first draft is a complete version of a piece of writing, but it is certainly not expected to be the final version. During the revision stage, you will have the opportunity to make all kinds of changes to your first draft before you put the final touches on it during the editing stage. A first draft gives you a complete working version of an essay that is ready to share with peers, writing coaches, instructors, and/or editors that can be improved with revision and editing.

Writing as Inquiry Copyright © 2021 by Kara Clevinger and Stephen Rust is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Building the Essay Draft

Building a strong essay draft requires going through a logical progression of stages:, explanation.

Development options

Linking paragraphs

Introductions

Conclusions.

Revising and proofreading the draft

Hints for revising and proofreading

Tip: After you have completed the body of your paper, you can decide what you want to say in your introduction and in your conclusion.

Once you know what you want to talk about and you have written your thesis statement, you are ready to build the body of your essay.

The thesis statement will usually be followed by

• the body of the paper
• the paragraphs that develop the thesis by explaining your ideas by backing them up 
• examples or evidence

Tip: The "examples or evidence" stage is the most important part of the paper, because you are giving your reader a clear idea of what you think and why you think it.

Development Options

• For each reason you have to support your thesis, remember to state your point clearly and explain it.

Tip: Read your thesis sentence over and ask yourself what questions a reader might ask about it. Then answer those questions, explaining and giving examples or evidence.

Show how one thing is similar to another, and then how the two are different, emphasizing the side that seems more important to you. For example, if your thesis states, "Jazz is a serious art form," you might compare and contrast a jazz composition to a classical one.

Show your reader what the opposition thinks (reasons why some people do not agree with your thesis), and then refute those reasons (show why they are wrong).  On the other hand, if you feel that the opposition isn't entirely wrong, you may say so, (concede), but then explain why your thesis is still the right opinion.

• Think about the order in which you have made your points. Why have you presented a certain reason that develops your thesis first, another second? If you can't see any particular value in presenting your points in the order you have, reconsider it until you either decide why the order you have is best, or change it to one that makes more sense to you.
• Does each paragraph develop my thesis?
• Have I done all the development I wish had been done?
• Am I still satisfied with my working thesis, or have I developed my body in ways that mean I must adjust my thesis to fit what I have learned, what I believe, and what I have actually discussed?

Linking Paragraphs

It is important to link your paragraphs together, giving your readers cues so that they see the relationship between one idea and the next, and how these ideas develop your thesis.

Your goal is a smooth transition from paragraph A to paragraph B, which explains why cue words that link paragraphs are often called "transitions."

Tip: Your link between paragraphs may not be one word, but several, or even a whole sentence.

Here are some ways of linking paragraphs:

• To show simply that another idea is coming, use words such as "also," "moreover," or "in addition."
• To show that the next idea is the logical result of the previous one, use words such as "therefore," "consequently," "thus," or "as a result."
• To show that the next idea seems to go against the previous one, or is not its logical result, use words such as "however," "nevertheless," or "still."
• To show you've come to your strongest point, use words such as "most importantly."
• To show you've come to a change in topic, use words such as "on the other hand."
• To show you've come to your final point, use words such as "finally."

After you have come up with a thesis and developed it in the body of your paper, you can decide how to introduce your ideas to your reader.

The goals of an introduction are to

• Get your reader's attention/arouse your reader's curiosity.
• Provide any necessary background information before you state your thesis (often the last sentence of the introductory paragraph).
• Establish why you are writing the paper.

Tip: You already know why you are writing, and who your reader is; now present that reason for writing to that reader.

Hints for writing your introduction:

• Use the Ws of journalism (who, what, when, where, why) to decide what information to give. (Remember that a history teacher doesn't need to be told "George Washington was the first president of the United States." Keep your reader in mind.)
• Add another "W": Why (why is this paper worth reading)? The answer could be that your topic is new, controversial, or very important.
• Catch your reader by surprise by starting with a description or narrative that doesn't hint at what your thesis will be. For example, a paper could start, "It is less than a 32nd of an inch long, but it can kill an adult human," to begin a paper about eliminating malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

There can be many different conclusions to the same paper (just as there can be many introductions), depending on who your readers are and where you want to direct them (follow-up you expect of them after they finish your paper). Therefore, restating your thesis and summarizing the main points of your body should not be all that your conclusion does. In fact, most weak conclusions are merely restatements of the thesis and summaries of the body without guiding the reader toward thinking about the implications of the thesis.

Here are some options for writing a strong conclusion:

Make a prediction about the future. You convinced the reader that thermal energy is terrific, but do you think it will become the standard energy source? When?

Give specific advice. If your readers now understand that multicultural education has great advantages, or disadvantages, or both, whatever your opinion might be, what should they do? Whom should they contact?

Put your topic in a larger context. Once you have proven that physical education should be part of every school's curriculum, perhaps readers  should consider other "frill" courses which are actually essential.

Tip: Just as a conclusion should not be just a restatement of your thesis and summary of your body, it also should not be an entirely new topic, a door opened that you barely lead your reader through and leave them there lost. Just as in finding your topic and in forming your thesis, the safe and sane rule in writing a conclusion is this:  neither too little nor too much.

Revising and Proofreading the Draft

Writing is only half the job of writing..

The writing process begins even before you put pen to paper, when you think about your topic. And, once you finish actually writing, the process continues. What you have written is not the finished essay, but a first draft, and you must go over many times to improve it--a second draft, a third draft, and so on until you have as many as necessary to do the job right. Your final draft, edited and proofread, is your essay, ready for your reader's eyes.

A revision is a "re-vision" of your essay--how you see things now, deciding whether your introduction, thesis, body, and conclusion really express your own vision. Revision is global, taking another look at what ideas you have included in your paper and how they are arranged.

Proofreading

Proofreading is checking over a draft to make sure that everything is complete and correct as far as spelling, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and other such matters go. It's a necessary, if somewhat tedious and tricky, job one that a friend or computer Spellcheck can help you perform. Proofreading is polishing, one spot at a time.

Tip: Revision should come before proofreading: why polish what you might be changing anyway?

Hints for revising and proofreading:

• Leave some time--an hour, a day, several day--between writing and revising. You need some distance to switch from writer to editor, some distance between your initial vision and your re-vision.
• Double-check your writing assignment to be sure you haven't gone off course . It is all right if you've shifted from your original plan, if you know why and are happier with this direction.  Make sure that you are actually following your mentor's assignment.
• Read aloud slowly . You need to get your eye and your ear to work together. At any point that something seems awkward, read it over again. If you're not sure what's wrong--or even if something is wrong--make a notation in the margin and come back to it later. Watch out for "padding;" tighten your sentences to eliminate excess words that dilute your ideas.
• Be on the lookout for points that seem vague or incomplete ; these could present opportunities for rethinking, clarifying, and further developing an idea.
• Get to know what your particular quirks are as a writer. Do you give examples without explaining them, or forget links between paragraphs? Leave time for an extra rereading to look for any weak points.
• Get someone else into the act. Have others read your draft, or read it to them. Invite questions and ask questions yourself, to see if your points are clear and well-developed. Remember, though, that some well-meaning readers can be too easy (or too hard) on a piece of writing.

Tip: Never change anything unless you are convinced that it should be changed .

• Keep tools at hand, such as a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a writing handbook.
• While you're using word processing, remember that computers are wonderful resources for editing and revising.
• When you feel you've done everything you can, first by revising and then by proofreading, and have a nice clean, final draft, put it aside and return later to re-see the whole essay. There may be some last minute fine-tuning that can make all the difference.

Don't forget--if you would like help with at this point in your assignment or any other type of writing assignment, learning coaches are available to assist you.  Please contact Academic Support by emailing [email protected] ; calling 1-800-847-3000, ext 3008; or calling the main number of the location in your region (click  here for more information) to schedule an appointment.

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If you would like assistance with any type of writing assignment, learning coaches are available to assist you. Please contact Academic Support by emailing [email protected].

Questions or feedback about SUNY Empire's Writing Support?

Contact us at [email protected] .

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• Peterborough

Drafting the English Essay

• Creating an outline
• The use of "I" (first-person)
• Historical present
• Drafting body paragraphs
• The introduction
• The conclusion

Creating an Outline

Making an outline before you start to write has the same advantage as writing down your thesis as soon as you have one. It forces you to think about the best possible order for what you want to say and to think through your line of thought before you have to write sentences and paragraphs.

Remember that an essay and its outline do not have to be structured into five paragraphs.  Think about major points, sections or parts of your essay, rather than paragraphs. The number of sections you have will depend on what you have to say and how you think your thesis needs to be supported. It is possible to structure an essay around two major points, each divided into sub-points. Or you may structure an essay around four, five or six points, depending on the essay's length. An essay under 1500 words may fall naturally into three sections, but let the number come from what you have to say rather than striving for the magic three.

Creating an outline also helps you avoid the temptation of organizing your essay by following the plot line of the text you are writing about and simply retelling the story with a few of your own comments thrown in. If you conscientiously make an outline that is ordered to best support your thesis, which is there in print before your eyes, your essay’s organization will be based on supporting your argument not on the text’s plotline.

Read more on organizing your essay

Writing the Draft

If you have followed good essay-writing practice, which includes developing a narrowed topic and analytical thesis, reading closely and taking careful notes, and creating an organized outline, you will find that writing your essay is much less difficult than if you simply sit down and plunge in with a vague topic in mind.

Always keep your reader in mind when you write. Work to convince this reader that your argument is valid and has merit. To do this, you must write clearly. The best writing is the product of drafting and revising.

As you write your rough draft, your ideas will develop, so it is helpful to accept the messy process of drafting. Review your sections as you write, but leave most of the revision for when you have a completed first draft. When you revise, you can refine your ideas by making your language more specific and direct, by developing your explanation of a quotation, and by explaining the connections between your ideas. Remember that your goal is clear expression; use a formal tone, avoid slang and colloquial terms, and be precise in your language.

Stylistic Notes for Writing the English Essay

The use of "i".

The judicious use of "I" in English essays is generally accepted. (You may run into a professor who doesn't want you to and says so, and, in that case, don't). The key is to not to overuse "I". When writing your draft, you may find it helpful to get your thoughts flowing by writing "I think that..." but when you revise, you will find that those three words can be eliminated from the sentences they begin.

For example:

I think that these poems also share a rather detached, unemotional, matter-of-fact acceptance of death.

Revised: These poems share a rather detached, unemotional, matter-of-fact acceptance of death.

I think death, dying, and the moments that precede dying preoccupy Dickinson.

Revised: Death, dying, and the moments the precede dying preoccupy Dickinson.

The Historical Present

Instructors generally agree that students should use the the present tense, which is known as the historical present, when describing events in a work of literature (or a film) or when discussing what authors or scholars say about a topic or issue, even when the work of literature is from the past or uses the past tense itself, or the authors and scholars are dead.

Examples of historical present:

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Bottom is a uniformly comedic figure.

Kyi argues that “democracy is the political system through which an empowerment of the people occurs.” 

It is considered more accurate to use the present tense in these circumstances because the arguments put forward by scholars, and the characters presented and scenes depicted by novelists, poets, and dramatists continue to live in the present whenever anyone reads them. An added benefit is that many find the use of the historical present tense makes for a more lively style and a stronger voice.

Drafting Body Paragraphs

The body of the essay will be made up of the claims or points you are making, supported by evidence from the primary source, the work in question, and perhaps some secondary sources. Your supporting evidence may be quotations of words or phrases from the text, as well as details about character, setting, plot, syntax, diction, images and anything else you have found in the work that is relevant to your argument.

Writing successful paragraphs

You may find yourself quoting often, and that is fine. The words from the text are, after all, the support for the argument you are making, and they show that your ideas came from somewhere and are grounded in the text. But try to keep your quotations as short and pertinent as possible. Use quotations effectively to support your interpretation or arguments; be sure to explain the quotation: what does it illustrates and how?

Effectively integrating evidence

Make sure you don't use or quote words whose definition or meaning you are not sure about. As a student of English literature, you should make regular use of a good dictionary; many academics recommend the Oxford English Dictionary . Not knowing what a word means or misunderstanding how it is used can undermine a whole argument. When you read and write about authors from previous centuries, you will often have to familiarize yourself with new words. To write good English essays, you must take the time to do this.

Sample Body Paragraph

This body paragraph is a sample only. Its content is not to be reproduced in whole or part. Use of the ideas or words in this essay is an act of plagiarism, which is subject to academic integrity policy at Trent University and other academic institutions.

“Because I could not stop for Death” describes the process of dying right up to and past the moment of death, in the first person.  This process is described symbolically. The speaker, walking along the road of life is picked up and given a carriage ride out of town to her destination, the graveyard and death. The speaker, looking back, says that she “could not stop for Death – / [so] He kindly stopped for” her (1-2).  Dickinson personifies death as a “kindly” (2) masculine being with “civility” (6). As the two “slowly dr[i]ve” (5) down the road of life, the speaker observes life in its simplicity: the “School,” (9), “the Fields of Gazing Grain” (11), and the “Setting Sun” (12), and realizes that this road out of town is the road out of life. The road’s ending at “a House that seemed / A Swelling of the Ground” (17-18) is a life’s ending at death, “Eternity” (24).  Once in the House that is the speaker’s grave, that is, after death, the speaker remains conscious. Her death is not experienced as a loss of consciousness, a sleep or oblivion. Her sense of time does change though:

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity – (20-24) 

It has become difficult for the speaker to tell the difference between a century and a day. But she knows it has been “Centuries” since then, so the implication is that her consciousness has lived on in an eternal afterlife.

What works in the sample paragraph?

• The topic sentence makes a clear claim that the rest of the paragraph develops through details, quotations and analysis.
• The quotation is followed by the writer’s analysis of the quoted words and argument about their implication. This is the best way to use textual evidence.

The Introduction

Often, the introduction is the hardest part to write. Here you make your first impression, introduce the topic, provide background information, define key terms perhaps, and, most important, present your thesis, upon which the entire essay hangs. Many people find it easiest to write the introduction last or to write a very rough introduction that they change significantly once the draft is complete.  

Strategies for writing the introduction

Sample Introduction

This introductory paragraph is a sample only. Its content is not to be reproduced in whole or part. Use of the ideas or words in this essay is an act of plagiarism, which is subject to academic integrity policy at Trent University and other academic institutions.

Emily Dickinson was captivated by the riddle of death, and several of her poems deal with it in different ways. There are many poems that describe, in the first person, the process of dying right up to and including the moment of death, often recalled from a vantage point after death in some sort of afterlife. As well, several poems speculate more generally about what lies beyond the visible world our senses perceive in life. This essay examines four of Dickinson’s poems that are about dying and death and one that is more speculative. Two are straightforwardly about dying, while the other two present dying symbolically, but taken together they show many similarities.   Death is experienced matter-of-factly and without fear and with a full consciousness that registers details and describes them clearly. All the poems examined hint at an afterlife which is not described in traditionally Christian terms but which is not contradictory to Christian belief either. Yet death remains a riddle. While one poem may emphasize an afterlife of peace, silence and anchors at rest, others only hint at an ongoing consciousness, and one both asserts that something beyond life exists while also saying that belief is really only a narcotic that cannot completely still the pain of doubt. Dying, the moment of death, and what comes after preoccupy Dickinson: in these poems, death and eternity both “beckon” and “baffle” (Dickinson, “This World is not Conclusion” 5).

What works in this sample introduction?

• This essay has a good, narrowed, focused topic.
• The introduction does not include a general statement about life or poetry. The essay is about five poems by Dickinson, and right from the beginning, its focus is on that.
• The thesis of the essay is one sentence, but it may be more. Note that this thesis statement does not list supporting points; a good thesis statement provides the organizing principle of the essay, and the essay writer has decided to let the supporting points appear throughout the body of the essay.

The Conclusion

An effective conclusion unifies the arguments in your essay and explains the broader meaning or significance of your analysis. It is best to think of the conclusion as an opportunity to synthesize your ideas, not just summarize them. It is also your chance to explain the larger significance of your argument: if your reader now agrees with your thesis, what do they understand about the theme, the text, or the author?

Strategies for writing the conclusion

Sample Conclusion

This concluding paragraph is a sample only. Its content is not to be reproduced in whole or part. Use of the ideas or words in this essay is an act of plagiarism, which is subject to academic integrity policy at Trent University and other academic institutions.

In many ways, “On this wondrous sea” sums up the attitude toward death and eternity seen in all the poems examined. Death is experienced without fear, and life is shown as leading up to death and eternity. What exactly this eternity is like is only hinted at in most of these poems. So, what is beyond continues to “baffle,” but none of the poems present death as extinction with nothing beyond; rather what is beyond “beckons.” Death and eternity are something known, a grave that is a house, a consciousness living on, a shore to which we come “at last” after a life both stormy and “wondrous.”

What works in this sample conclusion?

• This paragraph does not just repeat the introduction. It pulls together the main ideas contained in the entire essay to try to point out their larger significance. Rather than a point-by-point list, it is a summary of what it all means taken together.
• Understanding The English Essay
• Developing a Topic and Thesis for an English Essay
• Using Secondary Sources in an English Essay
• Glossary of Common Formal Elements of Literature
• Documenting Sources in MLA Style (Modern Languages Association)

Writing the Essay Draft

Drafting from an outline.

While there are distinct differences between developing and organizing support, and between developing/organizing support and drafting the essay, differentiating these steps can sometimes be difficult – in many cases, they blend into one another. As you develop support, you may find that you are also organizing that support into categories, thus creating a draft in outline form.

If outlining seems logical to your way of thinking and approaching a writing project, know that there are  several different kinds of outlines:

• Roman or Arabic Numeral (highly structured, more formal)
• bullet point (less structured, more informal)
• mind map (less structured, more informal)
• other methods as appropriate, such as a timeline, powerpoint slides, or whatever method works for the topic and your own way of thinking about the topic

Roman Numeral Outline

Thesis statement : E-mail and internet monitoring, as currently practiced, is an invasion of employees’ rights in the workplace.

• To prevent fraudulent activities, theft, and other workplace related violations.
• To more efficiently monitor employee productivity.
• To prevent any legal liabilities due to harassing or offensive communications.
• There are no federal or State laws protecting employees.
• Employees may assert privacy protection for their own personal effects.
• Workplace communications should be about work; anything else is a misuse of company equipment and company time
• Employers have a right to prevent misuse by monitoring employee communications

Arabic Numeral Outline

Bullet Point Outline

Mind map outline.

Whichever type of outline you’ve started with, it can conveniently morph into an essay draft, simply by choosing a portion of the outline as a place to start writing. Start developing that portion with topic sentences, full sentences, complete thoughts, details, examples, facts, opinions, and all appropriate types of support.  Remember that an outline identifies the ideas you intend to use in the essay; you develop the actual essay draft by adding support to those ideas.

One of the many advantages to working from an outline is that you create an idea structure and can see visually how/whether those ideas relate, so you can see what needs to be added or edited. Because outlines capture ideas, they also allow you to begin your draft with whatever section or group of ideas you choose. Pick a section you feel strongly about, and start there. Move around your outline in whatever order you choose, in order to keep the momentum going to develop your essay draft.

• Drafting from an Outline. Revision and adaptation of the page From Outlining to Drafting at https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-englishcomposition1/chapter/text-from-outlining-to-drafting/. Authored by : Susan Oaks. Provided by : Empire State College, SUNY OER Services. Project : College Writing. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• From Outlining to Drafting. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-englishcomposition1/chapter/text-from-outlining-to-drafting/ . Project : English Composition I. License : CC BY: Attribution
• image of Roman Numeral outline. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_(list) . Project : Outline (list). License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Arabic Numeral Outline. Provided by : Wikipedia. Located at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_(list) . Project : Outline (list). License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Bullet Point outline. Authored by : Glynis Jolly. Provided by : flickr. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/py6cwB . License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• Mind Map outline. Authored by : Frank Dai. Provided by : flickr. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/aG4fD . License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

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6 Drafting Part 2: Introductions

This chapter is the second of three devoted to the drafting stage of the writing process. It dives more into that stage by zooming in on the introduction to academic essays.

Editor’s Introduction to the Chapter

Many students think of the introduction as a giant funnel: open by establishing the broader topic, then propose a thesis statement at the end that narrows the scope of the essay. For example, a “funnel” introduction about Benjamin Franklin’s  Autobiography and the American Dream would open with a general discussion of the American Dream and then propose how Franklin’s text relates to that idea.

The problem with the funnel approach is that it places the burden on the reader to fill in missing information. A reader who isn’t in the same course as the student may be confused about why the American Dream is being discussed at this point in time. The topic just floats there, timelessly. Why should we care about it?

Introductions crafted for specific readers will provide enough background information so the reader can better understand how the writer’s essay participates in a more meaningful situation or conversation. Rather than funneling ideas, situationally-attuned introductions practice a context-to-thesis strategy. As the chapter on context explains, introductions are where a text’s “context” typically shows up.

In the article below about introductions, Stacie Draper Weatbrook carefully unpacks why a context-to-thesis structure is important and how to begin crafting one yourself. First Year Writers should note, however, that what “context” means will vary depending on the rhetorical situation, and some introductions may not have a thesis statement at all. How to open an essay or article requires the same critical reading strategies that pertain to other aspects of rhetorical savviness, especially an awareness of basic genre conventions. An introduction to a persuasive essay will look very different from the opening to a reflective cover letter, partly because the purposes are different.

Drive for the Road Conditions; Write for the Reader Conditions

by Stacie Draper Weatbrook

You can’t drive the same way all the time. You start and stop when you’re in traffic, and you can go 80 mph or more on the open Interstates. When you’re driving in the mountains, you don’t take curves at 50 mph. Instead, you slow down to avoid careening off the cliffs. In the rain, you reduce your speed to avoid hydroplaning. When driving in the snow, you reduce your speed, you keep a big distance between your car and the other cars, and you don’t break quickly so your car doesn’t slide out of control.

I know a couple who had great conflicts in their marriage in one particular area: the husband’s driving. He drove fast. He followed the car in front of him much too closely. He didn’t plan ahead and merged at the last minute. The wife, anxious and nervous about driving anyway, found his aggressive driving style more than she could handle.

Finally one day, the wife told him,  “You need to drive for the conditions, and right now the condition is me.”  Instead of fuming, holding a grudge, or giving him the silent treatment, she was able to explain what she needed. Because he loves her and wants her comfort, he changed his way of driving.

This couple is my parents, and they will soon celebrate their 50-year anniversary.

Much like considering road conditions, writers consider the rhetorical situation: the writer, the purpose, and the reader. In writing, as in driving, writers need to adjust for the conditions, the audience.

Awareness of your audience should determine how you write. Even when writing to an audience that’s knowledgeable about the topic, always err on the side of clarity. In other words, slow down so you make sure your audience is with you.

Here are some tips to write for the conditions.

Start Slowly With an Introduction and Then Build Speed

When you drive, you start at 0 mph and build up speed. It’s the same with writing. Your writing is not about showing off how much you know by being cryptic and esoteric and leaving your audience to guess what you mean. Considering your rhetorical situation means recognizing your purpose and communicating it in a way your audience can follow. A simple introduction can do wonders to help the audience see the information and why it’s important. You’ve got to ease the reader into your essay. Your audience could have been watching reruns of  The Office , buying dog food online, attending yoga class, or any number or random tasks before reading your paper. The point is, your reader, even if they are intensely familiar with your topic, or deeply interested in your progress as a writer, needs a starting place, so take a page out of  The Sound of Music , and start at the very beginning.

Most of our public and private discourse comes as a reaction to an event or statement. In other words, writing takes place in the context of what others are saying about events, statements, and research. Graff and Birkenstein explain in their book  They Say I Say  that having a clear thesis is not enough; it is the writer’s responsibility to show the larger conversation (20). They explain:

When it comes to constructing an argument, we offer you the following advice: remember you are entering a conversation and therefore need to start with “what others are saying . . .” and then introduce your own ideas as a response. Specifically, we suggest that you summarize what “they say” as soon as you can in your text, and remind readers of it at strategic points as your text unfolds. (20–21)

As you write, think about the bigger picture and what “they” may be saying about your issue:

Give your audience enough background so they know what the issue is and why it’s important. At the same time, it’s essential to note that setting the context doesn’t mean overwhelming audiences with pages of explanations that leave the reader unsure of the paper’s purpose. When driving you don’t go 5 mph for the first ten minutes on the freeway just to warm up. Instead, you quickly build up speed so you can merge onto the freeway and get to your destination.

Here’s an example introduction from a paper about the causes of Celiac disease. Notice how it quickly gives context then asks a focusing question to set up the organization for the paper:

This introduction started with the idea that twenty-five years ago most people had no idea what gluten was, moved on to the idea that today you’re sure to have heard of it, and suggested maybe the audience knows someone with Celiac disease or has seen restaurant menus or offerings in the grocery store. Starting from the very basics (most people had no idea) and moving to the question  What’s responsible for the increase in Celiac disease?  ensures the audience can follow along.

Write What Matters Copyright © 2020 by Liza Long; Amy Minervini; and Joel Gladd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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4 Chapter 4: Drafting a Paper

For many years now, most instruction on student writing tends to focus on process instead of product. Students frequently struggle to get their thoughts together, and as assignment that simply involves an essay with a single deadline can often set a student up for failure. Sometimes, a college paper will have a set of checkpoints built in (a proposal due by a certain day, followed by a draft due by another day, and so on). At other times, students have to provide this structure themselves.

Drafting consists of putting together ideas in a format that a reader will be able to understand. Ideally, a draft will allow a reader to follow the thought process of the writer while still satisfying the reader’s curiosity or interest in particular topics (or subtopics) of a given subject.

Overview:  A lot of teachers remember writing essays using a combination of notecards, annotated bibliographies, and outlines. Others might have experienced peer workshops and drafting. Many teachers, however, have not had the need to sit down and think about why these steps are necessary. Some teachers might not even have accepted that the steps are necessary.

On a functional level, focusing on the process of writing (instead of just the final essay) gives students a chance to organize and to develop their ideas. It also allows teachers a chance to determine when or where a student has encountered difficulties.

Application:  Most writing has steps, and even if those steps vary from class to class or from assignment to assignment, time needs to be built into both teacher and student schedules to finish each of these steps. Additionally, it tends to be more rewarding for students and teachers alike if at least a single checkpoint is built into the writing process (e.g. a proposal that is due, a bibliography that is turned in, or a draft that is contemplated by classmates).

A student in a class without these built-in checkpoints needs to work hard to develop them, and students in such classes really need to create their own chances to talk with faculty about their progress. On the other hand, faculty who lack the time or the ability to build in these checkpoints need to be understanding of the difficulties students will face with completion and with the development of their ideas.

What to Avoid:  Don’t think of an essay as something that happens in a single sitting or at a single moment in time.

LENGTH versus DEPTH

Students, teachers, tutors, and online study guides all get it wrong. When we talk about essays, we really shouldn’t talk about how long an essay is; we should talk about how deep an essay is. Plenty of essays can be fairly long without making a valid argument, but it’s a lot less likely for an essay to be short and to still include everything that it needs.

Overview:  Imagine typing the same sentence over and over again until it filled six pages. Does that fulfill the requirement of a six-page essay? Maybe it does, but only in the minds of those deliberately trying to undermine the learning environment. Likewise, imagine writing just one sentence that happens to make a valid factual claim and turning it in for the six-page assignment. Isn’t that one valid claim enough? Shouldn’t the ‘essay’ be judged on quality instead of quantity?

Not really. Both of these fictional student responses to an assignment overlook the idea of development. Take a moment to think about the reasons a teacher might have for assigning an essay. Most of the time, when college instructors are asked why they assign essays, they give the same basic answers: essay assignments are designed to check a student’s knowledge of an issue, to require a student to think critically about course content, and to improve the ability of a student to put course content into a broader context. Neither the ‘repeat the same content over and over again’ example nor the ‘cut all of the content down to the shortest possible answer’ example fulfills these goals.

Application:  In order to demonstrate knowledge of an issue, a student needs to be able to explain that issue (in this case, in writing) in a way that is clear. Simply copying and pasting the Wikipedia entry doesn’t display this knowledge any more than driving through a fast-food restaurant displays an understanding of cooking. This is why even with proper source citation, direct quotation tends to be less meaningful than a student paraphrasing content into his or her own words—the first simply checks a box, while the second requires a bit more understanding.

Likewise, writing an essay about the content of a course usually requires the student to support a claim about one of the subjects the course covers (an essay needs a thesis, or something like a thesis). However, the real length of a good essay does not come from repeating the same point. It comes from developing an idea. Frequently, students are expected to show their work. In math, students are asked to explain how they reached the answers. In argument, students are expected to explain what evidence, and what reasoning, supports their theses. For students who really struggle to find ideas, both the Toulmin model and the scientific method offer suggestions for how such essays can be structured.

What to Avoid:  Try not to think of an essay as an attempt to explain why you, personally, support your main claim. Instead, think of an essay as an effort to demonstrate the knowledge and understanding that went into reaching a conclusion.

ORGANIZATION

If you have ever had a discussion end only to think, five minutes or five hours later, “oh, I should have said ______,” then you understand how frustrating it can be to try to organize an essay. Our best thoughts rarely occur to us when they are most useful, and even good ideas can seem silly when they are stranded without support or context. This is why organization is key for college-level essays.

Overview:  One of the most frustrating things about writing anything, let alone writing essays for a grade, is how difficult it can be to organize thoughts into a meaningful form. Many different strategies have been proposed, and most of them work a little bit. One thing that seldom works is for a writer to keep all of the thoughts on the screen in the order those thoughts happen to drift through his or her head. However, the solution is rarely as simple as ‘outlining’ a potential essay in advance. Instead, organizing an essay requires understanding its goals.

An essay that is asking for a student to demonstrate an understanding of course content should probably focus most of its body on that course content, with very little ‘off topic’ on external material. On the other hand, an essay that specifically asks students to contextualize their writing should probably split its content much more evenly, with frequent connections being drawn between lecture notes, the textbook, and the broader world.

Application:  Students writing college-level essays should remember their readers. Information should be presented with the mindset of explaining related facts to someone who wants to understand why the essay presents its thesis or central claim.

Writers of college essays have a major advantage over writers of professional documents. A writing assignment given by an instructor is almost certainly possible (not easy, but possible). Other students have likely struggled with and completed the assignment before. However, this advantage also has a downside—instructors grading college-level essays have seen good and bad versions before. They already have their own preferences. Be sure to ask about and to include these preferences in your own writing. Remember that it is not your place to organize your essay the way you prefer; it is your responsibility to organize the essay in a way your reader will think makes sense.

What to Avoid:  Don’t think of organization as a one-time thing. It is a process. Students need to set aside time to evaluate how their essays are organizes as they write them.

TRANSITIONS AND PARAGRAPHING

Even if you have a good, general idea of how you want to organize your thoughts, it can be difficult to move from major idea to major idea. It can be even harder to decide which ideas belong together.

Overview:  Whenever you’re trying to get somewhere new, you need directions. Whether you look at a map, read road signs, or have a navigation system guiding you, you need to know ‘what’s next.’ Reading an essay also requires guidance.

It is the responsibility of the author of an essay to explain how two different ideas relate. Transitions are supposed function like road signs or navigational signals, telling readers what relationships exist between ideas while also serving to indicate what differences merit the move from one section of an argument to the next.

Paragraphs, on the other hand, are a bit more complex. In a general sense, a paragraph is a group of related sentences connected by a shared focus. However, that’s not a very useful definition. Instead, it’s helpful to think of a paragraph as a bite of information. If you ‘feed’ your reader to small of a bite, it’s not very interesting; if you offer too big of a bite, it’s going to be hard for your reader to process it all. Instead, a paragraph should be broken in two whenever it is getting too big to understand. The easiest place to break a paragraph is when it essential to understand the first section—and to reflect on it—before reading the second section.

Application:  Students should be certain that they write a document that is easy to navigate, posting ‘signs’ along the way to help a reader. If it is difficult to explain the relationship between two ideas, the student writer should consider the possibility that one or both of the ideas needs to be moved to another part of the essay, closer to the sections it does relate to.

Likewise, paragraphs need to be seen from the perspective of the reader, not the author. Look at a paragraph and imagine it is in an assigned reading such as a textbook. Is it massive and daunting? Would you think about skimming it? Is it so small and vague that you wonder why it is left to stand on its own? Paragraphs do not have a magic length—complex arguments might have longer paragraphs than simple narratives, for example—but by remembering that each paragraph needs to be used by somebody else, student writers can get closer to managing the length and form of their essays.

What to Avoid:  Do not assume that simply because you intuit a relationship between ideas that your readers will agree. Don’t forget that someone needs to read the document after you’ve written it—turning in the essay is only the midpoint of the process.

REVISION and EDITING

Think about a professional athlete, musician, or actor. Imagine if, after each performance, that person could take back the worst quarter of his or her actions and try them over again. The ball is never dropped, the note is never misplayed, and the line is never forgotten. The ability to revisit a performance is a rare opportunity, and yet most amateur writers fail to take advantage of the chance. There are two ways to improve a writing performance after the fact: revision and editing.

Overview:  Spending long periods of time thinking about a subject and trying to explain that subject in a clear, concise, and objective manner is not a skill most people practice. Opinions tend to be reached gradually, over time, and are then offered for discussion. Dialogue occurs. Then, all parties move on. College essays don’t work this way. As a result, writing an essay is a very strange experience. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that many of us aren’t very good at it. The first time a student writes an essay for a college course might be the first time that student seriously thinks about the causes of World War I, the role of convergent evolution in biology, or the ethics of anti-smoking policies. Therefore, the initial draft of such an essay is likely to be shaky. Thoughts are probably incomplete. Evidence might be poorly explained.

After this first attempt at writing the essay, then, students should try to look at the essay again and try to see what needs to be changed. This process takes time. It means that the essay cannot be put off until right before the due date. It means that the student needs to spend even more time on a single assignment. However, it also means that one aspect of the student’s course performance is completely under his or her own control—because the student can keep working on the essay until it makes sense. This process, revision, is different than editing.

Editing is a more familiar process to many students. Editing consists of going through a written document and fixing mistakes. Proofreading an essay can help a student spot misspelled words, and looking over a document can allow for corrections of minor factual errors. Editing can be done after a desperate attempt to finish an essay just before a deadline, and frequent editing can help a student create writing that communicates clearly.

Application:  When a draft is complete, the student who wrote the essay needs to take some time away from the essay (anywhere from thirty minutes to a couple of days, depending on the schedule). Then, the student needs to return to the draft and look at it honesty and critically. This is when having a friend or family member look at the draft can be a good idea, but only if this other person is going to be critical—blind support and encouragement isn’t all that useful. Once the student has looked at the draft and taken some notes on what need to get better, it’s time to go back to writing.

Editing and proofreading should not happen once. Students who proofread need to be aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. Struggle with punctuation? Then go over that part twice. Have trouble with spelling? Then stop relying on spell-checking software and go through the document slowly. The essay is a part of your course performance that is under your control. Take advantage of this opportunity.

What to Avoid:  Don’t confuse revision and editing. It is possible to revise a document and still to fail in editing it. Likewise, just because a document has been proofread does not mean that it has been revised.

Writing Academic Arguments Copyright © by Joshua P. Sunderbruch. All Rights Reserved.

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V. G. Belinsky 1847

Letter to N. V. Gogol [1]

Written : July 3, 1847; Source : V.G. Belinsky: Selected Philosophical Works Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1948; Transcribed : Harrison Fluss for marxists.org, February 2008.

You are only partly right in regarding my article as that of an angered man: that epithet is too mild and inadequate to express the state to which I was reduced on reading your book. But you are entirely wrong in ascribing that state to your indeed none too flattering references to the admirers of your talent. No, there was a more important reason for this. One could endure an outraged sense of self-esteem, and I should have had sense enough to let the matter pass in silence were that the whole gist of the matter; but one cannot endure an outraged sense of truth and human dignity; one cannot keep silent when lies and immorality are preached as truth and virtue under the guise of religion and the protection of the knout.

Yes, I loved you with all the passion with which a man, bound by ties of blood to his native country, can love its hope, its honor, its glory, one of its great leaders on the path toward consciousness, development, and progress. And you had sound reason for losing your equanimity at least momentarily when you forfeited that love. I say that not because I believe my love to be an adequate reward for a great talent, but because I do not represent a single person in this respect but a multitude of men, most of whom neither you nor I have ever set eyes on, and who, in their turn, have never set eyes on you. I find myself at a loss to give you an adequate idea of the indignation your book has aroused in all noble hearts, and of the wild shouts of joy that were set up on its appearance by all your enemies, both the nonliterary – the Chichikovs, the Nozdrevs, and the mayors...and by the literary, whose names are well known to you. You see yourself that even those people who are of one mind with your book have disowned it. Even if it had been written as a result of deep and sincere conviction, it could not have created any impression on the public other than the one it did. And it is nobody’s fault but your own if everyone (except the few who must be seen and known in order not to derive pleasure from their approval) received it as an ingenious but all too unceremonious artifice for achieving a purely earthly aim by celestial means. Nor is that in any way surprising; what is surprising is that you find it surprising. I believe that is so because your profound knowledge of Russia is only that of an artist, but not of a thinker, whose role you have so ineffectually tried to play in your fantastic book. Not that you are not a thinker, but that you have been accustomed for so many years to look at Russia from your beautiful far-away ; [2] and who does not know that there is nothing easier than seeing things from a distance the way we want to see them; for in that beautiful far-away you live a life that is entirely alien to it; you live in and within yourself or within a circle of the same mentality as your own that is powerless to resist your influence on it. Therefore you failed to realize that Russia sees her salvation not in mysticism or asceticism or pietism, but in the successes of civilization, enlightenment, and humanity. What she needs is not sermons (she has heard enough of them!) or prayers (she has repeated them too often!), but the awakening in the people of a sense of their human dignity lost for so many centuries amid dirt and refuse; she needs rights and laws conforming not to the preaching of the church but to common sense and justice, and their strictest possible observance. Instead of which she presents the dire spectacle of a country where men traffic in men, without even having the excuse so insidiously exploited by the American plantation owners who claim that the Negro is not a man; a country where people call themselves not by names but by nicknames such as Vanka, Vaska, Steshka, Palashka; a country where there are not only no guarantees for individuality, honor and property, but even no police order, and where there is nothing but vast corporations of official thieves and robbers of various descriptions. The most vital national problems in Russia today are the abolition of serfdom and corporal punishment and the strictest possible observance of at least those laws that already exist. This is even realized by the government itself (which is well aware of how the landowners treat their peasants and how many of the former are annually done away with by the latter), as is proved by its timid and abortive half-measures for the relief of the white Negroes and the comical substitution of the single-lash knout by a cat-o-three tails. [3]

Such are the problems that prey on the mind of Russia in her apathetic slumber! And at such a time a great writer, whose astonishingly artistic and deeply truthful works have so powerfully contributed toward Russia’s awareness of herself, enabling her as they did to take a look at herself as though in a mirror – publishes a book in which he teaches the barbarian landowner to make still greater profits out of the peasants and to abuse them still more in the name of Christ and Church....And would you expect me not to become indignant?... Why, if you had made an attempt on my life I could not have hated you more than I do for these disgraceful lines.... And after this, you expect people to believe the sincerity of your book’s intent! No! Had you really been inspired by the truth of Christ and not by the teaching of the devil you would certainly have written something entirely different in your new book. You would have told the landowner that since his peasants are his brethren in Christ, and since a brother cannot be a slave to his brother, he should either give them their freedom or, at least, allow them to enjoy the fruits of their own labor to their greatest possible benefit, realizing, as he does, in the depths of his own conscience, the false relationship in which he stands toward them.

And the expression “ Oh, you unwashed snout, you! ” From what Nozdrev and Sobakevich did you overhear it, in order to present it to the world as a great discovery for the edification and benefit of the peasants, whose only reason for not washing is that they have let themselves be persuaded by their masters that they are not human beings? And your conception of the national Russian system of trial and punishment, whose ideal you have found in the foolish saying that both the guilty and innocent should be flogged alike? [4] That, indeed, is often the case with us, though more often than not it is the man who is in the right who takes the punishment, unless he can ransom himself, and for such occasions another proverb says: guiltlessly guilty! And such a book is supposed to have been the result of an arduous inner process, a lofty spiritual enlightenment! Impossible! Either you are ill – and you must hasten to take a cure, or...I am afraid to put my thought into words! ...

Proponent of the knout, apostle of ignorance, champion of obscurantism and Stygian darkness, panegyrist of Tartar morals – what are you about! Look beneath your feet – you are standing on the brink of an abyss!... That you base such teaching on the Orthodox Church I can understand: it has always served as the prop of the knout and the servant of despotism; but why have you mixed Christ up in it? What have you found in common between Him and any church, least of all the Orthodox Church? He was the first to bring to people the teaching of freedom, equality, and brotherhood and to set the seal of truth to that teaching by martyrdom. And this teaching was men’s salvation only until it became organized in the Church and took the principle of Orthodoxy for its foundation. The Church, on the other hand, was a hierarchy, consequently a champion of inequality, a flatterer of authority, an enemy and persecutor of brotherhood among men – and so it has remained to this day. But the meaning of Christ’s message has been revealed by the philosophical movement of the preceding century. And that is why a man like Voltaire who stamped out the fires of fanaticism and ignorance in Europe by ridicule, is, of course, more the son of Christ, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, than all your priests, bishops, metropolitans, and patriarchs – Eastern or Western. Do you really mean to say you do not know that! Now it is not even a novelty to a schoolboy...Hence, can it be that you, the author of The Inspector General and Dead Souls, have in all sincerity, from the bottom of your heart, sung a hymn to the nefarious Russian clergy whom you rank immeasurably higher than the Catholic clergy? Let us assume that you do not know that the latter had once been something, while the former had never been anything but a servant and slave of the secular powers; but do you really mean to say you do not know that our clergy is held in universal contempt by Russian society and the Russian people? About whom do the Russian people tell dirty stories? Of the priest, the priest’s wife, the priest’s daughter, and the priest’s farm hand. Does not the priest in Russia represent the embodiment of gluttony, avarice, servility, and shamelessness for all Russians? Do you mean to say that you do not know all this? Strange! According to you the Russian people is the most religious in the world. That is a lie! The basis of religiousness is pietism, reverence, fear of God. Whereas the Russian man utters the name of the Lord while scratching himself somewhere. He says of the icon: If it works, pray to it; if it doesn ’t , it ’s good for covering pots.

Take a closer look and you will see that it is by nature a profoundly atheistic people. It still retains a good deal of superstition, but not a trace of religiousness. Superstition passes with the advances of civilization, but religiousness often keeps company with them too; we have a living example of this in France, where even today there are many sincere Catholics among enlightened and educated men, and where many people who have rejected Christianity still cling stubbornly to some sort of god. The Russian people is different; mystic exaltation is not in its nature; it has too much common sense, a too lucid and positive mind, and therein, perhaps, lies the vastness of its historic destinies in the future. Religiousness has not even taken root among the clergy in it, since a few isolated and exceptional personalities distinguished for such cold ascetic contemplation prove nothing. But the majority of our clergy has always been distinguished for their fat bellies, scholastic pedantry, and savage ignorance. It is a shame to accuse it of religious intolerance and fanaticism; instead it could be praised for exemplary indifference in matters of faith. Religiosity among us appeared only in the schismatic sects who formed such a contrast in spirit to the mass of the people and who were numerically so insignificant in comparison with it.

I shall not expatiate on your panegyric to the affectionate relations existing between the Russian people and its lords and masters. I shall say point-blank that panegyric has met sympathy nowhere and has lowered you even in the eyes of people who in other respects are very close to you in their views. As far as I am concerned, I leave it to your conscience to admire the divine beauty of the autocracy (it is both safe and profitable), but continue to admire it judiciously from your beautiful far-away: at close quarters it is not so attractive, and not so safe....I would remark but this: when a European, especially a Catholic, is seized with religious ardor he becomes a denouncer of iniquitous authority, similar to the Hebrew prophets who denounced the iniquities of the great ones of the earth. We do quite the contrary: no sooner is a person (even a reputable person) afflicted with the malady that is known to psychiatrists as religiosa mania than he begins to burn more incense to the earthly god than to the heavenly one, and so overshoots the mark in doing so that the former would fain reward him for his slavish zeal did he not perceive that he would thereby be compromising himself in society’s eyes.... What a rogue our fellow the Russian is!...

Another thing I remember you saying in your book, claiming it to be a great and incontrovertible truth, is that literacy is not merely useless but positively harmful to the common people. What can I say to this? May your Byzantine God forgive you that Byzantine thought, unless, in committing it to paper, you knew not what you were saying...But perhaps you will say: “Assuming that I have erred and that all my ideas are false, but why should I be denied the right to err and why should people doubt the sincerity of my errors?” Because, I would say in reply, such a tendency has long ceased to be a novelty in Russia. Not so very long ago it was drained to the lees by Burachok [an advocate of “official nationality"] and his fraternity. Of course, your book shows a good deal more intellect and talent (though neither of these elements is very richly represented) than their works; but then they have developed your common doctrine with greater energy and greater consistence; they have boldly reached its ultimate conclusions, have rendered all to the Byzantine God and left nothing for Satan; whereas you, wanting to light a taper to each of them, have fallen into contradiction, upholding, for example, Pushkin, literature, and the theater, all of which, in your opinion, if you were only conscientious enough to be consistent, can in no way serve the salvation of the soul but can do a lot toward its damnation...Whose head could have digested the idea of Gogol’s identity with Burachok? You have placed yourself too high in the regard of the Russian public for it to be able to believe you sincere in such convictions. What seems natural in fools cannot seem so in a man of genius. Some people have been inclined to regard your book as the result of mental derangement verging on sheer madness. But they soon rejected such a supposition, for clearly that book was not written in a single day or week or month, but very likely in one, two, or three years; it shows coherence; through its careless exposition one glimpses premeditation, and the hymn to the powers-that-be nicely arranges the earthly affairs of the devout author. That is why a rumor has been current in St. Petersburg to the effect that you have written this book with the aim of securing a position as tutor to the son of the heir apparent. Before that, your letter to [Minister of Education] Uvarov became known in St. Petersburg, wherein you say that you are grieved to find that your works about Russia are misinterpreted; then you evince dissatisfaction with your previous works and declare that you will be pleased with your own works only when the Tsar is pleased with them. Now judge for yourself. Is it to be wondered at that your book has lowered you in the eyes of the public both as a writer and still more as a man?...

You, as far as I can see, you do not properly understand the Russian public. Its character is determined by the condition of Russian society in which fresh forces are seething and struggling for expression; but weighed down by heavy oppression, and finding no outlet, they induce merely dejection, weariness, and apathy. Only literature, despite the Tartar censorship, shows signs of life and progressive movement. That is why the title of writer is held in such esteem among us; that is why literary success is easy among us even for a writer of little talent. The title of poet and writer has long since eclipsed the tinsel of epaulets and gaudy uniforms. And that especially explains why every so-called liberal tendency, however poor in talent, is rewarded by universal notice, and why the popularity of great talents that sincerely or insincerely give themselves to the service of orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality declines so quickly. A striking example is Pushkin who had merely to write two of three verses in a loyal strain and don the kammer-iunker ’s livery to forfeit popular affection immediately! And you are greatly mistaken if you believe in all earnest that your book has come to grief not because of its bad trend, but because of the harsh truths alleged to have been expressed by you about all and sundry. Assuming you could think that of the writing fraternity, but then how do you account for the public? Did you tell it less bitter home truths less harshly and with less truth and talent in The Inspector General and Dead Souls? Indeed, the old school was worked up to a furious pitch of anger against you, but The Inspector General and Dead Souls were not affected by it, whereas your latest book has been an utter and disgraceful failure. And here the public is right, for it looks upon Russian writers as its only leaders, defenders, and saviors against Russian autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality, and therefore, while always prepared to forgive a writer a bad book, will never forgive him a pernicious book. This shows how much fresh and healthy intuition, albeit still in embryo, is latent in our society, and this likewise proves that it has a future. If you love Russia, rejoice with me at the failure of your book!...

I would tell you, not without a certain feeling of self-satisfaction, that I believe I know the Russian public a little. Your book alarmed me by the possibility of its exercising a bad influence on the government and the censorship, but not on the public. When it was rumored in St. Petersburg that the government intended to publish your book in many thousands of copies and to sell it at an extremely low price, my friends grew despondent; but I told them then and there that the book, despite everything, would have no success and that it would soon be forgotten. In fact it is now better remembered for the articles that have been written about it than for the book itself. Yes, the Russian has a deep, though still undeveloped, instinct for truth.

Your conversion may conceivably have been sincere, but your idea of bringing it to the notice of the public was a most unhappy one. The days of naive piety have long since passed, even in our society. It already understands that it makes no difference where one prays and that the only people who seek Christ and Jerusalem [5] are those who have never carried Him in their breasts or who have lost Him. He who is capable of suffering at the sight of other people’s sufferings and who is pained at the sight of other people’s oppression bears Christ within his bosom and has no need to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The humility you preach is, first of all, not novel, and, second, it savors on the one hand of prodigious pride, and on the other of the most shameful degradation of one’s human dignity. The idea of becoming a sort of abstract perfection, of rising above everyone else in humility, is the fruit of either pride or imbecility, and in either case leads inevitably to hypocrisy, sanctimoniousness, and incomprehensibility. Moreover, in your book you have taken the liberty of expressing yourself with gross cynicism not only of other people (that would be merely impolite) but of yourself -- and that is vile, for if a man who strikes his neighbor on the cheek evokes indignation, the sight of a man striking himself on the cheek evokes contempt. No, you are not illuminated; you are simply beclouded; you have failed to grasp either the spirit or the form of Christianity of our time. Your book breathes not the true Christian teaching but the morbid fear of death, of the devil and of hell!

And what language, what phrases! “Every man hath now become trash and a rag” -do you really believe that in saying hath instead of has you are expressing yourself biblically? How eminently true it is that when a man gives himself wholly up to lies, intelligence and talent desert him. If this book did not bear your name, who would have thought that this turgid and squalid bombast was the work of the author of Inspector General and Dead Souls ?

As far as I myself am concerned, I repeat: You are mistaken in taking my article to be an expression of vexation at your comment on me as one of your critics. Were this the only thing to make me angry I would have reacted with annoyance to it alone and would have dealt with all the rest with unruffled impartiality. But it is true that your criticism of your admirers is doubly bad. I understand the necessity of sometimes having to rap a silly man whose praises and ecstasies make the object of his worship look ridiculous, but even this is a painful necessity, since, humanly speaking, it is somehow awkward to reward even false affection with enmity. But you had in view men who, though not brilliantly clever, are not quite fools. These people, in their admiration of your works, have probably uttered more ejaculations than talked sense about them; still, their enthusiastic attitude toward you springs from such a pure and noble source that you ought not to have betrayed them completely to your common enemies and accused them, into the bargain, of wanting to misinterpret your works. [6] You, of course, did that while carried away by the main idea of your book and through indiscretion, while Viazemskii, that prince in aristocracy and helot in literature, developed your idea and printed a denunciation against your admirers (and consequently mostly against me). [7] He probably did this to show his gratitude to you for having exalted him, the poetaster, to the rank of great poet, if I remember rightly for his “pithless, dragging verse.” [8] That is all very bad. That you were merely biding your time in order to give the admirers of your talent their due as well (after having given it with proud humility to your enemies)- I was not aware; I could not, and, I must confess, did not want to know it. It was your book that lay before me and not your intentions: I read and reread it a hundred times, but I found nothing in it that was not there, and what was there deeply offended and incensed my soul.

Were I to give free rein to my feelings this letter would probably grow into a voluminous notebook. I never thought of writing you on this subject, though I longed to do so and though you gave all and sundry printed permission to write you without ceremony with an eye to the truth alone. [9] Were I in Russia I would not be able to do it, for the local “Shpekins” open other people’s letters not merely for their own pleasure but as a matter of official duty, for the sake of informing. This summer incipient consumption has driven me abroad, [and Nekrasov has forwarded me your letter to Salzbrunn, which I am leaving today with Annenkov for Paris via Frankfort-on-Main]. [10] The unexpected receipt of your letter has enabled me to unburden my soul of what has accumulated there against you on account of your book. I cannot express myself by halves, I cannot prevaricate; it is not in my nature. Let you or time itself prove to me that I am mistaken in my conclusions. I shall be the first to rejoice in it, but I shall not repent what I have told you. This is not a question of your or my personality; it concerns a matter that is of greater importance than myself or even you; it is a matter that concerns the truth, Russian society, Russia. And this is my last concluding word: If you have had the misfortune of disowning with proud humility your truly great works, you should now disown with sincere humility your last book, and atone for the dire sin of its publication by new creations that would be reminiscent of your old ones.

Salzbrunn, July 15, 1847.

1. The publication of Selected Passages from Correspondence, with Friends was not a complete surprise for Belinsky. Six months before Gogol had published in the Sovremennik, Moskovskiye Vedomosti and Mosk-vityanin an article entitled Odyssey, which was later embodied as a separate chapter in Selected Passages. Belinsky claimed that this article, by its paradoxicalness and “high-flown pretensions to prophetic tone,” distressed “all the friends and admirers of Gogol’s talent and gladdened all his enemies.” Following this article Gogol published a second edition of Dead Souls with a foreword which filled Belinsky with “keen apprehensions regarding the future reputation... of the author of Inspector General and Dead Souls. ” In his review on this second edition Belinsky said that among the most important defects of the poem were those passages in which “the author tries to rise from a poet and artist to an oracle and descends instead to a somewhat turgid and pompous lyricism.” Belinsky, however, reconciled himself with these defects, since such passages were few in the poem and “they can be omitted in reading without diminishing the pleasure which the novel itself affords.” Of much greater importance was the fact that “these mystico-lyrical sallies in Dead Souls were not simple and accidental errors on the part of the author, but the germ of the perhaps utter deterioration of his talent and its loss for Russian literature.”

Thus, Belinsky was prepared for the Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends. Their publication nevertheless profoundly shocked him. In a big article dealing with this publication Belinsky, for reasons of censorship, was able to give no more than a mild expression of the indignation which the appearance of this “vile” book aroused in him. In a letter to V. P. Botkin, who had disapproved of his article, Belinsky wrote: “I am... obliged to act against my nature and character: Nature has condemned me to bark like a dog and howl like a jackal but circumstances compel me to mew like a cat and wave my tail like a fox. You say that the article is ‘written without sufficient premeditation and straight from the shoulder, whereas the matter should have been handled with subtlety.’ My dear friend, but my article, on the contrary, could never have done justice to such an important theme (albeit of negative importance) as the book it deals with precisely because I premeditated it. How little you know me! All my best articles are unpremeditated, just improvizations; in sitting down to them I never knew what I was going to write...The article on Gogol’s vile book might have turned out to be a splendid one had I been able to shut my eyes and let myself go to the full range of my indignation and fury...But I had premeditated this article, and I knew beforehand that it would not be brilliant, for I merely struggled to make it business-like and to show the baseness of an infamous wretch. And such it has come from under my pen, and not in the way you have read it. You people live in the country and know nothing. The effect of this book was such that Nikitenko, who passed it, deleted some of my quotations from the book, and trembled for those he bad left in my article. At least a third of my own copy was deleted...You reproach me for having lost my temper. But I did not try to keep it. Tolerance to error I can well understand and appreciate, at least in others if not in myself, but tolerance to villainy 1 will not stand. You have .utterly failed to understand this book if you regard it only as an error ar;d do not see it as studied villainy besides. Gogol is not at all K. S. Ak-sakov. It is Talleyrand, Cardinal Fesch, who deceived God all his life and fooled Satan at his death.”

Belinsky’s article, such as it appeared, created a strong impression on Gogol, though he failed to grasp its import. It struck him that Belinsky was angered with him only because he took personal exception to the attacks against the critics and journalists scattered throughout the Correspondence. In this connection Gogol wrote to Prokopovich on June 20, 3847: “This irritation grieves me very much.... Please have a talk with Belinsky and let me know in what frame of mind he now is with regard to me. If his bile is stirred up let him vent it against me in the Sovremennik in whatever terms he pleases, but let him not harbour it in his breast against me. If his wrath has abated give him the enclosed epistle.” Prokopovich handed over the “epistle” to the editorial office of the Sovremennik, and N. A. Nekrasov forwarded it on to Salzbrunn where Belinsky was then sojourning. Gogol, inter alia, wrote Belinsky: “I was grieved to read your article about me in the 2nd issue of the Sovremennik. Not that I deplored the degradation in which you wanted to place me before everyone, but because it betrays the voice of a man who is angry with me. And I would not like to make even a man who did not like me angry with me, still less you, of whom I had always thought as of a man who loved me. I had no intention of causing you distress in a single place of my book. How it has happened that I have roused the anger of every single man in Russia I cannot for the time being understand.” After scanning Gogol’s letter, Belinsky, in the words of P. V. Annenkov, flushed and murmured: “Ah, he does not understand why people are angry with him – he must have that explained to him – I shall answer him.” Three days later his reply was ready. Belinsky read it to P. V. Annenkov. The latter, writing of the impression which this reply made on him, said: “I was alarmed both by the tone and tenor of this reply, and, of course, not for Belinsky’s sake, since no special consequences of foreign correspondence among acquaintances could have been anticipated at the time. I was alarmed for Gogol’s sake, who was to have received this reply, and I could vividly imagine his position the minute he began to read this scathing indictment. The letter did not merely contain a denunciation of his views and opinions; the letter revealed the emptiness and ugliness of all Gogol’s ideals, of all his conceptions of goodness and honour, of all the moral principles of his life, together with the egregious position of those circles whose defender he professed himself to be. I wanted to explain to Belinsky the whole scope of his passionate speech, but he knew that, it appears, better than I, ‘But what else was to be done’.-” he said. ‘All measures should be taken to protect people against a rabid man, even though it were Homer himself. As for insulting Gogol, I could never insult him as he has insulted me in my soul and in my faith in him.’ “ A. I. Herzen, to whom Belinsky read his letter to Gogol, told Annenkov: “It is a work of genius – and, I believe, his testament as well.” This letter to Gogol, which was “the epitome of Belinsky’s literary activity,” Lenin considered to be “one of the finest works of the uncensored democratic press, which has preserved its great and vital importance to this day.” (Lenin, Collected Works, Russian edition, Vol. XVII, p. 341.) In this letter Belinsky not only subjected Gogol’s reactionary book to devastating criticism, he exposed the entire feudal and autocratic system of Russia, and only death saved him from severe punishment for this remarkable document. The superintendent of the Third Section, L. V. Dubelt, “regretted” that he was not able to make the great critic “rot in prison. It is known that the Russian writer Dostoyevsky was condemned to death, the sentence later being commuted to penal servitude, for having read Belinsky’s letter in a circle of Petrashevsky adherents. The government’s cruel reprisals, however, could do nothing to prevent Belinsky’s letter from being circulated in thousands of copies. I. S. Aksakov wrote to his father on October 9, 1856, i.e., nine odd years after Belinsky’s letter first appeared: “I have travelled much about Russia: the name of Belinsky is known to every youth who is at’ all given to thinking, to everyone who longs for a breath of fresh air amid the stinking quagmire of provincial life. There is not a single high-school teacher in the gubernia towns who does not know Belinsky’s letter to Gogol by heart.”

Belinsky’s famous letter was first published by A. I. Herzen in The Polar Star in 1855 (2nd ed., London, 1858, pp. 66-76), from which text it was reprinted several times abroad. The full text of this letter appeared in several editions of Belinsky’s works as well as in his Letters published in 1914. The original has not come down to us. The text here given is a reprint from that published in The Polar Star.

2. Gogol went abroad in 1836 where, with short intermissions, he lived for many years.

3. The knout with a single lash used as an instrument of punishment in Russia was substituted by the cat-o’-three tails in accordance with the criminal code of 1845.

4. Gogol had said all this in a letter to Count S. S. Uvarov in April 1845.

5. Gogol in Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends had written of his intention of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

6. Gogol had not mentioned Belinsky by name in his Correspondence, but it was obvious to all that it was him he had in mind when speaking of the critics. Thus in Chapter VII he wrote that Odyssey ... would refreshen criticism. Criticism was tired and confused from dealing with the baffling works of modern literature, it had flown off at a tangent, and, waiving literary topics, was “beginning to dote.”

7. Refers to P. A. Vyazemsky’s article Yazikov and Gogol.

8. In an article On the “ ’s ovremennik ” Gogol -wrote: “Thank God, two of our... first-class poets are still alive and well – Prince Vyazemsky and Yazikov.” Furthermore, having in view a new edition of his Correspondence Gogol asked Prince Vyazemsky: “read, acquaint yourself, strictly examine and set right my book... . Regard the manuscript,” he wrote? “as you would your own cherished property .. And so, dear Prince, do not forsake me, and may God reward you for it, for that will be a truly Christian act of charity.” The praise and this plea apparently had their effect, for Prince Vyazemsky wrote his article Yazikov and Gogol in defence of Gogol’s book.

9. In the foreword to the second edition of Dead Souls Gogol wrote: “Much in this book has been written wrongly, not as things are really happening in the land of Russia. I ask yon, dear reader, to correct me. Do not spurn this matter. I ask you to do it.”

10. The words in brackets were, of course deliberately omitted by Herzen in The Polar Star to avoid giving publicity to the names of Nekrasov and Annenkov mentioned in Belinsky’s letter.

Literary Criticism Archive

Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (1845-1909) - a humanist of modern times

30-06-1996 article, international review of the red cross, no. 312, by vladimir pustogarov.

  Vladimir Vasilievich Pustogarov,   an international jurist and Doctor of Law, was Deputy Director of the Institute of State and Law, Academy of Sciences (USSR), and is currently Senior Researcher at the Institute of Law and Government of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the first monograph on F.F. Martens: "... With the olive branch of peace. F.F. Martens -jurist, diplomat and publicist" (Moscow 1993, 287 pages). In March 1996, he was awarded the Martens Prize of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  

  Original: Russian.  

In the history of humankind, no matter how far back we look into the past, peaceful relations between people and nations have always been the ideal, and yet this history abounds in wars and bloodshed. The documentary evidence, oral tradition and the mute testimony of archaeological sites tell an incontrovertible tale of man's cruelty and violence against his fellow man. Nevertheless, manifestations of compassion, mercy and mutual aid have a no less ancient record. Peace and war, goodneighbourly attitudes and aggression, brutality and humanity exist side by side in the contemporary world as well.

The primary task of modern times is to break this vicious chain and to put an end to war and violence - a goal which is all the more vital because of its close links with the need to prevent the ecological disaster that threatens the whole planet and its inhabitants.

Recipes for the elimination of war are many and varied and are all worthy of attention, but at the same time no one can question the significance and fruitfulness of the noble idea of protecting the life, honour and dignity of human beings by legal means, with the ultimate aim of banishing war itself from international relations. In this connection, the importance of promoting legal awareness is primordial, since homo sapiens behaves in accordance with conceptions formed in his mind, and a legal norm can come into effect only when it becomes inherent in the way of thinking of a large enough number of people. The Ten Commandments of the Bible can be carved on stone tablets, cast in bronze or stamped on steel plates, but will nevertheless remain a dead letter unless they become part of the legal consciousness of society.

The evolution of the moral values that determine the concept of justice ( justitia ) entails changes in the law, including international law, and the crowning points of this development are marked by the names of outstanding lawyers. It is indeed regrettable that our cultural tradition - at least, since the fall of ancient Rome - has placed lawyers far from the vanguard, behind emperors and army commanders, men of letters and painters. The poems of the 12th century minnesinger Walter von der Vogelweide are still included in anthologies of German verse, Napoleon and Suvorov are still legendary heroes of the past and the canvases of Titian and Rubens are still regarded as masterpieces - but who remembers Eike von Räphoff, the first codifierof mediaeval law and the author of the rhymed Saxon Mirror ?

It was not until the 17th century that Hugo Grotius became widely known in Europe and more centuries passed before international developments in the last quarter of the 19th century brought forth a brilliant galaxy of international law experts from various countries who laid the foundations of contemporary international law.

One of the most outstanding representatives of this pleiad was Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (1845-1909), a Russian jurist, diplomat and publicist whose influence on international law is appreciable to this day.

  Martens as an international lawyer  

F.F. Martens was born into a poor family in the town of Pernov (now Pärnu) of the Liefland province of the Russian Empire. At that time the province comprised the territory of modern Latvia and Estonia.

At the age of nine he lost both his parents and was sent to a Lutheran orphanage in St. Petersburg, where he successfully completed the full course of studies at a German high school and in 1863 entered the law faculty of St. Petersburg University.

Very little is known of his childhood and youth. No doubt they were not easy. He himself did not like to recall those years, although sometimes the accumulated bitterness would suddenly burst forth, and he would write in his diary such entries as this one on the occasion of his 60th birthday: " I have never had a worse day in my life, even if I think back to my childhood years " . [1 ] Apparently the hardships of his childhood had not faded from his memory...

At the university the young man was a brilliant student and his gifts caught the attention of I.I. Ivanovsky, the faculty dean, whose support enabled him to continue his studies at the university and to obtain the degree of professor of international law.

Martens soon defended his master's thesis On the law of private property in time of war and was sent on a study tour abroad, attending lectures at the universities of Vienna, Heidelberg and Leipzig. As may be seen from his later works, he was mainly influenced by A.D. Gradovsky, professor of St. Petersburg University, who advocated the ideas of the rights of the individual and West European constitutionalism, by L. von Stein, professor at the University of Vienna, well known for his works on management and " social intercommunication " across State boundaries, and by J.K. Bluntschli, professor at Heidelberg University, who published The Modern International Law of Civilized States in the form of a code.

His growing knowledge of Russian and West European schools of thought helped to broaden his outlook and to develop his spirit of innovation and independent thinking. When delivering his first lecture to students in January 1871, he defiedtradition by not continuing the course begun by his predecessor, but by criticizing the current state of the science of international law, on the grounds that it was not yet based on the study of material factors, was not trying to identify the objective laws of development and " made no attempt to investigate the internal laws of communication between States and of international relations " . Martens believed that it was time to " start looking into the laws of the historical development of nations in their international life " . [2 ] It was indeed bold of the young academic to claim to have created his own school of thought in international law.

Martens was above all opposed to any concept implying that law was based on force. He regarded such views as unworthy of human beings and pernicious for international relations, pointing out that in such cases even prominent experts were confusing law enforcement procedures with law itself, for the fact that law was safeguarde d by force did not mean that force should serve as the basis for law. According to Martens, the inviolability of human life, honour and dignity is recognized to be the right of everyone, not because it is protected by criminal law, but because everyone has an inalienable right to life, honour and dignity.

With regard to the driving force of international law, Martens saw it in the development of international relations, reflecting the nations'need to communicate among themselves: " ubi societas ibi jus est " ( " where there is communication there is law " ). He wrote: " The idea of international communication under which every independent State is an organic part of a single whole, linked with the other States by their common interests and rights, should serve as the basis for a scientific system of contemporary international law " .[3 ]

The real needs of States are constituted by international relations, which in turn are expressed in international law. At the same time, international law is not merely a device for recording the formation of relations between States, but is also a manifestation of the moral values of the human race.

Although a down-to-earth realist, Martens stressed the " ideal power of law " , the power of the ideals of justice and humanity, and as a jurist and a humanist, he saw the basis for an equitable legal order, not in State sovereignty, " political balance " or nationalistic ideas, but solely in law: it is only law and the absolute rule of law that can ever serve as a basis for a properly organized life, free from war and violence.

In his analysis of the history of antiquity, feudalism and the modern era, Martens recorded a steady shift in the correlation between law and force in favour of law. He believed that " in the area of international relations, too, the time will come wh en the great law of social life will finally prevail, and each nation will exist for the world and the world for each nation " . [4 ]

Martens'sublime humanism and foresight caused him to situate the human being at the centre of international life. He concludes that there is but one law running through the entire history of nations, namely " the principle of respect for the human person " .[5 ]

It is to his credit that he placed the human being at the centre of international law in spite of the views prevailing at the time. Martens considered protection of the rights, interests and property of a human being to be the substance of the entire system of international relations and regarded respect for human rights as a yardstick of the degree of civilization of States and international relations. " It is our conviction, " he wrote, " that once the human being as such is recognized by the State to be the source of civil and political rights, international life will reach a high degree of development, law and order. And the reverse is also true - international relations can neither be developed nor established on a firm basis with a State in which the human person enjoys no rights and is oppressed " . [6 ] The wording of Martens'credo is outstandingly clear: " Protection of the individual is the ultimate purpose of the State and goal of international relations " [7 ] - an idea and formulation worthy of the UN Charter or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights!

Martens'humanism was incompatible with the spirit of militarism even that emanating from his own homeland. The essay he contributed to a St. Petersburg journal in connection with the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the University of Bern (Switzerland), to which he was invited as guest of honour, is noteworthy in this respect. Martens was fascinated by the fact that a country as small as Switzerlandhad seven universities, that the university jubilee was being celebrated as a public holiday by the town and the whole canton of Bern and that this little canton maintained a university and provided for it better than Russia did for her institutions. " For us Russians, " he wrote, " the history of this small cantonal University of Bern is enlightening at least by familiarizing us with the experiences and vicissitudes of cultural life " . To this he added: " The Swiss realized long ago what constitutes the true, essential and unshakeable might of every nation. It is not millions of bayonets, an immense national territory or a vast population, but it is the power before which everyone must bow and which triumphs over everything - the power of superior culture, intellect and talent " . [8 ]

Martens'scholarly outlook determined his practical activities as both a lawyer and a diplomat.

  Martens as a diplomat  

Unlike pacifists and representatives of similar trends, Martens considered the idea of the abolition of war in the immediate or more distant future to be purely utopian. In his opinion, the only solution that was compatible with the humane goals of law was to limit the horrors of war by means of clearly defined rules accepted by all States.

It is worth mentioning that in Martens'time an anti-war offensive was being launched from many quarters and along different lines. The number of peace associations was growing. After emerging in the USA and Great Britain, they soon sprang up in a considerable number of countries. By 1895 there were 125 of them, including 36 in Great Britain, 26 in Germany, 14 in France, 14 in Italy, 9 in Switzerland and so forth, and at the beginning of the 20th century Russia was the only European country in which there were none. In Brussels in 1848, the peace associations held their first co ngress, which then became an annual event. Their activities influenced world public opinion by decrying the glorification of war, and the Interparliamentary Conferences held regularly after the first such conference in Paris in 1899 had a similar effect. [9 ]

The idea of joining the civilized States in a single union within which all conflicts would be resolved peacefully was quite popular at the time. One of its most ardent supporters was L.A. Kamarovsky (1846-1909), a Russian jurist best known as the initiator of a permanent international court, who suggested as a first step the establishment of a union of European and American States along the lines of the USA,10 in the belief that strengthening the practice of federalism was important for promoting the idea of peace. [11 ]

The demand for the reduction of armaments and - in some circles - the concept of universal disarmament received relatively wide support among the general public.

The development and production of increasingly devastating weapons triggered a counterreaction, and in 1868, at the initiative of Russia, a number of States signed the St. Petersburg Declaration, renouncing the use, in time of war at sea or on land, " of any projectile of a weight below 400 grammes which is either explosive or charged with fulminating or inflammable substances " . [12 ] That provision was motivated by the desire to avoid excessive human suffering.

Attention is usually concentrated on this particular rule, whereas the Declaration of 1868 contains a number of other important principles, for instance, that " the only legitimate object which States should endeavour to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy " . On the basis of the laws of humanity, the Declaration banned all arms, the use of which would exceed that object of war and called for control to be exercised over future technical improvements of armament s.

Another fast-growing trend in mitigating the horrors of war was towards providing care for the wounded, prisoners of war and civilians. This work received a strong impetus from the activities of Henry Dunant, a young Swiss who had witnessed the aftermath of the bloody battle of Solferino (during the Franco-Austro-Italian War of 1859) and had written a book about that experience: " A Memory of Solferino " . At the end of his book, Dunant proposed that every country should set up a society to care for the wounded and that an international congress should be held on the subject. The proposals fell on fertile soil: the first meeting of the International Committee for Aid to Wounded Soldiers was held in 1863, and 1864saw the adoption of the (Geneva) Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field. Societies for relief to the wounded began to emerge in various countries, and in 1880 Dunant's original Committee became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).  

The picture outlined above should not, however, give a false impression of States'willingness to impose restrictions on armaments and means of warfare or to introduce more humane rules for the conduct of war. At that stage, a new legal awareness was only putting out its first shoots and the law-making process was in its early beginnings. As a matter of fact, Martens himself was soon to face some harsh realities.

  Martens and the laws of war  

With the backing of D.A. Miliutin, the Defence Minister who was close to the Tsar, Martens prepared a draft convention on the laws and customs of war, an instrument which was intended to establish universal rules of w arfare for all belligerent States amd included regulations for the treatment of the civilian population and of non-combatants in general. The rules were designed to mitigate the horrors of war, in accordance with the legal awareness and humanism that were growing among the general public.

At the initiative of Russia, Martens'draft was submitted to the International Conference convened in Brussels in 1874, but that assembly failed to adopt the convention. Although the text itself did not meet with any objection, the idea of restricting war by international rules came up against widespread resistance. The draft was finally adopted as a declaration of the Conference and did not become a convention until two decades later.

The results of the Brussels Conference did not discourage Martens, who defended his views in the press. In 1879, he published a voluminous work entitled The Eastern War and the Brussels Conference in which he strongly castigated the apologists of war. Of great significance was his two-volume course The Contemporary International Law of Civilized Nations, published in 1881-1882, which ran into five editions and continued to be the most authoritative textbook in Russian universities for the next 30 years. It was soon translated into seven languages and was used by various foreign universities.

The publication of the Collection of Treaties and Conventions Concluded by Russia with Foreign States brought him world-wide fame. Its 15 bulky volumes, based on materials in the Russian archives, were issued in 1874-1909. By prefacing each treaty and convention with an essay on its history, Martens turned the collection into " a historical and diplomatic encyclopaedia of Russia's foreign relations " . [13 ]

Martens was an active member of th e Ghent Institute of International Law, participating, inter alia, in its work on documents relating to Red Cross activities. As from 1884, Martens represented Russia at all Red Cross conferences and was particularly active in the review of the initial Red Cross Convention at the Geneva Conference of 1906. In 1902, F.F. Martens received the Red Cross Distinguished Service Award for his services to society.

Martens'authoritative status gradually gained international recognition. During his 40 years of service in the Russian Ministry ofForeign Affairs, he represented Russia at nearly all the international conferences in which it participated. He thus took an active part in preparing the documents for the Berlin Conference on Africa (November 1884-February 1885) and the Brussels Conference on African Affairs (1889-1890), and also in drafting the main provisions of the " General Act on international measures for combating the maritime traffic in negroes " . In 1893, Martens was a delegate to the First Conference on International Private Law and later represented Russia at the Second, Third and Fourth Conferences (1904). He acted as arbitrator in international disputes on a number of occasions, the best-known being his arbitration in the dispute between Great Britain and Holland in 1892: not only did his award satisfy both parties, but he also laid down the principle of a captain's jurisdiction, under the laws of the vessel's flag, for offences committed on the high seas. In 1899, as an umpire of the court of arbitration, Martens examined the territorial dispute between Great Britain and Venezuela (whose interests were represented by the USA). The demarcation line drawn by the court along the Orinoco river basin has ever since constituted the frontier between Venezuela and Guyana. Martens was also a member of the Russian delegation which signed the peace treaty with Japan in Portsmouth (USA) in 1905.

  The Hague Peace Conferences  

The hour of Martens'triumph as a jurist and a diplomat came with the organization and conduct of the First World Peace Conference in The Hague in 1899.

We now know from archival documents that it was none other than Martens who drew up the programme of the Conference. On 12 August 1898, M.N. Muravyov, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, circulated a note among the foreign envoys in St. Petersburg proposing that an international conference be convened with a view to ensuring " genuine peace and primarily putting an end to the progressive development of armaments " . The note, drawn up without any prior consultations, came as a complete surprise to foreign States and was not substantiated by any preliminary drafts or well-considered plans in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs itself. It was, so to speak, " a bare idea " , intended to produce a general impact.

As it happened, the proposal to convene a disarmament conference did meet with an enthusiastic response among certain circles in several countries, and out of consideration for those feelings the Governments of Great Britain, France, Germany and other countries supported the Russian initiative. It was nevertheless clear to Martens who was following the foreign press coverage of the issue and to the senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that none of the Powers were prepared to disarm. Martens was to learn this from his personal experience: when drawing up the conference programme, he quite reasonably assumed that Russia as the initiator should set a tangible, even if minor, example of disarmament, and therefore proposed to declare at the conference that in the year of its holding Russia would reduce the number of its army recruits during that year. Tsar Nicholas II, however, commented as follows on the draft programme: " I find it difficult to agree to a decrease in the strength of the Russian army " .[14 ]

Having obtained a positive public response and seeing that any form of disarmament was utopian, the senior officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were inclined to give the plan for the conference a quiet burial. Minister M.N.Muravyov, for instance, suggested that a meeting of the ambassadors accredited to St. Petersburg, which might come up with some kind of a declaration, should be substituted for the conference.

Martens, who had shouldered the burden of preparations for the conference, was of a different opinion. Although by now he did not believe in the feasibility of any reduction of armaments, he found a way out by transforming the conference on disarmament into the first peace conference.

The programme drawn up by Martens which later served as a basis for the work of the 1899 Hague Conference provided that:

1. With regard to disarmament, a declaration should be adopted to the effect that the States parties " in the near future undertake not to resort to military force for the protection of their rights and legal interests without prior endeavours to seek good offices, mediation or arbitration proceedings " .

In addition to the above it was proposed to discuss some measures for freezing armaments.

2. Another aspect of the Conference's work concerned the establishment of a permanent court of international arbitration.

3. The third aspect of its work was the adoption of a convention on the laws and customs of war.[15 ]

The conference programme suggested by Martens not only brought the disarmament initiative of Russian diplomacy out of a deadlock, but also created a practicable basis for measures aimed at strengthening peaceful relations between nations and mitigating the horrors of war.

When the First Hague Conference opened on 6 May 1899, bringing together the representatives of 27 States (21 European countries, the USA, Mexico, China, Japan, Persia and Siam), Martens was elected Chairman of the Third Commission, dealing with the laws and customs of war.

Although the relevant draft convention had been submitted as early as 1874 in Brussels, the conciliation process in the Third Commission ran into a number of difficulties. At one point, a situation arose which Martens described as " critical " : a group of small countries headed by Belgium opposed the very principle of the rights and duties of armies of occupation, and demanded an unlimited right of resistance for the population of occupied territories. A solution was found in the form of the so-called " Martens clause " , the reservation that he proposed to insert in the preamble to the convention, reading as follows: " ... in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them ( the States Parties - V.P.), the inhabitants and the belligerents remain under the protection and rule of the principles of the law of nations, as they result from the usages established among civilized peoples, from the laws of humanity, and the dictates of the public conscience " .[16 ] Martens'proposal was greeted by applause and the whole convention was adopted unanimously.

In addition to presiding over the Third Commission, Martens repeatedly addressed the plenary meetings of the Conference and spoke in its Second Commission. His merits were so widely recognized that he came to be called " the life and soul of the Conference " .

As a result of the discussions, the First Peace Conference adopted a resolution on the desirability of restricting military budgets, the Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and the Convention for the Pacific Settl ement of International Disputes, which provided in particular for the establishment of a Permanent Court of Arbitration.

The significance of the Conventions signed at the First Peace Conference and the impact they had and still have on the development of contemporary international law do not require any further comment. Individual clauses of the Hague Conventions (including those signed in 1907) have given rise to the development of separate branches of law which have become so topical today. These Conventions are a memorial to F.F. Martens, that outstanding Russian jurist, diplomat and humanitarian. In evaluating Martens'contribution to the overall results of the Conference, Jean Pictet, a well-known expert on international humanitarian law, wrote that the Martens clause had been brought into existence by its author's " genius " . [17 ] It is noteworthy that the full text of a slightly amended version of the Martens clause was included in Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. [18 ]

The articles of the Hague Convention on the Laws and Customs of War look strange to the modern reader. " Prisoners of war may be set at liberty on parole... " (Article 10); it is forbidden " to kill or wound treacherously individuals belonging to the hostile nation or army " , " to declare that no quarter will be given " (Article 23 (a) and (d)); " the pillage of a town or place, even when taken by assault, is prohibited " (Article 28); or (for occupied territories) " pillage is formally forbidden " (Article 47). But all this was a reflection of the contemporary realities of war, and it cannot be said that the provisions of the Hague Conventions are always observed in present-day conflicts. In any case, their humanitarian significance and their effect on legal awareness can hardly be overestimated.

  The Martens clause  

The Second World Peace Conference met in The Hague on 15 June 1907 with 44 countries participating. It was practically a world assembly, or " an international parliament " as Martens put it.

Martens again had to take a most active part in preparing the Conference programme, in its proceedings and in bringing about the adoption of agreed texts of the conventions. On the one hand, the organizational work was considerably facilitated by the fact that the way had been paved by the 1899 Conference, but on the other hand a substantial number of complex questions, left unsettled because of their difficulty, had accumulated for consideration by the Second Conference. In addition, that work had to be carried out in an atmosphere of deteriorating relations between the world Powers and of the formation of military blocs in preparation for a new war. The naval rivalry between Great Britain and Germany was particularly acute.

In the light of this new situation, the Tsar's Government decided to send Martens on a tour round the European capitals with a view to sounding out opinions and holding consultations.

In Berlin he met Kaiser Wilhelm II, in Paris - President Fallières, in London - Lord Grey, the Foreign Secretary, and King Edward VII, in The Hague - the whole royal family, in Italy - King Victor Emmanuel III and in Vienna the Minister of Foreign Affairs von Ehrental and the Emperor Franz Josef. There were also numerous meetings with senior government officials and public figures. This tour by " Professor Martens " created quite a sensation and helped to promote the preparations for the Conference, although it naturally could not smooth over the existing Anglo-German and Franco-German differences. Wilhelm II, in particular, strongly objected to any discussion of the British proposal for the reduction of armaments, threatening to disrupt the conference if such a discussion were to be held. Tsar Nicholas II was greatly influenced by Wilhelm II's position on this issue and Martens had to prove to him the " harmlessness " of the British proposal. The Tsar continued to vacillate, however, and was even thinking of cancelling the Conference altogether.

Those were the circumstances in which the Second Peace Conference, attended by delegates from 44 countries, started its work in The Hague on 15 June 1907. It should be noted in this connection that in Martens'theoretical course congresses of States, regularly convened at a world-wide level, were assigned the role of legislative bodies for the international community, as it was believed at the time that the prevailing trend was towards strengthening that community on the basis of law.

Four commissions were set up at the Conference, and Martens was elected Chairman of the Fourth, or " naval " , Commission, which he called " the most difficult " , since the Anglo-German rivalry was most clearly manifested there and Martens often had to settle differencesbetween the protagonists. The Fourth Commission was nevertheless the first to complete its work, thanks to Martens'experience.

The Second Hague Conference ultimately adopted a Final Act to which 13 Conventions and a Declaration were annexed. The States parties agreed to convene the Third World Peace Conference after a specified interval.

The 1907 Conference revised and further developed a number of the provisions adopted in 1899, with the result that the documents of the First Conference are usually quoted in the form in which they were amended in 1907. The First Peace Conference has in a way been absorbed by its successor, and when reference is made to a Hague Convention it is an instrument of the 1907 Conference that is usually implied. The oblivion into which the First Peace Conference has fallen is politically and legally unjustified, and it would be more equitable to consider both conferences from the point of view of their interrelationship. Russia's initiative to mark the centenary of the 1899 Conference by convening the Third World Peace Conference is therefore worthy of support.

As we have already mentioned, the anti-war offensive was launched from different directions and took various forms, but practical realities soon channelled these activities into two trends which, although interrelated, are legally and structurally quite distinct. One trend focused on the protection of war victims - the wounded, prisoners of war, internees and other non-combatants; the beginning of the codification process in this area being connected with the Geneva Conference of 1864 and the activities of the International Committee of the Red Cross. This trend is referred to in the literature as " the Law of Geneva " , while the other trend, focused on the rules of the conduct of war and constraints on the means of warfare and hence mainly concerned with combatants, has become known as " the Law of The Hague " .

Martens himself personified the unity and organic interrelationship of " the Law of Geneva " and " the Law of The Hague " . He took an active part in the development of " the Law of Geneva " and at the 1899 Hague Conference worked successfully for the adoption of a number of important provisions on non-combatants, primarily defining the status of prisoners of war, the wounded and the shipwrecked during hostilities at sea, as well as the status of civilians in occupied territories. Those provisions were subsequently incorporated in the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949.

  Martens and human rights  

Martens has already been assigned his rightful place among the creators of international humanitarian law with respect to its " Law of Geneva " and " Law of the Hague " branches, but now we can include him among those who laid the foundations of another branch, that of the protection of fundamental human rights. Its codification is considered to start with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, and which some jurists distinguish as " the Law of New York " .19 It was Martens who in his works and lawmaking activities placed the human person at the centre of international life and recognized the protection of the human being to be the ultimate objective of international law.

Fedor Fedorovich Martens died in 1909 and was buried in St. Petersburg.

  Notes :  

1. Archives of Russian Foreign Policy (ARFP), Inventory 787, File 9, Storage unit 6, pp. 73-74.

2. F.F. Martens, On the goals of contemporary international law, St. Petersburg, 1871 (in Russian).

3. F.F. Martens, The contemporary international law of civilized nations , vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1882, p. 178 (in Russian).

4. F.F. Martens, The Eastern War and the Brussels Conference, St. Petersburg, 1879, p. 45 (in Russian).

5. F.F. Martens, op. cit. (note 3), pp. 23-34.

6. Idem , pp. 110-129.

7. Idem.  

8. " The European Herald " , St. Petersburg, 1884, No. 10, pp. 852-858 (in Russian).

9. L.A. Kamarovsky, The success of the idea of peace , Moscow, 1898, pp. 89-179 (in Russian).

10. L.A. Kamarovsky, On an international court, Moscow, 1881, pp. 483-501 (in Russian).

11. L.A. Kamarovsky, The question of an international organization. The United States of Europe . Moscow, 1905 (in Russian).

12. Declaration renouncing the use, in time of war, of explosive projectiles under 400 grammes weight, St. Petersburg 1868 ( " Declaration of St. Petersburg " ).

13. M.A. Taube, F.F. Martens (1845-1909) - An obituary , St. Petersburg, 1909, p. 9 (in Russian). The volumes were published simultaneously in Russian and French.

14. ARFP, Inventory 470, file 63, Ë.450.

15. ARFP, Inventory 787, file 9, storage unit 4, pp. 80-86.

16. As adopted by Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, of 18 October 1907, 8th preambular paragraph.

17. J. Pictet, Development and Principles of International Humanitarian Law, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster/Geneva, 1985, p. 60.

18. Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), of 8 June 1977, Article 1, par. 2.

19. F. Kalshoven, Constraints on the waging of war, ICRC, Geneva, 1987, pp. 7-23.

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2024 NFL Draft takeaways: Best, worst and most interesting pick for each AFC team

Here's how each afc team fared in the 2024 nfl draft.

After months (and likely years) of putting together their big boards, front offices across the country are now starting to put the 2024 NFL Draft in the rearview mirror. The three-day spectacle came to a close on Saturday and an injection of youth is now entering the league. For some clubs, they are hoping this young core can be the foundation they can rest their franchise on. For others, they could be looking to this class to be the final piece that pushes them over the top in their hunt for a Lombardi Trophy in 2024. 

While we are less than a week removed from the draft kicking off and we've yet to see any of these draftees play with their respective teams, we're going to dive into each AFC team and highlight their best, worst and most interesting selection. The best and worst selections are based off the highest and lowest grades given out by our CBS Sports NFL Draft analysts: Pete Prisco, Josh Edwards and Chris Trapasso. Grades for each team's picks  can be found here . 

Baltimore Ravens

Best pick (A+):  OT Roger Rosengarten , Washington (Round 2, Pick 62) 

Quick-setting OT with the athletic chops to get in the face of EDGEs in a hurry. Has to clean up footwork out pulls but has the natural gifts to eventually excel there. Plays very aggressively, which leads to some off-balanced reps. Has to get a touch stronger. I like the OL investment. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C+) : WR Devontez Walker , UNC (Round 4, Pick 113)

Good-sized, well-proportioned downfield burner. Will take the lid off many defenses. Stiffness in his routes and didn't run many in college. Will track it beautifully over his shoulder but not a confident rebounder. Doesn't appear to be a natural hands catcher. Minimal YAC. Niche option that fits what this offense needs. (Chris Trapasso) 

Most interesting pick (B+) : EDGE Adisa Isaac , Penn State (Round 3, Pick 93)

Baltimore bolstered its outside linebacker room with an athletic freak in Isaac. The Penn State product is a bit raw, but has elite traits that should develop nicely under John Harbaugh. 

Buffalo Bills

Best pick (A) :  LB Javon Solomon , Troy (Round 5, Pick 168)

Burst, bend, speed predicated outside EDGE. Small frame but serious length. Unique build. Doesn't get engulfed by bigger blockers as much as expected because of his speed-to-power conversion. Hand work is good, not amazing and can flatten to the QB. Motor hums on every play. Bills needed this type of quick winner on the outside. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : WR Keon Coleman , Florida State (Round 2, Pick 33)

"X" receiver for a WR-needy team. Plays faster than his combine speed but doesn't separate consistently and isn't as good of a contested-catch wideout as his size and highlight-reel would indicate. Young though. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (C-) : WR Keon Coleman, Florida State (Round 2, Pick 33)

We'll double-dip here with Coleman because it was fascinating how he ultimately was the pick for Buffalo. The team traded down from the No. 28 overall pick and allowed the Chiefs to trade Xavier Worthy . Then, they traded down again from No. 32 to allow the Panthers to select Xavier Legette . Those receivers will specifically be linked to the Bills and Coleman throughout his tenure. In any event, he has an opportunity to adopt a ton of targets left by Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis . 

Cincinnati Bengals

Best pick (A) : EDGE Cedric Johnson , Ole Miss (Round 6, Pick 214)

Stocky defensive end with dynamic flashes. Love his swipe move, just wished he utilized it more frequently. Powerful player who has to be coached up on how to utilize his length better to keep blockers off him. Ascending rusher. I like this pick. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (B) : TE Erick All , Iowa (Round 4, Pick 115)

Experienced three-down TE with receiving confidence and production. Has the athleticism to get open on occasion in the NFL and has a flair for the spectacular grab in traffic. Route-running intricacies are a part of what he brings to the field and is a solid albeit unspectacular blocker. Doesn't have serious seam-stretching speed. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Jermaine Burton , Alabama (Round 3, Pick 80)

This pick is fascinating due to the current wide receiver room in Cincinnati, specifically as it relates to Tee Higgins ' trade request. By the Bengals using a Day 2 pick on a receiver, it won't slow down any speculation that they could move off Higgins over the course of the summer. 

Cleveland Browns

Best pick (A+) : DL Michael Hall Jr. , Ohio State (Round 2, Pick 54)

Tremendous selection. Awesome value meets serious need. Young, high-level productivity and athleticism. Hand work is well beyond his years. Could improve beating blocks vs. the run but he holds up well there for an interior rusher. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : IOL Zak Zinter , Michigan (Round 3, Pick 85)

Majorly experienced, linear run-game specialist who's best getting downhill where his lateral limitations aren't exposed. Powerful but could sink his pad level more frequently in the NFL . Disallows him from sitting into his anchor in pass pro. Has to improve on pass plays but brings it for the run. Coming off late-season knee-ligament tear. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Jamari Thrash , Louisville (Round 5, Pick 156)

Cleveland made a big splash in the wide receiver room earlier this offseason by trading for Jerry Jeudy , but don't sleep on Thrash producing in this offense in 2024. He's praised for his quickness and route-running ability. 

Denver Broncos

Best pick (A+) : CB Kris Abrams-Draine , Missouri (Round 5, Pick 145) 

Ultra-pesky inside-outside CB who rocked in the SEC for multiple years. Not incredibly fast nor length with size. Awesome tackling reliability. Routinely finds and makes plays on the football underneath and at intermediate level. Has plus long speed. Spectacular value here. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : QB Bo Nix , Oregon (Round 1, Pick 12)

I don't love Nix, but I get the pick. Desperation forces teams to pick quarterbacks earlier than they should. Sean Payton obviously sees Drew Brees in him, but this is way early. Why not trade down and get him later? (Pete Prisco)

Most interesting pick (A+) : Troy Franklin , Oregon (Round 4, Pick 102) 

Denver needed to replenish its wide receiver room and land a speedster in Franklin. He already has a rapport with Nix as they both come out of Oregon, so it'll be fascinating to see if that can translate at the next level and allow Franklin to make an early impact for Sean Payton. 

Houston Texans

Best pick (A) : S Calen Bullock , USC (Round 3, Pick 78)

Uniquely shaped, spindly safety who has the best pure free safety range in the class. Won't provide much as a run-support player but does give it his all. Quickly IDs routes. Can be fun playmaker at next level if his size doesn't hold him back. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (D+) : RB Jawhar Jordan , Louisville (Round 6, Pick 205)

Tiny RB who plays bigger and doesn't have elite speed nor elusiveness. Even with tinier frame, he sheds tacklers with decent regularity. Even at this late, this feels early. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B+) : TE Cade Stover , Ohio State (Round 4, Pick 123)

Stover has familiarity with C.J. Stroud as they two played together at Ohio State. In 2022, Stoud and Stover connected for 36 catches, 406 yards and five touchdowns. The 6-foot-4, 255 pounder followed that up with a 2023 season where he caught 41 balls for 576 yards and five scores. Dalton Schultz is the TE1 in this offense at the moment and signed through 2026, but Stover could be a factor in short time.

Indianapolis Colts

Best pick (A): WR Adonai Mitchell , Texas (Round 2, Pick 52)

Love this pick for Colts. Exactly the type they like. Size/speed/athleticism specimen. So fluid running routes. Just can have long stretches where he goes invisible. Very minimal YAC. An outside wideout who can win at second and third levels for Anthony Richardson . (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C) : EDGE Jonah Laulu , Oklahoma (Round 7, Pick 234) 

Tall, somewhat sleek interior rusher with great length. Can occasionally win with first-step quicks but not a trademark, and he leans into offensive lineman, which can make him susceptible to beaten controlled. Pass-rush plans have to evolve. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : EDGE Laiatu Latu , UCLA (Round 1, Pick 15)

Indy took the first defensive player at the 2024 NFL Draft in Latu. He absolutely fills a need and there was some pre-draft steam that he gained as the first defensive player to come off the board, but it'll be interesting to see how his career compares with Dallas Turner and Jared Verse , who could've gone off at that spot as well.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Best pick (B+) : OT Javon Foster , Missouri (Round 4, Pick 114) 

College OT who has the frame to stay there but maybe not the overall athletic profile. Power and quick-setting skills shine. Can win ugly and importantly shows recovery skill. This is a smart investment. Just gets the job done on a routine basis. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (D+) : DL Jordan Jefferson , LSU (Round 4, Pick 116) 

Classic wide-bodied DT who thrives against the run. Thick frame. Block-shedding skills are well-developed but has no pass-rush plans. Active on passing downs just rarely gets home. Length is a plus and he's an above-average athlete for a future NT. Not a bad player just limited and this feels early. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B+) : WR Brian Thomas Jr. , LSU (Round 1, Pick 23) 

Thomas Jr. seemed to be in a tier of his own in this draft class. He was looking up to the likes of Marvin Harrison Jr. , Malik Nabers and Rome Odunze , but a tick above the next group. Now that he joins Trevor Lawrence in Jacksonville, I think there's an outside chance that he could be of the bigger impact receivers in this draft, including the Big 3 who went above him.

Kansas City Chiefs

Best pick (A+) : S Jaden Hicks , Washington State (Round 4, Pick 133)

Large, intimidating safety who comes with the full skill set. Can cover tight ends. Deliver big hits over the middle. Make plays on the football with decent regularity. And he tackles well. Awesome addition to Chiefs secondary. Best closer to the line of scrimmage. My top safety in this class. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (B) : OT Kingsley Suamataia , BYU (Round 2, Pick 64)

Boom-or-burst prospect. 2022 was outstanding 2023 was not on film. Burst and especially lateral sliding ability are there. Has hard time locking onto EDGEs and securing them. Slips out of many blocks against the run. Hand work in pass pro can be outstanding at times. Raw but talented. NFL OT frame. Need filled. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Xavier Worthy, Texas (Round 1, Pick 28)

It still boggles my mind that the Bills decided to trade with Kansas City and allow them to move up to get a burner like Worthy. He's drawn comparisons to DeSean Jackson and Andy Reid knows exactly how to utilize that type of talent. It could be a special duo between Worthy and Patrick Mahomes .

Las Vegas Raiders

Best pick (A): IOL Jackson Powers-Johnson , Oregon (Round 2, Pick 44)

Instant starter inside. Guard size with mobile center feet. Shorter arms and some rawness in pass pro. But upside is through the roof. All-Pro caliber in that regard. Smart pick here. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C) : TE Brock Bowers , Georgia (Round 1, Pick 13)

He's a heck of a player, but didn't they draft Michael Mayer last year and signed Harrison Bryant this year? They have other needs. Don't really like this pick that much. It's not like he's a good blocker for their run game. Strange pick with other needs. (Pete Prisco)

Most interesting pick (A-) : RB Dylan Laube , New Hampshire (Round 6, Pick 208)

UNH isn't exactly a breeding ground for NFL talent, but Laube is a fascinating prospect. He's stellar receiving back and has good lateral quickness to evade defenders.

Los Angeles Chargers

Best pick (A) : RB Kimani Vidal , Troy (Round 6, Pick 181) 

This is a future feature back. Stocky, well-built frame. Between the tackles experience and can blend slashing and multi-cut style together. Elusive, sets up blockers well and has effortless power through contact at times. Not a true burner. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C+) : DL Justin Eboigbe , Alabama (Round 4, Pick 105) 

Classic Nick Saban defensive lineman. Two-gapping extraordinaire with thick, powerful frame. Good first-step quickness but won't be a calling card to win as a pass rusher consistently in the NFL. Not a pass-rush move type. Higher floor than upside. Limited role. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A) : WR Ladd McConkey , Georgia (Round 2, Pick 34)

After parting ways with Keenan Allen and Mike Williams this offseason, the Chargers were in desperate need of adding to their wide receiver room. That sprung them to trade up on Day 2 to add McConkey. When healthy, he's one of the top receivers in this class and should be a regular target for Justin Herbert . Health was a factor during his days at Georgia, however, which is worth monitoring at the next level. 

Miami Dolphins

Best pick (A+) : WR Malik Washington , Virginia (Round 6, Pick 184) 

Electric, short not small wideout who was the heartbeat of the Virginia offense after transferring from Northwestern. Wins underneath with explosion and powerful lower half gives him high-end contact balance. Won't be huge separator on full route tree. Leaper who can find it in the air. Good, not great speed. Niche type but a lot of fun. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : OT Patrick Paul , Houston (Round 2, Pick 55) 

Strange fit because this is one of the least mobile blockers in the class. Mike McDaniel typically prioritizes athleticism along his offensive line. Absolutely enormous with supreme length. Hand placement is very inconsistent. Gets outside the shoulder pads. Very experienced. Hits on a need. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : RB Jaylen Wright , Tennessee (Round 4, Pick 120)

I'm curious to see how the backfield reps shake out in Miami. Mike McDaniel already had Raheem Mostert and De'Von Achane as a tandem before before the Wright pick, so it'll be interesting to see how much of a role the Tennessee product can carve out early on.

New England Patriots

Best pick (A+) : WR Javon Baker , UCF (Round 4, Pick 110) 

This is a future No. 1 wideout. While not a burner, he plays faster and has the complete skill set. Releases at the line are good, flexibility to get open at intermediate level, YAC prowess, and especially rebounding skills are high-end. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : IOL Caedan Wallace , Penn State (Round 3, Pick 68)

Sizable framed OT with lumbering feet. Average-at-best athlete. Plays with good calmness and accuracy at second level and has quality power but overall athletic profile was severely threatened often in college. A concern for his NFL future. New England did need to add some OL depth. Worried about his upside. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (C+) : QB Joe Milton, Tennessee (Round 6, Pick 193)

New England drafted not one, but two quarterbacks this year with Tennessee's Joe Milton coming off the board in the sixth. This likely spells the end of Bailey Zappe's time in New England. The arrival of Milton is also a savvy addition for the Patriots because it gives them another lottery ticket in hopes of finding their franchise QB and could prove to be a trade asset down the line if Drake Maye lives up to his No. 3 overall potential.

New York Jets

Best pick (B+) : RB Braelon Allen , Wisconsin (Round 4, Pick 134) 

Not a freaky specimen athletically but enormous RB with loads of experience. One of the youngest prospects in the entire class. Game is predicated on between-the-tackles vision and effortless power through contact. Not elusiveness or speed. Best pass pro RB in the class. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C) : RB Isaiah Davis, South Dakota State (Round 5, Pick 173)

Big, highly athletic feature back without serious top speed but nifty cutting skill at all levels of the field. Will make many defenders miss although could experience some growing pains making step up in competition. Serious feature back potential but another RB? (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : QB Jordan Travis , Florida State (Round 5, Pick 171)

I like the idea of the Jets taking a stab at a talented QB prospect like Travis and allowing him to develop behind Rodgers. While it's unclear if he'll be their QB of the future, it's smart for them to start planning for the post-Rodgers era. 

Pittsburgh Steelers

Best pick (A) : IOL Mason McCormick, South Dakota State (Round 4, Pick 119) 

Six-year player at FCS with four full years of starting experience and it shows. Elite-level athlete with low pad level. Grip strength is tremendous. Balance could use some work. Anchor is solid but overall has to get stronger. But this is an assignment sound blocker with ideal frame and experience to thrive instantly. Love how Pittsburgh has rebuilt its OL. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (B-) : DL Logan Lee , Iowa (Round 6, Pick 178) 

Vintage Steelers pick here. High-caliber athlete who can win at any alignment up front although his productivity in college didn't match how good of an athlete he is. Could stand to add some weight at next level. Has to get stronger but can win with slippery rushes between gaps. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (B-) : WR Roman Wilson , Michigan (Round 3, Pick 84)

Anytime the Steelers draft a wide receiver, you better take notice. Pittsburgh has been a factory of finding stellar receivers at the draft for quite a while and Wilson could be a solid slot option for either Russell Wilson or Justin Fields .  

Tennessee Titans

Best pick (A) : LB Jaylen Harrell , Michigan (Round 7, Pick 252) 

Old-school outside linebacker who can sink in coverage or attack the outside shoulder of the tackle. Smooth, athletic movements to comfortably do either. Shows glimpses of pass-rush promises just doesn't diversify his rushes enough. Must get stronger but does set sturdy edge. Young ascending player. (Chris Trapasso)

Worst pick (C-) : DT T'Vondre Sweat , Texas (Round 2, Pick 38) 

Monstrous NT who finally demonstrated a glimmer of pass-rush capability with hand work as a senior. Not as good against the run or double teams as his size indicates. Probably two-down player in the NFL. Tennessee did need more size inside along the DL, but this is too early for a limited player. (Chris Trapasso)

Most interesting pick (A-) : LB Cedric Gray , UNC (Round 4, Pick 106)

Gray is one of the younger linebackers in this class as he'll only turn 22 in late October. Still, he lands in Nashville as a strong prospect with back-to-back All-ACC first team selections and was a Second Team All-American a year ago. 

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