LAWS10157 Advanced Legal Methods Writing good essays, Study notes of Law

Download LAWS10157 Advanced Legal Methods Writing good essays and more Study notes Law in PDF only on Docsity! Writing good essays a.k.a. What markers want from you! The mark you receive for your essays is a function of several variables. You should focus on what you can control or cultivate. I refer to things like inspiration, preparation, effort, care, general writing talent, understanding of the essay questions, general mood, avoiding distractions etc. Acquiring some of these skills is no easy feat and certainly not one achievable quickly. Some skills require training, so train. More effort and study tend to equal better marks; there is no shortcut. The focus of this vade mecum, however, is not on your skills or your preparation. The purpose of this pamphlet is the avoidance of mark-abating mistakes that are absolutely avoidable but, alas, recurrent. Keeping all the other factors equal, you should be able to optimise your performance by following some suggestions. Do not squander useful points; whatever the substantive quality of your essay, make sure your mark reflects it and is not undercut by amateurish oversight. This document addresses three areas, in turn. First, matters of format are discussed, which have no bearing on the substance of your writing (A). Section (B) tackles stylistic and language issues, and the all-important practice of drafting. The suggestions which concern the substantive quality of your writing are in Section (C). (A) Formatting Matters To operate Word™ and its Apple™ equivalent is a very intuitive activity; you must be familiar with them. The formatting of your essay must be impeccable. There simply is no reason why a dedicated student should not submit a perfectly formatted document. Some circumstances might occur that affect the merits of what you write, sure, never shall you be excused for not taking sixty minutes to ensure the document is, literally, of printable quality format-wise. Any inaccuracy in this compartment will convey an impression of sloppiness that will not help you, and you could have easily avoided. In sparse order: - Include page numbers. - Justify the text. - All the text you copy-paste (bibliographic references, bits of legislation etc.) must be converted into the destination formatting of your document (font, size), especially when you copy text from websites. - Do not fill your cross-references (i.e., when in footnote 21 you refer to a source already cited in footnote 5, and you write “see Fontanelli supra (n 5)”) until the document is ready for submission. Do not ever try to fill them as you go. You will either spend an insane amount of time updating them every time an extra footnote changes the whole numbering or, more typically, submit non-updated cross-references. This is the very last thing to do, before submitting the essay. Pro-tip: use the dedicated Word tool ( Insert  Cross-reference  Footnote). - Choose a referencing style (i.e., the way to refer to sources, normally in the footnotes) before you start writing anything. I recommend OSCOLA because it is very terse: it is easy to memorise and there is less margin for errors. Memorise it and try to use it as you write. Accumulating unformatted references, telling yourself that you will take care of them during some later zen-like formatting session is the dictionary definition of a wishful thought. Inconsistently formatted references are common, easily avoidable and (therefore) very disappointing. They scream sloppiness. - Include clear headlines for each section of your essay (see below). - Your bibliography shall be tidy. Separate primary sources from secondary ones. Separate cases from legislation, and books from articles. Put primary sources in some order (normally chronological) and secondary sources in some order (normally alphabetic, using authors’ surnames). (B) Writing Style Matters Writing well is not easy, but avoiding bad writing is. There is a simple secret to good writing: drafting. Nobody expects you to write clear, concise, and elegant sentences without drafting. However, you have enough time to draft, so you must never turn an essay in that has obscure, convoluted and redundant sentences. Drafting (and re-drafting) is a very simple process: read what you wrote, and think of a better way to write it. Only if you have used your very best efforts but found no better way, move on. Repeat the process until you are numbed, the words make no sense and you want to take a walk. Come back from the walk and repeat the process. Et cetera. Drafting is how you avoid all these problems: - Waste of words. You have only so many words to impress your marker. Any word in your essay that is not essential is a missed opportunity to do well. It is a minute spent looking at the shop windows when you are already late and running for the train. o Repetitions are a cardinal sin (and show that the essay was written, but not read, by the author). o Stating the obvious is another way to waste words. o However, the most common malpractice in this respect is banal wordiness. Wordiness is an endemic defect of almost 100% of the essays I have marked. The reason is simple: students have a common-sense aversion against over-worded sentences, but rarely exercise such aversion in drafting! As a result, concise sentences are few, since they occur by chance, not by design. Think of it this way: you are maybe unsurprised if I told you that your average sentence uses a third too many words, because you are not used to re-drafting your text down to its bare minimum length. However, if you do that, you could get 50% extra “free” words. What would normally take you 9,000 words to write can fit into 6,000, if you take drafting seriously. The advantage that you can derive from this simple practice is obvious: you can pack more arguments, more bibliography, more discussion, more analysis in the same essay, and the mark will inevitably reflect this enhancement. - Typos. Typos are common. Certain typos reveal only sloppy writing and, if numerous, lack of drafting: if you read carefully what you are about to submit you should find and fix all of them. Some other mistakes are worse, because they raise doubts as to whether you can use English with the required proficiency. They are not typos of the slip-of-finger kind, but proper errors: “their” instead of “there” or “they’re”; “affect” instead of “effect”; “causal” instead of “casual”; “it’s” instead of “its”, et cetera. It is imperative that none of these mistakes is ever in the text you submit. Just read, re-read, and draft these mistakes out of the equation. It costs you nothing to fix them, but if you do not, you can be sure it will cost you some marks. - Use topic sentences. Make it a habit to start each paragraph with a topic sentence. It might come unnatural at first, but you will see the benefits immediately. Forcing yourself to formulate a topic sentence will make your thoughts clearer too: it is a safe antidote to waffling. Make no mistake: if you waffle, it shows. If you are not sure what a topic sentence is, ask Google. This document uses topic sentences. - Choice of words. Avoid colloquialism. There is plenty of space to make your personal voice heard within the remits of scientific language. Do not exceed them. A good rule of thumb is to think of how your textbooks read; they give you a fair approximation of how your essay