5 pages due by 24 hours

How to Write an Essay (and the Exam)

- academic philosophy is a discipline; it’s not about expressing how you feel about this or that

- don’t be all over the place

- be organized

CONTENT

- opening par

- concluding par.

- understand the question and don’t do more or less than what it asks

- and don’t change the question to something else and then answer that question

- isomorphic

- quotations vs. paraphrase

- what makes one argument stronger than another

- judgment call based on a variety of criteria:

- clarity

- internal consistency

- external consistency (with what is known, e.g. nat sci)

- Ockham’s Razor

- no fallacious reasoning

- premises ideally should be relevant, acceptable, and sufficient

- anticipation of counter-arguments/counter-evidence

STYLE

- Poe, “unity of effect”

- double space, paragraphs, indented paragraphs, professional reference style (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style)

- spelling (UK vs. US), grammar (who vs. whom etc., singular vs. plural, etc.)

- study style sample pdf I put together

- use of “I” (but not “I feel”)

- punctuation (UK vs. US)

- italics vs. quotation marks

- font/typescript

- see the evidence in my font file pdf

- past tense (history) vs. present tense (e.g. a writing/text, even by Plato)

- hyphen, dash (en and em)