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Kendall Campus

ESL and Foreign Languages Department

The 10 Golden Rules for Writing a Good Essay

  1. Margins and format must be presented upon the Modern Language Association (MLA) norms. You may leave both margins justified (even the MLA doesn’t ask for it), with the name and page number ½ inch of the top right of each paper.
  1. All the work must be double-spaced including notes and works cited. Notes, if there are, must be endnotes in separate paper. Citations must be upon the MLA norms; every citation over 4 verses must be separated with double indent, without quotation marks.
  1. Titles of books and dramatic works must appear underlined (or in italic), titles of poems and articles in quotation marks.
  1. The introduction must be brief, and its extension must maintain relation with the extension of the work. For 2 or 3 pages work, the introduction could be the initial sentence of the 1st paragraph. A 5 pages writing could be introduced in a brief paragraph. A work with more than 10 pages could be introduced in a longer paragraph. Don’t mention the author life, neither the contemporary history, nor the eternal values of the work: This is pure fluff.
  1. It is absolutely essential a logic development of the ideas. Each paragraph must lead directly to the following one. No jumps, from an idea to another, neither of a part of the work to another.
  1. Neither 1 sentence paragraph, nor endless paragraphs are accepted.
  1. The writer doesn’t exist in the work. Instead of saying, “I think”, you say “It seems that”; instead of “I have the impression”, “It is possible that”; instead of “What more interested me”, “The most interesting”, etc…
  1. No citation is put after another, but the relevance or the importance of each one must be explained. Neither more than one citation is put to demonstrate the same thing. If one citation proved the depravation of Don Juan or the madness of Don Quixote, so there is no need to insert 2 or 3 citations to prove what you have already proved.
  1. A close reading of the text is needed. The student must read the work carefully with stoppage. Made sentences and nonsense wordy writing must be only in the love letter and heart magazines, not in an academic work. Personal impressions were very interesting during the Romantic period, but what I think that was 150 years ago.
  1. The conclusion must present a summary and a synthesis of the ideas the most important of the work:

Cannot be 1 sentence.

Neither 2 nor 3 incoherent sentences, just because your professor asked for 5 pages work and you wanted to finish your writing to cover the quantity and forget the quality.

Jamil Istifan

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