history essay format

history essay format

Exploring the Evolution of Historical Essay Writing: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction to Historical Essay Writing

Adequate historical description, analysis, and critique of essays is a necessary maxim for many thematic classes. The following introduction will give a generic, brief overview of the steps for students to consider while writing any historical essay. The sample essay has been consulted and used by staff members in the History Department at the University of Owl at Purdue. Visits and appointments to discuss The Historical Essay Guide can be arranged through the Office of Student Advising.

1. The ability to describe or visualize concepts; 2. The ability to identify patterns or reasons why things happened; 3. The ability to analyze or break information into parts that are necessary or important; and 4. Increase reading and writing skills.

For the traditional, assignment- and exam-grade driven courses, however, essays, papers, and exams remain the representative means to evaluate our students. In order to maximize the effectiveness of these evaluative measures, we as instructors, advisors, and T.A.s need to give our students experience with these assessment tools. Essay writing helps develop four basic skills essential to historical thinking:

2. Key Components of a Historical Essay

If you ice skate, you know how difficult and hazardous it can be. Often, you have to concentrate on one small area so that you do not fall or crash. Writing a historical essay can feel very much the same way. So much of the essay has to be carefully crafted and carried out, and if you don’t realize it, certain activities can be absolutely dangerous. At a minimum, you may find yourself in an uncomfortable interview with a source that’s not giving you what you want. On a more precipitous note, if inadequate background work causes you to misunderstand the subject, you might wind up in a dispensation of dangerous situation for the “facts,” and that is the fastest way to fail at writing a worthy historical essay. This is why the historical essay writing process takes place on a broad field that has been broken into manageable yet important segments. Each part of the process has been carefully and deliberately designed to help the writer create a competent and informative essay that accurately reflects the complexity, diversity, and reality of the topic.

It is helpful to begin by examining the similarities and differences between these two types of historical stories. A true historical essay is based on an event, occurrence, or person from the past. In other words, if it is something that you would likely see in a history book, it is a historical essay. In contrast, a work of historical fiction is a made-up story based on an event, occurrence, or person from the past; some of these stories are based on events or people from the past that actually happened, but the vast majority of historical fiction simply uses history as a backdrop for the story. These types of stories are enjoyable to read, but even the most cautiously researched and well-meant historical fiction can be misleading. By alerting the reader to the fact that a work is historical fiction, you are including a disclaimer, of sorts. This means that your readers are more likely to remember that what they are reading is a well-crafted story and not a completely accurate portrayal of people or events from history.

Historical essay vs. Historical fiction

3. Research and Source Evaluation in Historical Writing

Some things to keep in mind when selecting suitable primary sources for college student use when teaching college students parliamentary history include the following points: First, primary sources selected should illustrate the concept, trend, time period, or event that the instructor is trying to teach. Second, the sources should be of interest to the students, both in the content and in the context in which they are used. Third, geographic and ethnic diversity is also important. Selecting sources from diverse ethnic groups and geographic regions provides a more accurate and complete picture of college students’ history. Fourth, because of the frequency with which women and minorities are left out of history studies, sources that deal with how the majority of people have lived are important. Fifth, balancing a curriculum with the sources is also an important consideration. Finally, it is essential to remember the reading level of most first-year college students when choosing sources.

Primary sources expose the creativity, the talents, and the humanity of real individuals. They thus possess the power to motivate students. After all, it is not abstract principles but real individuals who confront us with the reality of human life and history. Nowhere can the spirit of that hand-tooled, human craftsmanship essential to good history be captured so well. As a matter of fact, primary sources are such a powerful force; they often are the pedagogical beginning point for a high-quality history closer to home: the college classroom. In college teaching, study of original primary sources is an important bridge between what students experience and the narrative developed by the professor based on methodology, historiographical content, and primary research.

4. Structuring and Organizing Your Historical Essay

After sorting through the various documents and drawings you discovered when preparing your graphic cycle, you realized that there are several different aspects of pre-Civil War life that are important in understanding the Shaw Neighborhood. You looked at the physical environment such as buildings and neighborhoods. This led to the next tier of organization which focused on the people and institutions associated with the Great Migration. Then you realized that not all African Americans moved to the Shaw Neighborhood nor was the Neighborhood the only place African Americans congregated. Freed Blacks also met at churches and fortunately still preserved historically important District properties. They also met at Mutual Aid Societies, which also built edifices in the District, after they were able to accumulate more funds than just for a church. Furthermore, like recent immigrants, they came together and recreated their traditional social activities at various clubs built in the District. As you can see, and as you must have observed from other writers, organization within an essay is necessary for even the most spatially oriented document.

4.2. The Planning Section

So far you have a thesis statement, an introduction, a factual background, a section for textual evidence, and a section for the relation of the evidence to your essay questions and the thesis. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? How do you pull it all together? In the case of some of the shorter, four to seven pager essays, it could be as simple as moving down to your conclusion. In the case of more lengthy essays, you will need to add a conclusion and a planning section before you complete the essay. Restaurans clustered in a nearby commercial center. Draw this three-tiered organizational framework and describe the steps necessary to complete each section.

4.1. Introduction

5. Writing Techniques and Strategies for Historical Essays

Decide to support your argument using evidence. Attack the subject of how as well as the why. In other words, think of yourself as a listener who anticipated the question “Why should I believe that?” and who is providing the answer that would support the main point you are. In addition to primary and secondary sources, do not forget visual evidence. Use maps to identify locations and chronologies. Pictures and drawings can often provide a sense of the vitality of places and events better than a paragraph in a book can. Tables or graphs can help transmit an idea or a concept better than a description can. At the same time, properly conveying that same idea or concept in text, you should have to clearly address and emphasize in your essay using the table, graph, or illustration. Finally, consider using hypertext for your paper. Just imagine that a printed essay might not have room for all the context of explanation or confusion in your structure, but there may be full descriptions available for readers on the Web. Nonetheless, explain the relevance of your material to the reader of your paper elsewhere, and be as clear as possible in your description. Lastly, carefully peruse your piece of historical writing. When you read aloud, does it sound right? If it does not give you that pleasant feeling you want to convey to an audience, then you will want to expand on or refine your writing. Revise and review the main organizational structure, the content, and proofread the grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and perspective of what you have written. After your last edit, watch sixth-grade students reading of your essay aloud. If they are utterly intrigued, you have done an excellent job developing a piece of historical writing.

When it comes to historical essay writing, the techniques and strategies are quite similar to those of an exploration. First, you need to choose your topic. Given the length of most essays, it is best to pick something that does not take too long to research and write about, but make sure to pick an important subject that will stand on its own. Next, your thesis is your map. This is what you will be convinced of as true, regardless of what the facts might otherwise say. It should be a single sentence that plainly states exactly what you think. Place it at the end of your introduction, and then develop a supporting argument, one main point for each paragraph. Finally, be sure that the body of your paper unites all of the points into one argument. If you argue that the sky is orange later on in the paper, you have a problem.