The ABC(D)s of a Good History Paper
- Have a strong thesis. A thesis statement provides focus for your paper while telling the audience what you are hoping to show. A strong thesis will be interesting, specific, and a bastion of clarity. For more on how you can make a weak thesis stronger or examples of what are (and aren’t) theses, click here.
- Thoroughly analyze the evidence. Failing to thoroughly analyze evidence is a common mistake. Instead, students tend to try to convince the reader (aka the professor) that their position is right by listing every single piece of evidence that could possibly support it. Don’t let this be you! Teachers are most interested in what you have to say, not how many pages of the assigned reading you can quote. The analysis portion is where you get a chance to give your ideas and interpretation, to show you really “get” the assignment and have learned something. Skimping on the analysis guarantees you can’t get higher than a B, no matter how many quotes or examples you cite in your paper.
- Organize your paper so each section is clearly connected to your thesis. Writing in a stream-of-consciousness style can be great if you’re in an English class or James Joyce, but in a history paper it’s a big no-no. Make sure all of your all sections clearly connect to your thesis. If they don’t, you either need to re-organize (by moving explanatory stuff to the introduction) or re-write. Almost always unclear connections reflect a thesis that is too vague.
- Use proper grammar and spelling. This might seem like a no-brainer, but use proper spelling and grammar. This applies especially to the modern age when everything automatically checks for spelling and grammar mistakes. Nothing tells your teacher that you didn’t even bother reading over your paper–much less writing more than one draft–than typos, irregular capitalization, and run-on sentences. You wouldn’t want to give them that impression, would you?
Thesis
Lots of students think they know what a thesis is, only to struggle to put it into words. Simply put, a thesis statement tells the audience what you intend to prove in your paper. A thesis is not a question. You can preface your thesis with the question it answers, but it is not always necessary. A thesis is also not just stating a fact. Remember how I said a thesis statement tells the audience what you intend to prove in your paper? If you state a fact, there’s nothing to prove in your paper because it has already been proven. That’s what makes a fact a fact and not an opinion.
Now that you know what a thesis is, let’s talk about what makes a good or strong thesis. A strong thesis will be interesting, specific, and a bastion of clarity.
Take a look at this example: “Most girls did not go to school in the early-twentieth century.” Spoiler alert! This is NOT a strong thesis because it is so vague. Where? Why? How do you define “most”? It’s also not very interesting. If that were the first line of an article, would you keep reading? Probably not. Let’s try again.
“Men were not interested in supporting education for girls in early-twentieth century Egypt.” Now we have a place, but we still don’t know which men or–most importantly–why they weren’t interested in supporting education for girls at that time and place. We call this an unfounded, general assumption. If this were the first line of an article, you might keep reading or you might not, which is the kind of lackluster interest a good student like you isn’t going to settle for! Try again.
“Education for girls was a major demand of feminists in early-twentieth-century Egypt.” That’s a good thesis, right? Nope. This is just a statement of fact that is trying to pretend it’s a thesis by adding “major” in front of demand. Sneaky, but still not good.
“Egyptian feminists put forward proposals to develop education for girls as a means for women’s social advancement in the early twentieth century.” Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. This is still verging on fact, but at least why the subject of the sentence is doing what they’re doing is being addressed. Keep going.
“Frustrated by the encroachments of men on women’s work and by the general lack of opportunities for women outside the home, many Egyptian feminists in the early twentieth century promoted education for girls as a way to improve their social status and economic standing.” Right away you probably notice this attempt at a thesis was much more specific than any of the others. Specificity is the mark of a good thesis. It also addresses why Egyptian feminists promoted education for girls at that time AND what they hoped to achieve by educating them. This thesis also gives the reader a good idea of how the paper is going to unfold: a section addressing the encroachments and the general lack of opportunities for women, a section on how education was going to improve women’s social status, and a section on how education was going to improve their economic standing.
Remember, a good thesis is clear, specific, and makes the reader want to learn more.
Analyzing the Evidence
Once you’ve got your thesis locked down, all you have to do is give all of the reasons your argument is correct and voila! An A grade will magically appear next to your name.
Wrong!
Students often try to convince the reader (aka the professor) that their position is right by listing every single piece of evidence that could possibly support it, but failing to analyze evidence is a common mistake. What if the evidence could be interpreted in a different way or used to support a different conclusion? Evidence, after all, is just bits of data. It can be used for many things. What you view as being clear evidence of UFOs might be seen as evidence of weather balloons by another. So, you’ve got to tell the reader why the facts you’re presenting support your thesis. Ideally, you’ll even convince the reader that the facts only support your argument and none others. We’ll get to that in a bit.
The way I recommend you analyze evidence is through “show and tell.” Show me the evidence AND tell me why it supports your argument. Don’t assume the connection is obvious. Be specific and detailed in your explanation. Those specific details may seem uninteresting or unnecessary, but they often are the most persuasive elements because they signal to the reader that you know what you are writing about and, better yet, you can be trusted as an expert on the subject.
It’s also smart to think about the order in which you want to present your evidence, so that each additional piece of evidence and analysis builds on the previous ones.
Remember, teachers are most interested in what you have to say, not how many pages of the assigned reading you can quote. They’re looking for signs of critical thinking, something more than just cutting-and-pasting. The analysis portion is where you get a chance to present your ideas and your interpretation. Let your teacher know you really “get” the assignment. More importantly, show them you have learned something from the reading, assignment, class. You’ll give your teacher warm fuzzies and who doesn’t want the person deciding their grade to be full of good feelings?
Not you, that’s who.
Revision and Polishing
Students tend to treat revision and polishing as the same thing. They’re not. Revision is about clarity. Would your argument be clearer if you moved this paragraph before that paragraph? Would a different piece of evidence more strongly illustrate your point? Those kinds of questions are part of the process of revising. Polishing is about style. It’s about the aesthetics of your paper, choosing language that is pleasing to the eye and ear.
Now that you know the difference, let’s talk about revision.
Some students find it really painful and so avoid it, turning in first drafts and hoping the professor doesn’t know any better. It doesn’t have to be that way. Revision can be both successful and easy, if you follow the strategies below.
Solo Strategy: Read aloud
Simply by reading your paper out loud to yourself, you can notice places that need revision. For example, any part you have to re-read needs to be rewritten because the meaning isn’t clear enough. You’ll find transitions that feel abrupt and typos, but more importantly, you’ll think more deeply about what you’re saying. Are you convinced by the evidence? Does the argument make sense? If you can’t sell yourself on the paper, how can you sell it to someone else?
Multiplayer Strategy: Beta Reader
For those of you who enjoy a more collaborative approach, try using a beta reader. Grab a friend or roommate–even accost a stranger on the street if you happen to be named Billy–and have them highlight your thesis and the main ideas. If they identify the wrong sentences, then you know you need to go back and revise those sections to make the most important points of your paper stand out more.
Polishing
You don’t just want your paper to be clear and well-argued, you also want it to be a good piece of literature. You want it to stand out in the reader’s mind. But what makes literature “good”? Lots of things, but they all fall into two categories: technical and stylistic. Things in the technical category are probably the answers you’d give to what makes writing good. Proper grammar and spelling, active voice, no tense shifts, avoiding awkward constructions, and so on are technical items you can use to improve the quality of your writing. While important, the bigger bang comes from stylistic elements.
Stylistic elements are alliteration, repetition, parallelism, assonance (aka rhyme), and the use of punctuation to show emotion, to name a few. When polishing your writing, you’ll want to give the stylistic elements a lot of attention.
To start developing a stronger style, try out one (or all!) of the strategies below. You’ll be amazed how your writing improves!
Strategy #1: Avoid “to be”
Using a wide variety of verbs will enliven your paper. An easy way to do that is go through a page of your paper and circle all the times you used any form of “to be.” Some of these may be unavoidable, but often another verb can work even better. Examples: exists, lives, inhabits, endures, remains, stands, prevails, obtains, and so on.
Strategy #2: Use your vocabulary!
Avoid relying on the same handful of verbs or phrases. Repetition can be effectively used for emphasis, but too often it is the result of overreliance on the same stock expressions. As a bonus, using the full range of the English language usually increases clarity as you choose words with more nuanced meanings. When in doubt, follow these rules of thumb: you should never use the same phrase more than once a page and you should never use the same verb (aside from “to be”) in sentences in close contact.
Strategy #3: Avoid dyads
Many writing manuals recommend avoiding dyads: “home and hearth,” “safe and sound,” “appreciate and understand,” and so on. These sound cliched and, since the terms are synonyms, are unnecessarily repetitive.
How to Do History 