How to Write the Perfect Essay
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Somewhere in the recesses of history, an individual or group of individuals determined the form of the perfect essay. It may or may not have been the English department of some large university, but by the end of the 20th century, the basic structure of the essay had been perfected into its three component parts: the introduction, the body, and the conclusion. Each one of these parts serves to provide form and function in the communication of clear ideas, and each has a specific role to play that, when fully realized, transform the English language into a powerhouse of logic, argument, and erudition. (more…)
With respect to logical hierarchies, the process of looking closely at two similar people and writing a contrastive essay about their similarities and differences causes one to sharpen one’s sense of the distinction between generalities and specific details. For example, both of the people one is writing the essay about may have roughly the same body type; they may be mesomorphs, i.e. of a muscular type. One describes them as such and then, observing them more closely, one perceives and records subtle differences in the way that they are physically structured.


