Anyone at uni doing essays a query

edscdk

edscdk

edscdk

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17 Jul 2008
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my lad has been told NOT to use heading in essays, this just seems mental... he has been told only to use paragraphs am I missing something? they just seem to want a wall of text...
 
Well, I think the general assumption is that the writer writes clearly enough for the reader to know what the writer is writing about :)
 
Generally you have the title of the essay/assignment and that is the only title - unless the assignment is specified as a report or split into chapters it should be one continuous prose.

It should flow and will make sense to the marker - obviously laid out and formatted the way the guidelines say to, but basically just text split into relevant paragraphs with relevant references.
 
Well each essay will be about one particular topic. You introduce the subject at hand, and discuss where you are going. You then write appropriately to ensure the essay flows. Of course the reader will know what you are going on about as you are writing it. I'm not sure what a heading will offer. Part of uni is learning how to write effectively and concisely in order to convey your message.
 
Im now confused.Im just handing over masters essays and tutors were previously telling us its advisable to use headings so I did despite that I was used to do essays as one big body of text that should just differ by paragraphs.

Hopefully its nothing major.
 
Ahleckz said:
Well each essay will be about one particular topic. You introduce the subject at hand, and discuss where you are going. You then write appropriately to ensure the essay flows. Of course the reader will know what you are going on about as you are writing it. I'm not sure what a heading will offer. Part of uni is learning how to write effectively and concisely in order to convey your message.
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When I write I put in all the headings that cover all topics I want to cover then I would add the information in bullet points, then make that into sentences..... I suppose I just need to delete the section headings.... but that messes up my nice TOC in word... still if thats the right way to do it...

thanks for the info, good to have a 2nd opinion,
 
An essay should be one flowing piece of prose. Just a title at the beginning maybe but no section headings.

Reports would include headings dependent on the subject and report style.
 
RDM said:
Nothing like teaching you to write for the real world. :)
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I was thinking the same thing, I'll go to work tomorrow and remove all the section heading from the server build documents and tell the boss "that is the way is should be done".... then get sacked... and beaten up
 
Total nonsense! I have written countless documents with headings in University including my Honours and Masters dissertations. Headings are extremely important. It gives the reader a guideline to what they’re reading and the topic of discussion. It is also used to find references from the Table of Contents.
 
That does seem a little bit strange, in my essays at university I would generally put in some form of headings when addressing the various points that go to make up the essay. It doesn't always have to be rigid but I don't think it ever got me marked down having headings to highlight what I was discussing in that part of the essay.
 
It sounds like some people here are getting report style writting mixed up with essay writting.
I would never use any sort of title or headings in an essay apart from the main one, and I would never write a report with no sub headings.
Then again I'm studying an I.T degree so what do I know about essay writting :D
 
Essays and reports are different things and are used for different circumstances and it seems some are getting confused between the two. In a report, it would be appropriate to use headings. In an academic (I'm thinking of 'essay based subjects' such as law, psychology, politics, etc then you'd rarely have to do a report, the exception would be after carrying out field work and experiments. In an engineering subject then the use of reports would be much more common.
edscdk, not entirely sure why you're being so melodramatic. Also, if the tutor told him to do away with headings then that's what to do. It's the tutor that marks the work so best to please them even if you think (wrongly) that it is wrong. Finally, I would never use bullet points in an essay.
 
Actually I've just had a look at a few of my essays and I was remembering wrongly, I wouldn't normally put in headings - however I did for my dissertation which is what I was thinking of (nb my dissertation was rubbish). What I did do was quite often in starting a new paragraph express clearly what it was I would be talking about there.
 
I've always done essay based subjects and I'm now doing a degree which is also pretty much all essay based and I can't remember the last time I used sub-headings in essays.
 
I put headings in when writing the essay so I know the rough contents for each section. I always remove them when handing in an essay though, was told this by all my tutors.
 
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