Essays: The Importance Of Writing An Essay

Improved Essays
I can recall that throughout my high school years, my English professor would say: "You have an essay due Friday." I would ponder for hours before I could actually start the essay. How can I even start writing if I do not know exactly what an essay is? Why are essays important? How are essays going to help me in life? Why am I even writing one? In the following essay, I will provide evidence from "Essayists on the Essay" to describe what an essay is, its importance in our life, and the role Michel de Montaigne has on it.

First off, the dictionary definition of an essay consists upon a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative. But does an essay really
…show more content…
How can this be true? Jose Ortega y Gasset describes in pg. 38 from "Essayists on the Essay" that: "The essay is a science; the point of intellectual honor not to write anything susceptible of proof without possessing the latter beforehand." An essayist must have proof of the topic they are going to expose. For example, if we were to talk about Global Warming, then we would look for books, articles, and recent news to support our thesis. I consider that an essay without evidence is like a sea without water; you have the vast potential of information in your hands, but you refuse to give your best and excel on your …show more content…
Has there ever been an incorrect essay? No. There are spelling and punctuation mistakes, but no imprecise essays. I consider that an effective essay is one that is capable of transmitting verifiable information to an audience through the use of arguments. Though Montaigne's essays, we can depict that each essay is unique and has its own essence. As we all might know, each essay varies in its form and content. We will never find the same essay twice, even if we all have the same topic. Each essay is developed in a different way, and therefore the ideas we try to convey are capture distinctively from one

Related Documents

  • Decent Essays

    Unit 14 Assignment

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Name: Date: Graded Assignment Unit 14 Assessment: Part 2 Subjective Short Answer Complete this teacher-scored portion of the Unit Test and submit it to your teacher by the due date for full credit. Spend about ten minutes on each question. Take time to think about your answer before you begin writing.…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I think you should go back and talk to all thoses English teachers that did not think to teach the difference between a Essay and a Story:) . we just covered this in my English class . So I wrote what the elements of each a story and an essay were. I explained by putting the element and its definition and using an example of a story (“Save the Moon for Kredy Dicitson”) and using an example of a Essay (The Value of a Mess). One of the many Stories and Essays we read in the past few weeks, to grasp the concept of the difference between a stories and an Essays.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I chose to peer review Tashara Mason’s essay about Depression. Mason chose a couple of fantastic sources to gather her information from. The Mayo Clinic website makes every attempt to provide credible information. For example, they adhere to the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information which can be verified and the Mayo Clinic follows the Consumer Reports WebWatch guidelines which promote credible information on the Internet.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Writing essays to some it 's a simple assignment of writing down ideas to others it could be A long process of analyzing, organizing, and writing which could be overwhelming. Readers who spend more time reading and analyzing an article will make it easier to reframe their thoughts and draw better ideas of the text. In the article “ Reading and Thought” by Dwight Macdonald sends the message that most people now don 't spend enough time reading. People aren 't taking the time to stop and think about what they 're reading before expressing their opinions. As most people miss out on the opportunity to be well informed and make tight decisions based on the information they could retrieve.…

    • 1263 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Argumentative Essay Ben Franklin once wrote, “Well done is better than well said.” In simpler terms, Franklin is stating that actions are better than words. While actions and words are both elements that can be manipulated to fit a given situation, one is usually more efficient in solving problems, defining character, and accomplishing goals. In the novels Unbroken and Maus, the actions of the characters prove to be the most vital asset in their survival by helping them overcome obstacles and giving their lives meaning and purpose. On the other hand, The Scarlet Letter illustrates that being unable to transform words into actions makes one emotionally and mentally weaker.…

    • 1189 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In this fall semester of college what I’ve learned in Ms. Balderas class is knowing how to properly write a college written essay. I know after taking this course that I can somewhat write a well written essay that is college appropriate. In high school I was taught to write essay that were good enough for the teachers, but now that I’m in college I feel the need that I need to write better and show my instructor that I do know what I am writing about. I’ve learned so many ways to write a paper, but some of my essays aren’t there yet, I feel as if I haven’t gotten to the point where I’ve learned to write a paper that is good, but I know within time I’ll get there.…

    • 490 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Even though society thinks that literature is outdated, lost in times, and unmemorable, but in actuality, if read and dissected it provides substance and truthfulness to the problematic world that we live in. During this semester in Writing 102, Mr. Kehoe opened my mind on how revealing and ingenuous the work of literature truly are, and pushing for meaningful work encapsulated around the short stories provided. Enjoyable throughout the semester, we were assigned three interesting and mi¬nd consuming essay assignments: Analysis Essay, the Synthesis Essay, and the Research Essay, and these three essays were milestone points in my Writing 102 career. The Analysis Essay was first of the three major essays in the class, and this essay focused…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I remember the first time I wrote an essay that was being graded at the college level. This was in my junior year when I took AP Language and Composition, our first essay was a rhetorical analysis essay from a very old excerpt that used old english and was very hard to read. When I first started reading the passage I started to get nervous because I didn't understand what the text was saying but then I started to annotate and the passage began to make sense. I found many rhetorical strategies that the author used and I then began to outline the essay in my head.…

    • 698 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Surviving English Class

    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Surviving English Comp 1 Writing Class Writing is one thing I hate the most. It was hard to write an essay for the first time because I did not have the knowledge or concept of this writing style. Before this class, I thought I knew what writing was all about by expressing my thoughts, ideas and feeling. I know now that I had the wrong concept on how to write. I can express my thoughts, ideas and feeling, but if I put them in the wrong contents it does not lead the reader to the point of the essay.…

    • 647 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    EOF Student Reflection

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages

    I was able to overcome my fear of essays with the techniques like close reading and asking myself critical thinking questions. Beginning with the first essay assigned in college…

    • 831 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Readers want to see how your research stimulates your own thinking” (162). Without learning how to write exploratively, students will not only score more poorly with professors, but also fail to use their essays to think through the problem. In the beginning of chapter 7, Allyn and Bacon goes over how to write and understand exploratory essays. First comes the generating of ideas, then posing the problem, formulating a starting point, research notes, shaping and…

    • 454 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As a young person, choosing what to study is one of the hardest decision you have to make. According to a Washington Post article, “What’s the purpose of college: A job or an education?” by Jeffrey J. Selingo, learning and getting more knowledge about the world used to be a purpose of higher education, but nowadays it switched to getting a job after graduation rather than gaining more knowledge. Education is the most important factor in order to be successful, but lots of people are in college because their parents want them to, while others think that college is the next destination they have to go through after high school. To me, college is the place that teaches us how to think, how to analyze things thoroughly and to pursue a good career…

    • 819 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I was always told that an essay is developed around a thesis statement and resources that support my opinions about a prompt. I realized that there was more to an essay when I came across scholarly writing, which is writing on a higher level, usually one which we come across during college. It meets high standards of communication with outlines, tone, deductive reasoning, format, and way of analytical approach. It has a consistent way of delivering thoughts, shaping arguments, and narrowing down the subject to explain the main idea. With scholarly writing, students must express their thoughts through thesis statements, and develop an argument with their own thinking, not minding to be objective to clear any chance of bias.…

    • 778 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I have always considered my relationship with writing to be very insignificant. Although I enjoy spending time verbally expressing my thoughts and feelings to others, it becomes difficult when these thoughts and feelings are expressed through writing. Throughout my adolescent years, I would often receive feedback for my writing given by the teacher in the form of a grade. Being unable to effectively organize my thoughts and ideas into words and sentences, I would feel reluctant to continue writing confidently whenever I received an undesirable grade.…

    • 821 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When I was young I was never the best at reading even though my parents owned many books and magazines that they read on a daily basis. My mother enjoyed reading her gossip magazines that she would receive in the mail once a month and my father had a whole bookshelf full of history books. My parents would always encourage me to read the books I would check out at the school library to improve my reading and writing but that advice usually went in through one ear and out the other. The only books I would really attempt to read had to be humorous or horrifying, my favorites were the Goosebumps collection. I loved reading these books alone in my room where I couldn’t be sidetracked by all the commotion that went on in my house.…

    • 789 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays