Essay Guidelines

University of Minnesota

Department of Astronomy

To write a good essay, it is essential that you review the general essay guidelines. You should also be aware of any separate requirements that your lab TA may specify.

For further assistance with the essays, we recommend that you consult the TAs or the following resources:

General Essay Guidelines

The Reflective Essays are short papers which discuss the interaction of humans with their environment on Earth. They should be 400 to 600 words in length (about two pages). You should spend about five hours on each one, two or three hours researching and then two or three hours writing. What you write must be consistent with current scientific thinking and cite sources appropriately. On matters of opinion, you are free and encouraged to take any position you choose. You will be graded on the coherence, clarity, accuracy, logic, and relevance of what you write.

You must list your sources in a references section; this should be complete enough that someone else could check all the facts that you state. See the link above for guidelines. You may use information from the lectures and labs, but you will also want to do some research either in the library or on the web to get enough information to write your essay. Specifically, you are required to cite at least three references for each paper, and top grades will be assigned only to essays that appropriately make use of and cite multiple references.

For each essay, you must follow closely the assigned questions, unless you have proposed an alternative format to your lab instructor and received explicit permission to use that format. For example, you could propose to provide the same scientific information by writing a fictional story about an asteroid hitting the Earth, instead of simply answering the assigned questions. The decision about what alternative formats are acceptable is up to your lab instructor.

The essays are due in lab during the weeks indicated.

We suggest, in the strongest possible terms, that you have a friend read a draft copy of your essay and give you feedback in order to make revisions before you submit you final and only essay. First drafts are unlikely to satisfactorily meet the grading criteria, and top grades will only be given if the essay is free of spelling and grammatical errors. Writing suggestions and links to University resources to help you with your writing are available in the following sections.

[top]Guide to References/Citations

Your essays must include a bibliography section (MLA style) and in-text citations.  Below are listed a few MLA forms (book, article, website) below, and you can easily find others on the web. The information on citations (courtesy of Heidi Brandenburg) discusses when you need to provide parenthetical references and when you do not.

[top]MLA Style

Book

Author's last name, Author's first name. Book Title. Publisher City: Publisher Name, Year.

Article
Author's last name, Author's first name. "Article Title." Journal Title. Volume Number (Date): page numbers.

Internet Resources

Citations for Internet material are heavily dependent on the presentation of the material. Here are three examples:

[top]In-text Citations

Unless you make other arrangements with your instructor, you need to use  in-text citations. The main rule of use is: if the information given in your text citation clearly indicates which bibliography entry the reference belongs to, you do not need to parenthetically provide the source. Some examples of citations that contain enough information...

"Alfred Hitchcock was great at this," says Nancy Aiken, author of The Biological Origins of Art. "You see a knife coming down and you don't have to see the victim; you know it hits."

The New York Times reported in February 1998 that, while adults' television viewing habits split along color lines, their kids watch black and white shows equally.

According to our class website, our second paper, "Planetary Surface Temperatures," is due next week.

 If the sentence does not give enough information to identify the correct bibliography entry, add an (Author Year) citation at the end. The following sentence should have a parenthetical citation because we do not know if the discovery was published un der the discoverer's own name; we can not be certain which is the correct bibliography entry. in text:   In 1954, Merle F. Walker, then at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, discovered that the old nova DQ Herculis (which exploded in 1934) is a system of two orbiting stars (Walker, 1956).

in bibliography:  Walker, M. F., "The Discovery of ..."  Astrophysical  Contributions, Vol 23, 1956, p. 13-17.
 

 Websites may be parenthetically cited as (Website Address Year) but this form is awkward. A better idea is to give the page title or owner's name in your sentence. For example, NASA's history office provides a historical outline of impact events. The sentence will lead the reader straight to the bibliography entry that contains the phrase NASA's History Office.

[top]Writing Tips


  1. Use Active Voice. Rewrite all passive verb constructions (was done, would be, is thought) using active verbs. This brightens your writing; the reader will have a better, clearer impression of your subject and exposition.
  2. Develop a thesis before you begin writing. For part C of the first essay, for example, the thesis could be as simple as "There is a strong well-coordinated program of impact prevention in the United States today."
  3. Develop a logical framework to support your thesis.  For part  A of the first essay, for example,  you could organize your thoughts as follows
      4. 1.  Topic/thesis sentence to give overall preview of paragraph
      2.  Summary of evidence from craters
      3.  Summary of evidence about known impactors
      4.  Models of origins and early stages of solar system and why impacts fit into this picture
  4. Spend time writing your conclusion! The conclusion offers a last impression to your readers, so it is important to end well. Use an interesting fact or introduce a concept that helps draw the content of your paper together.
  5. Remove unnecessary clauses. They obscure your point and chop up the flow of your writing.
  6. Read your paper out loud. Then have someone else read your paper out loud. This will allow you to identify awkward phrases or paragraphs. I can not emphasize enough how important this is: if you choose to do only one thing to improve your writing, READ IT OUT LOUD!

[top]University Resources

Student Writing Center
306 B Lind Hall
M-Th 9 AM to 6 (or 4 ?) PM
F  9 AM to 2 PM

General College Writing Center
17 Appleby Hall
M-Th 9 AM to 4 PM
F 9 AM to 3 PM

On-line Writing Center

Composition tutors in the Residence Halls