About
History is more than dates and facts. Writing for history requires interpretation, analysis, and argumentation, in spite of seeming at times like one single story. At the college and post-graduate level, history papers should never present only one side or interpretation of an issue. The challenge of writing history is being able to present your interpretation of a person, time period, or event soundly, with structure and support and without bias and assumptions.
Writing Tips: Historical Essay
What It Does
The purpose of a history paper is to suggest a possible solution to a problem or question and then analyze and support that solution. Much like a science experiment, writing a history paper means testing hypotheses and providing evidence both for and against your position in a logical manner. A “historical hypothesis” could suggest possible causes, such as the immediate causes of a war, or possible effects, such as the social impact of a revolution. Add your perspective and analysis to this hypothesis or problem that you identify to develop your thesis.
Your thesis should be analytical and controversial or enlightening.
- Engage a particular framework, theory, or method of analyzing historical evidence.
- Create an original hypothesis or argument about the significance of your evidence, given the framework you have selected.
- Indicate your framework of analysis, topic of study, and specific subarguments or subtopics you will address.
- Present your thesis as a ‘roadmap’ for your paper. Follow the order in which you discuss topics in your paper.
- Indicate to the reader how you are going to use your subarguments to support your thesis.
- When you have finished writing your paper, make sure that your thesis still captures your whole argument.
These hypotheses would then be “tested” by seeking a wide range of primary and secondary sources that support or challenge your analysis. Digest and synthesize these many sources of information into a coherent argument that backs your thesis.
Primary and Secondary Sources
Create an Academic Tone
Once you’ve done your research and analysis, turning raw data and ideas into a polished historical essay takes style, focus, and organization.
Focus/Purpose
- Choose a topic that is appropriate for the length of your essay.
- Develop your topic fully, including necessary background and relevant evidence and analysis.
- Avoid irrelevant but interesting points of analysis. If it doesn’t fit with your thesis, do not include it no matter how interesting, poignant, or well-written it is.
- Check that each paragraph is internally focused, sticking to one subtopic or argument, and fits into the overall logic of your paper. Check each topic sentence against your thesis to be sure that it relates to your overall argument.
Organization
- Divide your paper into sections. If your essay is long enough, and it is appropriate for your purposes, use headings to identify the different sections of your paper. Check whether you should use section headings with your instructor, editor, or publisher.
- Use paragraphs to group related information and analysis. Develop each analytical point as a mini-argument, contained within one or a few paragraphs.
- Use transitions to create logic and flow throughout your essay
- Avoid dividing your evidence and analysis. Do not write one paragraph of evidence and the next analyzing it; incorporate these around your analytical points.
- Before you consider yourself finished, always do a detailed grammar check, and reread your essay to make sure that your edits have not changed your meaning or created other structural issues.
Style
- Write your paper to enlighten, interest, and inform your readers, not recite and regurgitate information.
- Be creative in your approach to the topic and information, but stay within academic conventions in your writing.
- Create an objective, authoritative tone that shows your reader that you are reasonable and knowledgable, and that your perspective is valid. Delete phrases like I thinkand It seems to me. Make your points outright.
- Use proper grammar and language. Avoid slang and abbreviations.
- Write consistently in the active past. Watch out for unnecessary tense shifts into the present or future.
Avoid the passive voice; it is weak, wordy, and less descriptive.
Elements of a Historical Essay
Introduction
Your introduction should orient your reader to your topic and thesis.
- Provide brief, focused context and background. Include enough general history that a non-specialist will be able to understand your paper. Do not digress into a long, narrative history. Stick to basics and aspects of the topic that relate to your thesis.
- Outline your argument and subarguments or topics.
- Define key terms and theories. Be brief, and try to incorporate these smoothly in the flow of your writing. These words are central to understanding your essay; fit them in accordingly.
- Capture the reader’s attention without using dictionary definitions, universal morals, vague generalizations like throughout history, or sensational material.
Thesis Statement
The thesis statement is your main point, and it should make a critically engaged, enlightened, non-obvious point. It should also be strongly worded, narrow enough to be developed in the paper, and wide enough in scope to address the necessary issues.
- Engage a particular framework, theory, or method of analyzing historical evidence.
- Create an original hypothesis or argument about the significance of your evidence, given the framework you have selected.
- Indicate your framework of analysis, topic of study, and specific subarguments or subtopics you will address.
- Present your thesis as a ‘roadmap’ for your paper. Follow the order in which you discuss topics in your paper.
- Indicate to the reader how you are going to use your subarguments to support your thesis.
- When you have finished writing your paper, make sure that your thesis still captures your whole argument.
Body
The body of a historical essay expresses the ideas, arguments and evidence that support your thesis statement.
- Divide the body of your essay into paragraphs.
- Group related information into each paragraph.
- Start each paragraph with an assertion about the point you will make in it.
Provide evidence (quotation, paraphrasing, statistic, etc.) that supports your assertion.
- Analyze your evidence and discuss how it supports your argument.
Conclusion
The conclusion of the paper makes a strong final case for your argument and thesis.
- Restate your thesis in different words. This time your statement should reflect the understanding of the topic that you and the reader presumably share.
- Summarize your main analytic points and wrap them up, reiterating how they relate to and support your thesis.
- Recommend directions for future study and research that your analysis has brought to light. Think about questions you had while researching and writing and how they relate to your topic.
See a Model: Historical Essay
Historical Essay
Rosie the Riveter, the Godmother of the Working Woman? World War II and the socio-economic role of the American woman (Item 1)
Abstract (Item 2)
A fictional character of World War II, Rosie the Riveter is an American figure of both hope and controversy. Regarded by some as a herald of second-wave feminism, by others as a propagandic character supporting American patriarchy, this fictional character signifies the entry of women into industry. This study examines both sides of the controversy surrounding Rosie from a socio-economic and first-person perspective, using social and economic statistics and personal commentary from women involved in the movement to provide a complete picture of the figure and her effects. (Item 3) Was Rosie a beacon for female equality, or merely a well-crafted construction urging women into a new world of inequality? First studying the perspectives of the women who went to work under Rosie’s campaign, then examining social trends in female employment and wages following World War II, (Item 4) this study uses quantitative and qualitative data (Item 5) to evaluate the social, economic, and political effects of women’s entry into the industrial workplace during World War II. As the social and political climate has changed over the past eighty years, this study tracks changes both systemic and individual to look closer at the roots of contemporary feminism. Ultimately a still-controversial political figure, Rosie the Riveter signifies not only the social and economic advances of women over the past century but their coercion and continued burdens as well. (Item 6)
Clad in coveralls with a bandanna hiding her hair, Rosie the Riveter sounded the rallying cry for women across the United States to join the war effort from her place on stamps, posters, and magazine covers. (Item 7) She symbolized women in the workforce, tough, plain, and proud, who were working for the first time and in jobs that women would not enter again for decades after victory was declared, and they could return home. Following war’s end, however, women did not simply go home as expected. They stayed in the workforce, continually expanding and demanding their rights and influence as employees and working citizens. (Item 8) As the image of the working woman became an accepted part of society, women’s rights gained support and raised the stakes to equality, not just access. The political slogan, “We Can Do It,” became a message with a new meaning for the women demanding their due rights from their country. From the “Riveters” of World War II who served their country to the protestors of the 70s who demanded their country respect their contributions, Rosie has come to represent the working American woman, patriotic, capable, and strong. But did Rosie signify a glorious new beginning for American women or merely mask their entry into a new inequality under a facade of determined toughness? (Item 9) In first-hand accounts from the women whom Rosie inspired and recent socio-economic history of women in America, the diverse interpretations of Rosie the Riveter’s significance can be seen in the personal words and political legacy of the women who went to work during World War II. Ultimately a still-controversial political figure, Rosie the Riveter signifies not only the social and economic advances of women over the past century but their coercion and continued burdens as well. (Item 10)
The impact of the women who went to work during World War II continued after the war, when many women stayed in the workforce rather than returning home. (Item 11) Refuting the idea that working women would be a temporary service, these women turned a wartime effort into the beginnings of a social re-ordering. As Josephine Carson, who worked as a librarian during and after the war, noted, “[women] wanted a career. They worked during the war outside their homes and then in many cases they were fired and they had to go back to the home because the boys were coming back…I think we were trying to work for economic fairness and social acceptance of women in the work force during and after the war, noted, “[women] wanted a career. They worked during the war outside their homes, and then in many cases, they were fired and they had to go back to the home because the boys were coming back…I think we were trying to work for economic fairness and social acceptance of women in the work force.” (Item 12) (Prochaska 1997, #), (Item 13) When the war ended, it was assumed that the privilege to work would end, that Rosie’s posters be taken down as women took off the coveralls and returned to domesticity. Educated and experienced, however, women demanded to know why they could work to serve their country but not themselves. (Item 14) The taste of independence and the right to work had already taken hold, though its immediate benefits were spare and of little consequence to women who were now managing the home while working outside it. (Item 15)
In spite of inflated numbers of women working post-World War II, contrarians argue that Rosie signified not a great new social reality for women but an illusion that protected society’s patriarchal ordering. (Item 16) Created to promote a temporary supplement to men’s industrial capabilities, Rosie is seen by these people as a propagandic character standing in for Uncle Sam and his male-centric status quo. Susan Skilted, who continued working as a secretary when the war ended, argues, “Women’s standing did not advance after WWII — they were still wives and mothers, but now they were wives and mothers with hobbies for which they were fortunate enough to earn a meager pittance…” (97). (Item 17) According to such thinkers, Rosie merely provided the appearance of importance for a class of women who now had two jobs but little more social standing.
As women continued to demand careers and acceptance, the demographics of the workplace began to shift (Item 18) to include more women, mostly in positions with lower status and pay. (Item 19) However temporarily, the acceptance of women into the workplace during the war led growing numbers to aspire to careers and economic independence. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 33.9 percent of women aged 16 and over participated in the workforce, a rate that had almost doubled to 59.8 percent in 1998 (U.S. Department of Labor, 2000). Women earned jobs in many industries and fields beyond the factory line and secretary’s desk as they pursued and achieved their right to employment at increasing rates. Despite the menial positions and smaller paychecks of the workplace into which women had gained the most entry, however, Rosie often continued to be regarded a herald of women’s economic power to come.
Additional body paragraphs are removed
but follow the same organization and argument structure.
Witnessed in accounts of women’s growing role in the workplace and labor statistics, the historic rise of women’s social and economic rights appear to be traced to Rosie’s ubiquitous campaign during World War II. The women who filled the labor force during the second World War set a precedent of ability and capability during their service, creating a legacy of patriotism and feminism still resonated by Rosie’s image. Since then, women continued to fight for their rights in the workplace and to enter it at increasing rates. Women at work meant that society had to change from its basic assumptions — that women’s place was not just in the home, and that women were also capable, valuable workers — up to systemic changes that have still not been resolved — equal pay for equal work, rights of parental leave, and merit-based advancement. (Item 20) In spite of the patriotic dedication symbolized by the fierce gaze of Rosie the Riveter, women after the war found that it was no longer the fight for their country to which they were contributing but the fight for their rights. And, in the shadow of Rosie and the women who served their country and opened the door to generations of change, social and economic justice has become the target with the same rallying cry as ever: “We Can Do It.” (Item 21)
Features of an Historical Essay
Item 1. The Title succinctly describes the topic and primary theoretical question of the paper. The subtitle indicates the theoretical approach the paper will take.
Item 2. The Abstract presents an overview of the entire paper: its topic, subarguments, and framework for analysis.
Item 3. The methodological framework — the way that the author researched the topic — is outlined.
Item 4. The abstract outlines the data that the study analyzes and the order in which it is addressed.
Item 5. These are not precise methodological terms, but they provide a general idea about the kind of data that the study examines.
Item 6. The thesis is restated in the abstract.
Item 7. The first sentence introduces the general topic of the essay, Rosie the Riveter. It provides an interesting description and image to grab the reader’s attention and provides a little bit of background.
Item 8. The introduction provides background to help the reader understand the paper topic. Even in a paper for a course, do not assume that the reader knows everything about the topic. Provide background for the aspects of the topic you will address, to orient and focus the reader on your analysis.
Item 9. The central question, or problem statement, of the investigation narrows the focus of the introduction, and the paper. Stating it in the introduction helps the reader understand the direction the paper will take.
Item 10. The thesis statement concisely states the topic and major subtopics that the paper will address. Here, the main topic of this paper is the controversy around Rosie the Riveter. This topic is studied through the social and economic advances of women and their coercion and burdens, illustrating both sides of the controversy.
Item 11. The first sentence of each body paragraph introduces the subtopic or aspect of the thesis that the paragraph will address.
Item 12. Evidence such as quotation supports the topic sentence and ultimately the thesis.
Item 13. The quotation is cited in MLA style, as is required for this paper. Check with your instructor or journal to make sure you are following the correct documentation style.
Item 14. The meaning of the quotation and its support for the argument are explicitly explained. Although the quotation fits the thesis itself, the author still explains its significance in her own words.
Item 15. The last sentence in the paragraph wraps up the point of this paragraph and alludes to the topic of the following paragraph, “bridging” and transitioning the reader into the next topic.
Item 16. This paragraph addresses the second side of the controversy outlined in the thesis — that Rosie in fact symbolized women’s coercion and continued burden. The paper must show both sides of the issue. The contrast is emphasized by language like in spite and contrarians.
Item 17. Evidence illustrates and supports this claim as well.
Item 18. The second kind of evidence, quantitative social and economic data, is introduced here. Depending on the structure of the paper’s argument, it may be more effective to provide this evidence in conjunction with the personal commentary in the first body paragraph. Dividing evidence by type is usually not a strong organizational strategy; organizing data by the point it supports is more effective.
Item 19. Because this evidence seems to support both sides of the argument, however, it may make sense here. While women did in fact enter the workforce at higher rates, they still were not earning equal stature, respect, or pay, a fact that supports the points in the second body paragraph. When organizing your paper, consider the points you want to make and the ones you want to emphasize.
Item 20. The conclusion sums up the main points of the essay in concise statements. The significance of each subtopic to the thesis is reiterated.
Item 21. The final concluding statement moves beyond the scope of the paper to address its contribution to the field of knowledge or understanding of the subject. This concluding statement sums up the author’s historical analysis in light of the present, another strategy that illustrates the study’s relevance.
Revision Checklist: Historical Essay
Focus/Purpose
Does your Introduction have a problem statement?
- Name and explain the problem that your essay will discuss within the first two paragraphs of your essay. What issue or event are you writing about? What aspects will you focus on?
- Explain what knowledge, gap in knowledge, new information, or conflict prompted your interest. Why is it worth examining and reporting?
- Be concise, but provide enough information that your readers will understand what you are writing about even if they are not familiar with the issue or event.
Development/Elaboration
Is your thesis statement direct, concise, and complete? Does it fit your introduction?
Explain in one to two sentences what you are writing about (your interpretation of the ‘problem’ and its solution) and how you support your interpretation.
Does your thesis statement tell the reader what you are about to argue?
- Include your position and your main points about the topic.
Does your thesis connect your main points to the central topic of your paper?
- Place your thesis at the end of your introduction.
- Does your thesis follow from your introduction?
- Are the main terms in your thesis defined and explained in your introduction?
Does your argument follow a logical structure?
- Use your thesis to give your paper a structure. What are you doing with your argument: comparing or contrasting different aspects of the problem, suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship, contesting traditional perspectives on the topic, etc.?
- Divide your data and evidence according to what it is you are trying to prove.
If you are comparing and contrasting two theories, group your data according to how it fits each or either theory. If you are suggesting a cause-and-effect relationship, show how each piece of evidence fits into the hypothesized relationship. If you are contesting traditional perspectives on a topic, explain the traditional perspective then what it overlooked or misinterpreted.
Do you include counterevidence? Do you either refute or concede this evidence in your argument?
- Anticipate arguments against your thesis by addressing evidence that may be used against you.
How and where in your paper could a reader disagree with your analysis, and based on what facts?
- Refute counterevidence by showing how it is untrue. Including flawed counterevidence shows that you are aware that it exists but can prove that your argument is still strong.
- Concede counterevidence by acknowledging other interpretations then reinforcing why your interpretation is more valid or accurate.
Do you use quotations effectively and properly cite all of your sources?
- Introduce direct quotations by stating their source. Do not take credit for someone else’s ideas.
- Check your assigned style manual (MLA, APA, Chicago) for the correct format for citing sources. Make sure that every quotation has a citation that includes all of the necessary information.
- Avoid using quotations at the beginning and end of your paper and your paragraphs. Quotations need an introduction to tell readers why this it is included and analysis to tell them how it fits into and supports your argument.
Does your conclusion reiterate your thesis and its significance? Does it wrap up your argument and move beyond simply restating your argument?
- Restate your thesis clearly at the beginning of your conclusion.
- Sum up each of your main points. Show how they contribute to your overall argument.
- Expand on your argument. You can suggest directions for future research, other questions that your argument raises, or relate your argument to a greater issue.
- Do not provide new information or arguments in your conclusion.
Organization
Do you organize your writing into topical paragraphs that help the reader follow your argument? Does each paragraph have a topic sentence that tells what that paragraph argues and how it relates to your thesis?
- Separate the ideas in the body of your paper into paragraphs. Each paragraph should address one aspect of the argument that you outlined in your thesis.
- Each paragraph should be at least 4 sentences and have a topic sentence. The support should move from your general point in the topic sentence to specific evidence and analysis.
- Give an overview of what the paragraph is about and how it follows from the previous paragraph or your thesis in the topic sentence.
- Start with general statements then use facts, details, and analyses to support those statements. The paragraph should include evidence from your sources and original analysis that tells why you included each piece of evidence and how it fits into your argument.
Do you use transition words and phrases effectively, creating logic and flow in your writing?
- Tie paragraphs together and into your argument by using transitional words and phrases.
- Use transitions to incorporate ideas from an earlier paragraph into the topic sentence of the following one. This helps your reader to make the jump between topics with you. How do the ideas in this paragraph relate to the last one’s? How do they together build your argument?
Language/Style
Do you use language that is appropriate for your readers? Is your terminology correct and inoffensive?
- Write your paper as though your reader is not familiar with your topic. Check that you have used words that your reader can understand and explained the terms with which your reader may not be familiar.
- Check that you have not used terms that are offensive or outdated to refer to gender, orientation, race, ethnicity, or geographic region. If you are unsure or uncomfortable with a term, check your style manual or with your teacher for appropriateness.
Do you write consistently in the active past?
- Use the past tense when writing a history paper. Do not switch between tenses unless you are using a direct quote.
- Use the active voice
Use first person, active voice in most cases. The active voice is less wordy and more direct than the passive voice. For example, instead of writing The fall in the birth rate can be seen in these statistics, say The birth rate statistics over the latter half of the century dropped steeply after the new policies were enacted.
Passive language turns verbs into other parts of speech. For example, She was unable to hear the ringing of the bell is passive. She couldn’t hear the bell ring is active. Avoid using such ‘buried’ verbs.
- Tell exactly what an incident, person, or theory did or achieved by using vivid, descriptive language.