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Writing Styles and Strategies
for Interpretation essays and Web Projects

An historical essay must express an argument or explanation that seems compelling to the author in a manner most calculated to persuade the reader. An historical essay must consider relevant points; make an argument clear; and provide evidence to support its claims.

The simplest and most common genre of such an essay is analytical, to logically probe the arguments pro and con. An analytical essay relates the evidence, and the inferences drawn from the evidence, while also showing how contrary interpretations fail to account for the evidence and/or commit fallacies of reasoning. In the past, you probably adopted an analytical style more often than not for this type of essay. An analytical style is perhaps the simplest to write, although not necessarily the most engaging to read. In addition, an analytical style is not always well-suited for humor, sarcasm, hyperbole, and other rhetorical characteristics, although in the hands of a master none of these are impossible.

However, it is also possible to express an argument indirectly, using such genres as the following, which oftentimes are more compatible with literary and rhetorical writing styles:

• narrative: relating the historical events into a connected story, told as it unfolds chronologically in the third person.
• first-person point of view: turn the narrative into a story using the first-person, speaking as an eye-witness, whether a main character, a marginal character, or a fictional character that you invent and add to the historical narrative (imagine a traveller telling a story, an elderly scientist talking to his last students, an eyewitness boasting of what he has seen).
• dialogue: retell the story 100% in dialogue as in a conversation, interview, meeting, testimony, etc.
• museum exhibit: present your ideas as they might be encountered in an exhibit of a museum, complete with images of artifacts and text for captions, for brochures, tour guides, etc.
• other: tell the story with the style you would expect for some other genre of writing, such as a diary, newspaper article, resume, email, etc.

These are just possibilities, and the actual number of writing styles is infinite!

The only substantive criteria to which you must adhere for Interpretation essays and Web Projects are that you must express an argument that is clearly compelling to you, and do your best to persuade others to adopt the same point of view.

In other words, do not recapitulate or summarize the contents of a text, or describe background knowledge or events that help to introduce it. Don’t dwell on mere summary or let the bulk of your essay be descriptive. Rather, interpret the text in the context of what you are learning in this course. It may help to imagine your reader to be someone who has just completed the same background and primary source readings, and who is as familiar with the basic material as you (no more, no less). She has asked you what you make of it, though she may be inclined to disagree with you. Give her the fruit of your reflections--a well-considered, informed interpretation--not a repetition of what she has just read.

Example: Given the evidence in 1615, which system of the world had at that time the strongest claim for acceptance?
Michael J. Crowe comments that “it is an irony of current educational practice that whereas everyone believes the earth orbits the sun, few persons can cite the evidences that led to this conviction” (p. iv). The Ptolemaic and Copernican theories of the world represent two ways of conceiving the important problems and of interpreting the relevant evidence. This topic would well serve either a single Interpretation essay or multiple Episodes in a Web Project. If you were to choose this topic, it would be like putting yourself into a time machine and traveling back to the year 1615, before Apollo missions to the moon or Space Shuttle astronauts in orbit became part of our cultural consciousness. This date even falls before Galileo's first encounter with the Inquisition. Appeals to events or discoveries occurring after 1615 would seem rather arbitrary and out of place. Obviously there is no “correct” answer to this sort of question. An analytical essay would consider in turn the evidence pro and con for each system as known at that time. But if you prefer, precisely the same material could be covered as a dialogue, as if a friend were to ask you what you thought of the new cosmology. Or you could present it in the form of a play, written as historical fiction. Or you might write it as if you were a guide in a historical museum.Whether written in dialogue or analytical style, your essay would explain the basis of reasoning and available evidence for each position. Regardless of the writing style you choose, you can still consider relevant points; make your argument clear; and provide evidence to support all claims.

Spelling and grammar do not matter on Yuku, but they will count as part of the Web Project grade; see Writing Tips.

	HSCI 3013. History of Science to 17th century Kerry Magruder, 2004-08 Report typos or broken links Many thanks to Mythology and Folklore and other online courses developed by Laura Gibbs.	Search course websites:
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