How to Write Essays and Dissertations

This essential guide to writing essays and dissertations for English literature students offers step-by-step instruction on each stage of writing, from organising initial ideas through to submitting a completed piece of work. It also explains the general principles that underlie essay topics and exam questions, building on a description of those principles to help you develop effective writing and editing strategies.

Fabb and Durant offer a clear account of what makes a successful essay in literary studies, and demonstrate why alternative forms of argument and presentation are not considered to work so well. They outline various ways of solving problems encountered during the process of writing, and emphasise the importance of finding solutions that suit the writer and the topic.

The advice in this updated and expanded second edition is supported by:

• Detailed commentary on extracts from actual student essays
• Short follow-up exercises at the end of each unit
• Special consideration of longer coursework projects and dissertations

Fabb and Durant show that original ideas gain good grades only when turned into coherent writing.  More generally, they encourage you to see writing not just as a way of expressing ideas youve already had or research youve already done, but as a means of discovering new ideas and thinking things for the first time.

Nigel Fabb is Professor Literary Linguistics at the University of Strathclyde, and an editor of the Journal of Linguistics. Alan Durant is Professor of English Studies at Middlesex University London. The authors have written numerous books on literature and linguistics, and are contributing authors to Ways of Reading (3rd edition, 2005).