Talk:Essay

Origins of the word essay

I believe the word essay originates from the greek for attempt, although http://www.etymonline.com/ says it's from the middle french. I would like to see this mentioned on the page as I believe it aids understanding of the term's modern usage, as well as being interesting.

I Agree --Jrsportsfanatik9999 23:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

--Jrsportsfanatik9999 23:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)==Question about "ese" asked here in the "Essay" talk section, with kind reply.== I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the word essay means when it is used in spanish language usually by gangsters?

It's a term that means something like "homeboy" or "friend" and it's not Spanish it's used in English by people of Mexican decent and not soley used by gangsters it's a slang term.:::

--Jrsportsfanatik9999 23:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Questions and suggestions

It is a discussion of a topic from an author's personal point of view [...]

I have often heard pieces of writing (philosophical essays, expository essays on a thesis, Wikipedia articles) ai--Jrsportsfanatik9999 23:46, 13 May 2007 (UTC)ming for a neutral point of view referred to as "essays", because they were perceived as having "essay form". Is this incorrect usage? - Jrn 15:35, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

---

Montaigne's name should be known by any literate person today, but my MS-WORD does not even include his name in those recognized by the spell-check (I have not added it, because I do not want to forget the illiteracy of our compu--Jrsportsfanatik9999 23:46, 13 May 2007 (UTC)ter culture).

Bacon is fine, but I would suggest that Donne and Brown be pegged on to Bacon and, please, someone expand this page! Take it right down to Annie Dillard's Pilgram at Tinker Creek and don't forget Lafcadio Hearn (one of my favorites) on the way.

keigu

robin d. gill uncoolwabin@hotmail.com rise, ye sea slugs!

I would add that there is a need to incorporate examples of formal academic writing and the five paragraph essay. --Jrsportsfanatik9999 23:46, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Conflict over external links

May I ask why bestessaytips.com has been removed? It looks like a completely relevant resource... --EW | Talk 18:44, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

It's paper mill linkspam:

  [DOMAIN whois information for BESTESSAYTIPS.COM ]
  Domain Name: BESTESSAYTIPS.COM
  Namespace: ICANN Unsponsored Generic TLD - http://www.icann.org
  TLD Info: See IANA Whois - http://www.iana.org/root-whois/com.htm
  Registry: VeriSign, Inc. - http://www.verisign-grs.com
  Registrar: ENOM, INC. - http://www.enom.com
  Whois Server: whois.enom.com
  Name Server[whois+dns with ip] NS1.GENUINEPAPERS.COM 66.197.164.53
  Name Server[whois+dns with ip] NS2.GENUINEPAPERS.COM 66.197.164.54
  Updated Date: 12-Oct-2005
  Creation Date: 17-Sep-2005
  Expiration Date: 17-Sep-2006
  Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK

Also, there is little useful content. The essay tips are pretty basic. There are much better resources for essay writing, that aren't written by spammers. Rhobite 18:53, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see anuthing spammy in that whois information. As for me, it is quite useful - much more than other links in this page. I want to have it kept. --Mykola Petrenko 19:51, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

"Genuinepapers.com" is clearly an essay mill. Also, I'm not convinced that Mykola Petrenko/Essaywriting are unaffiliated with the recent flurry of essay mill spam. Rhobite 20:15, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

"Mykola Petrenko" owns many of these sites. FYI, anyone who requests that an ESSAY MILL link stay live is affiliated in some way with that site. GUARANTEED. --SarahTeach 15:04, PST, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Sarah, do you have evidence to back up that claim? I would feel more willing to block him if you could prove that he is associated with these sites. I am inclined to believe you since he's added a couple suspicious links, but some proof would be nice. Rhobite 00:58, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Sarah. The site is linkspam. This article has been targeted for spam by these essay selling sites so editors here should take this into account when considering which links to add.--Alabamaboy 14:05, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I want you to consider that SarahTeach is affiliated with essayfraud.org (User_talk:SarahTeach), which is owned by essay selling company essaytown.com (essaytown.com/warning.html), while I'm not affiliated with any. Get any evidence and then insult or bully me. --Mykola Petrenko 18:01, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Rhobite, I have the proof that you requested. Look at the following page from the edit history of "Mykola Petrenko." He is from Ukraine, and he just happened to add a link to bestessays.com on January 25. It is quite clear that he is affiliated with bestessays.com. Gee, I wonder why he is so opposed to EssayFraud.org?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Mykola_Petrenko&diff=36669207&oldid=17284280

--SarahTeach 21:01, PST, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

An essay is a prose composition with a focused subject of discussion or a long systematic discourse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.190.186.123 (talk) 08:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Citing sources

It is a common misconception among students that a bibliography helps teachers figure out what arguments come from sources and which come from students. This is not the case, and often leads to inadvertent plagiarism. Quoted or directly attributable facts or statements need to be highlighted as such with quotes or a "This scientist says," and so on. Facts are cited in scholarly arguments so that other readers can evaluate the quality of the evidence to support the argument--whether by going and reviewing the cited sources used for evidence, or recognizing that the cited evidence is from reliable or unreliable sources, and so on. I've changed this part of the page accordingly. Joewright 05:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Redirect

Someone recently redirected this article to the article "Writing" without posting the information here as a subsection of the article on writing. Also, I went through the history page on this article and couldn't find the entry for when the redirect was placed on this article, which is weird. Anyway, I don't think that "essay" should be redirected to "writing" any more than "Poem" or "novel" should be redirected to "writing". So I deleted the redirect.

Phaseinduction 19:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I cleaned up your reversion. I also posted this user for blocking. Cheers. andy 21:14, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Broken link

One of the external links is broken (How to say nothing in 500 words). Apparently, the university moved all their faculty pages to new servers, but I can't find the new location of the article. Would a link to the article on archive.org be improper by Wikipedia standards, or should the link be removed until a proper substitution can be made?

http://web.archive.org/web/20071027055856/http://www3.baylor.edu/~Jesse_Airaudi/nothingwords.html

Jamal Wills (talk) 18:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

No, it is not. That is why the wayback machine template exists.--Jorfer (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Theoretical Essay

What exactly is the purpose of a theoretical essay? Thanks. -SingDanceLive —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.38.195.239 (talk) 23:05, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

OK, to put out the point, a theoretical essay is created without any difficulties. First, you need the current facts to back it up. Secondly, you need to break the essay topics into smaller sections, so it could be readable. Joe9320-1000000 articles more to be edited, One dream. (talk) 06:58, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Citation Issues

Hey all. The huge Huxley quotation in the introduction is footnoted pretty weakly. Some cursory searching leads me to believe that the volume is out of print, in which case the citation should, I think, be especially detailed. I'll try swing by my University's library in search of the source this week; but if someone out there has the actual bibliographical information and wants to save me some digging, I'd be grateful. Daniel P. Shannon (talk) 11:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

whatever wikipedia says it is

the definition of an essay is an example of the collective wisdom of persistant anonymous and semi-anonymous young men organized through computer networks, the last version lasting longer than a week being the best. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.62.203.245 (talk) 16:59, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

academic argument

definitional academic argument.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.103.91.227 (talk) 20:44, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Logical structure (in essays)

I think the sentence summarizing logical structure and admitting that there are many forms of logical structure should be moved to head the section it currently footnotes - that is the section in the article where forms of essay are discussed by way of an expanded list of significant types using typical exam question keywords. And this, of course, should be backed up in that is referenced with policy-friendly sources. The 'logic' disambiguation page, if not the main article in philosophy/maths portals should link here and vice-versa. Perhaps a special page on (general) educational and literary uses of logic and 'logical structure' would be appropriate? Thoughts here or on my talk page welcomed! Kathybramley (talk) 08:14, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Bad Links

The http://www.sfu.ca/cns/PDF/CNS_Essay_Handbook.pdf link is broken (notes 5 and 10 and perhaps elsewhere) and the spam pretending to be "note" 15 needs to be removed. -- 74.162.155.129 (talk) 02:59, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks. Don't be shy: {{sofixit}}. Getting a WP:USERNAME would also be helpful (but not strictly necessary) if you wanna edit. Ling.Nut3 (talk) 03:30, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
• Spam ref removed, thanks. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 17:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Giraffe Style Writing

The reference to Giraffe Style Writing under Definitions struck me as odd. Moreover, the only citation I could find for it is from http://writing.wikinut.com/English-writing/24lyty4t/:

“The first kind of essay is the personal essay which tells about the personal experiences of the writer, objective which shares the writer’s opinion on a certain issue and giraffe style writing which is writing in a form of spirals and patterns.”

Thus, I deleted the giraffe reference from the article.

Coryandrewtaylor (talk) 19:45, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• You did the correct thing, as per WP:BOLD and WP:V. Good work. – Ling.Nut3 (talk) 10:45, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

"Most controversial" topics

As I stated in my edit summary, there's no information about the methodology used to make up these heavily U.S.-centric lists. What encyclopedic value do they have? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:49, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 September 2017

Section "History", subsection "Europe": change "Il libro del oregano"(vandalism?) to either "The Book of the Courtier" or "Il Cortigiano" 80.180.181.89 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Done Changed to the latter. jd22292 (Jalen D. Folf) (talk) 03:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 December 2017

CHANGE "PORTING" to "SUPPORTING." 148.122.198.10 (talk) 12:56, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

Done DRAGON BOOSTER ★ 13:22, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

The structure

In the paragraph "Academic" you need to add the sub-item "An Essay structure". Although this article has a very extensive classification (Magazine or newspaper, Employment, Non-literary types, Film, Music, Photography, Visual arts) and a separate item " Forms and styles", in the sub-item "Academic" insufficiently disclosed the basic principles of writing an essay. It will provide homework writing help for the college students, since in many countries essays have become a major part of a formal education nowadays. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.231.223.98 (talk) 22:53, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

"Form and styles" section needs work badly

I realize it's poor form to point out that work needs doing without being willing to do it, but I really don't have time just at present.

The "Form and styles" section of this section is... not great. Most of the 'forms' it mentions are really basic categorizations (one step above the five-paragraph Intro-Body-Conclusion structure) that don't have a lot to do with the actual categories that contemporary professional essayists think about when they're writing or with the forms published essayists throughout history have used. Here are some examples of forms, styles, and subgenres that could reasonably be included, but aren't:

• biographical sketch
• personal essay
• critical essay (not a review)
• hermit crab essay (this one is fairly recent but is a distinct example of a fully formal category)
• hybrid personal/critical, or personal/historical, or personal/scientific forms
• theoretical investigation

As a writing teacher, I might expect beginning students to internalize the forms currently listed in the section -- and, actually, I would want to push them beyond these categories as soon as possible if they were to become good writers. About half of the entries currently there are sourced, mostly to one rhetoric textbook which Amazon reviews suggest is mostly used for freshman comp.

Even though probably most essays in the world are written for school, I think we should have a better section that talks about types of published essays as they actually exist in the world of public writing, because the essay as a published genre has had tremendous influence on politics, thought, culture, and science. It might make sense to separate subgenres from forms and styles, though the distinction will always be blurry. Rainspeaker (talk) 01:10, 17 December 2019 (UTC)