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Writing essays is some of the most fundamental tasks you’ll do in college. While history essays are not as demanding as research papers, they’re still based on historic facts and events.
Writing such essays can be stressful if you don’t know how to approach the various topics you’ll explore. Based on Research.com, 60% of students experience overwhelming anxiety due to their assignments and other college obligations. To avoid getting too stressed over your essays, here’s what a quality history essay should contain.
Choose the Right Essay Format
A good history essay needs to have solid foundations in terms of its formatting. You can write your history essay in four distinct ways depending on the topic you want to tackle:
To start, simply think about the topic you want to write about. You’ll easily settle into the right essay format once you know what you’ll be writing. If you get stuck rewriting or editing your essay, you can use a top essay writer service to get help from a professional editor. Remember – the right essay format will increase the overall quality of your paper and ensure that you get your points across more easily.
Fact-Check Your Claims
The tricky thing about writing history essays is that you’ll need to be careful of your claims. Whenever you mention dates, events, individuals, or other historic information, it needs to be 100% true and verifiable.
To do this, you’ll need to fact-check any claim you make in the essay, regardless of it being a less demanding academic assignment than a research paper. Here are a few ways to make sure you’re using factual information in your essay:
Don’t Insert Yourself Too Much
Even if you write a narrative or an argumentative essay, it’s important to remain somewhat objective about what you’re saying to the reader. Don’t make the essay an opinion piece about what your personal thoughts are on the matter.
You should balance your personal thoughts (which are as objective as possible) with historic facts and information. Act like an academic writer when tackling history essays instead of treating them as a creative writing exercise. This is what separates mundane from quality history essays in the professors’ eyes.
Raise Some Questions in the Conclusion
History essays offer you a unique opportunity to raise some interesting questions in the essay’s conclusion. Depending on how well-explored the topic of your history essay is, you can write some hypothetical questions about your subject and its further analysis.
Could the event have happened differently? What would the world look like if the event never happened? Writing a history essay is all about respecting the past while also offering some insight into how you perceive what you’ve researched. Pondering some “what if” scenarios while capping off your essay will be a good sign to the professor that you’ve enjoyed writing your history essay.
Format and Proofread your Essay Properly
While this goes for any type of academic essay, you should always go over what you wrote after the fact. Don’t submit essays that are riddled with stylistic, formatting, or grammar errors. Even if you’ve presented factual claims and professionally written about them, you still need to tend to the technical side of your essay.
Read your paper aloud and try to notice any inconsistencies with its flow, structure, and formatting. Edit your essay to make it more approachable and legible even to a non-academic eye – this will further increase its quality and land you a better grade for your efforts.
Writing a Quality History Essay
The secret ingredient to writing a quality history essay, or any essay for that matter, is finding a topic you’ll love talking about. Whether you’re interested in 20th-century history or love delving deep into ancient times, find something you’ll resonate with before you write a single word.
This will inspire you to do your best when it comes to writing, and it’ll make the process less of an obligation for you. It’ll also reflect on the results of your work, showcasing just how much energy you’ve put into a topic you’re passionate about.
Bio: Diane Sherron is a copywriter, editor, and social media content writer. Her expertise lies in writing factual, informative content in the form of essays, papers, studies, and copy for online publishing. Diane likes to study the latest writing trends and happenings in digital marketing whenever she has the time to spare.