The Art of Essay Writing

In university, you’ll hear a lot about tips for writing good essays and the criteria that should be met when writing an essay. These usually include clarity, accuracy, relevance, originality, etc. However, there may be very few places that mention the criteria for the ‘artistic’ aspect or the form of an essay. It may seem unimportant, but it is a good reference for a high-quality essay. In popular terms — it creates a good impression on the person grading the essay. If a person has invested in the form, they have certainly also invested in the content, because even the unimportant things they have done very well, so the important things must be better than that.

For me, I will not set so many criteria, but I will only base on two basic indicators which are the scientific nature and the artistic nature of the essay. The scientific nature almost includes all the above criteria (clarity, accuracy, relevance, originality, etc.) — representing the reasoning ability of the essay, while the artistic nature, in my opinion, can be understood as captivating expression, balance between paragraphs, and the use of figurative language to express ideas. You may come across some sharp phrases of famous scientists such as ‘Inequality and Unsustainable Growth: Two Sides of the Same Coin?’ written by Andrew G. Berg & Jonathan D. Ostry; or ‘The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?’ by Michael J. Sandel. These two aspects can be likened to the foundation and design of a house, or the quality and packaging of a product, or the taste and aesthetics of a dish. These things, we can associate with the pair of categories ‘content’ and ‘form’ in dialectical materialism. Accordingly, the core value of an essay will lie in the content (created by the scientific nature) but the form (or artistic nature) creates a not small added value for it.

Perhaps in the academic environment, the artistic nature will be somewhat forgotten, especially in the fields of natural science, when the results of experiments are the top priority (or simply prioritize facts). However, in the aspect of social science, or publications that need to reach a wider audience, or simply scholarship/admission essays, then the artistic nature matters. Then, we call it by another name ‘the art of persuasion’ — and this will be difficult to be classified into the scientific nature (although it can be supported by scientific evidence).