Essays Gone Bad

Essays are short writing pieces that discuss, describe or analyze specific topics. It can be about anything under the sun, and can be written in almost any style. It can be serious, funny, straight-forward or symbolic. It can tackle personal opinions, or merely report information. With such leeway essay writers enjoy, there have been cases that essays have gone bad. Why? Here are some common reasons:

• Overly philosophical or too intellectual essays. Essay writing’s primary goal is to express clear ideas – to convey brilliant thoughts to the reader. It’s not wrong to be intellectual and philosophical but it must have boundaries. Layman’s terms will suffice. Too much scholarly words will not result to good readership.

• All-purpose essay. This essay usually seems to say little things about everything but really says nothing relevant at all.

• World peace type of essay. This type of essay gets too preachy in tone. Reading this kind of essay is like watching a beauty pageant wherein candidates’ best answer would always be “world peace” or “for the benefit of all.” Essays must have a good stand or argument and not preach accepted facts.

• Cliché themes. Common themes like love, family and friendship are not bad to write. The problem is the angle taken to write on these cliché topics. Nothing is really new and original – it’s just a matter of shedding a new light.

Essay writing is supposed to be an efficient means to panel out creativity and fresh ideas. Compared to other forms of academic writing, it provides a greater avenue to discuss diverse subject in a reader-friendly and interesting manner. But this flexibility must not be taken as an excuse to produce an “anything goes essay.”