What is an Essay?
Essays are the most commonly assigned form of writing at University and are central to the academic process. Through essays, scholars communicate with one another; in them, professors and students present data to one another and explain new ways of thinking about ideas or events.
Professors assign essays to you because they want to give you the opportunity to think, in a deep and prolonged manner, about a topic. They want you to examine a historical question, create a unique and interesting answer to that question, and use sound historical evidence to prove that answer.
While they can take many forms and range in length from one page to thirty or more pages, academic essays share a set of central characteristics. Most significantly, all essays are made up of two basic elements—an argument and evidence—and they generally all follow a similar writing structure.