Distinction of the Academic Papers - Essay Example

An experimental or a trial process in the essay Introduction When studying at high school levels, it was evident that most of the academic papers were referred to as essays even when some of them appeared as mere articles. In addition, most United States educators refer articles or essays as term or research papers. This forms the basis of my title the “meaning of the term essay”, where I tend to explore the distinction of the term essay and other literally works such as articles. This is mostly true in the French history by essayist such as Montaigne in his pronounced use of the word essai in his literature work. The word essay has also been used to mean to examine, try, and to attempt to explain something with being sure of succeeding (Klaus 23). The association of essay with experiments also gets its root from the same idea of attempting to explain something. Francis Bacon also attempted to emphasize on the lack of empirical support of essay while attempting to establish its application in social sciences or arts. The key characteristic that draws a line or creates a distinction between essays an article depends exclusively on the writer’s assumptions, objectives, personal ideas, and style or structure of the literally material. A typical essay is not based on fixed place or a given time limit but unlike an article, it thrives on the ground of its original content. Also unlike pale articles, essays insists on good and fluent language, in fact in the most excellent essays good language is not narrowly a medium of communication, but communication in its own (Crawford 1). Some people argue that it is possible to distinguish the term essay empirically by the amount of words, such that an essay is a piece of literature that has at most ten thousand words, while an article has less than five hundred words. Other argues that an essay has a more formal structure than an article. In a broad way the term essay, refer to a short piece of writing addressing a certain subject matter. On a narrow perspective, the word essay may be used to refer to a short written or typed literature material that is much based on personal but non-fictional ideas. Generally, an essay is a written or typed nonfictional short story, an academic article, an experiment or even a summarized piece from a book (Kemerling 1). In literature, the meaning of essay is fussier since it is closely associated to most pieces of writing, and can only be differentiated on content or context. It is not easy to classify the genre into which the word essay belongs. However, we can follow the guidance presented by one of the most famous essayist known as Aldous Huxley. Huxley stated that an essay is a tool of literature that people can use to communicate almost everything that exist in life, and later added that by nature, essay is a short a brief piece of writing. In addition, Huxley suggested that essays belong to a genre of literature whose extreme characteristics can be understood clearly and effectively by exploring the three main frames of reference. The first frame is known as autographical or personal; Huxley argued that people belonging to this frame are those who write pieces of personal reflection and autobiographies, which are closely related to anecdote. The second frame of essayist is that of factual or objective literature, essays in this pole are not focused on individual subjects or personal autobiographies, but on are focused on broad literature such as political issues, or scientific facts (Damm 1). These type of frames concentrate on judgment or analysis of fact and making deductions, a feature of most scientific writing. The last frame is a universal summary of fact, this comprises of essayist who mostly deals with immense abstractions, and they are never personal and rarely concentrate on the facts or experience. It is difficult to differentiate a good essay from a wrong one since every writer has some personal objectives that he is attempting to achieve with the literature. Therefore, the quality of an essay depends on the required content, format and content and this may vary from one field to the other. The word essay cannot be empirically determined, hence one can only relay on the quality or content of the essay to judge its value. According to traditional essayist, good essays are those that accommodate the three frame or cuts across personal, factual or scientific, and universal abstractions (Mounsey 102). When the word essay is looked in a French perspective, it means the act of trying or attempting to explain something in a brief summary. However, the question is “how short is short?” I do not agree with the French definition that essay is a short summary of a piece of literature, because essays may range from one to more than twenty pages. Another thing is that the definition for essay and that of an article have very little distinction. The meaning of essay as an attempt is also debatable since there are different types of essays and some are not only attempting to explain a fact or a happening but also are reporting an actual occurrence. Defining an essay as a short piece of literature will mean that even the editorial part in a newspaper is an essay or every article in a blog is an essay (Klaus 54). Michael Montaigne many centuries ago described his research work as “attempts to put across his thoughts”, this gave birth to one of the main meaning of an essay as a form of writing of personal thoughts. In many countries, especially the United States essay means an educational device, forming a key component of college education. Essay as an educational tool consist of several questions or instructions that requires open or but guided responses depending on the field or subject of study. For high school students essays are a piece of writing that helps one to present their argument or understanding of a particular topic learns in class, on a certain happening in the country or an application of a scientific fact. Generally, in academics essays are used to gauge the mastery or mastery of a particular piece of learning. Students are required to view their argument, explain, give an opinion or evaluate certain pieces of literature material in form of an essay (Klaus 1). In the context of educational essay, we can argue that essay is an attempt by a student to explain or present his or her thoughts or ideas in an organized manner. However, that does not bring out a clear distinction between an essay and an exam paper or a test. It will be fallacious to argue that or essays are some of a test or an exam. The characteristic that essays consist of several questions or a set of guidelines makes it even much difficult to distinguish between an essay and an exam paper. Academic essays are mostly referred as papers, this presents the word essay in a more formal way than in a literally form. Essays whether academic or just mere group of thoughts, allows the writer to present his own opinion or ideas, but in an organized, structured, and logical manner (Damm 1). Essays unlike articles discourage the use of passive person, mostly referred to as the first person. Unlike articles, essays must start with an introduction of the main parts to be discussed, while at times stating even the structure of the essay. Articles on the other side do not require a starting statement or analysis that is commonly referred as literature review. Another characteristic of an essay that creates a clear distinction between the word essay and other literature materials is that, all materials and quotations used in forming the essay should be presented in the bibliography or reference part of the essay (Crawford 1). Newspaper or editorial articles omit such a requirement especially where the whole article is based on personal opinion. Essays are in most cases used in academics to mean research papers but there is a clear distinction between the two pieces of literature. The phrase research paper means an attempt to find out or explore a broad variety of materials on a particular subject or topic. Unlike essays, which tends to be shorter, less detailed and having a clear flow of ideas, research papers are highly detailed, more technical, much longer, and more selective in their format (Klaus 116). Conclusion With all those information on essays, it is still difficult to distinguish an essay from most of literature materials such as those distinguished above. The only ways to understand the real meaning of essay is to create a clear distinction between its close counter parts such as a journals, reports and articles. This distinction may also not bring much difference since most people refer any literature material occurring on a website or on mass media as an article. Nobody can tell precisely when to draw the line between the word essay and the word article. Work Cited Crawford, Bridget. What is the Difference between an “Article” and an “Essay”? 4 February 2010. 29 October 2013 . Damm, Cappelen. Four types of essay: expository, persuasive, analytical, argumentative. 2 September 2008. 29 October 2013 . Kemerling, Garth. A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names. 12 November 2011. 29 October 2013 . Klaus, Carl H. Essayists on the Essay: Montaigne to Our Time. University of Iowa Press, 2012. Mounsey, Chris. Essays and Dissertations. Oxford University Press, 2005. Read More