The 500-word Essay: Some Thoughts
Gordon Thompson The 500-word length is consistent with many other kinds of professional writing, from blogs to book reviews. Moreover, if you want to capture and hold your audience's attention, the three-section statement maximizes your opportunity. The statements below provide ideas on how you might successfully write. The short essays for this seminar have several goals. 1. They provide you with an opportunity to explore a topic we have covered in our discussions and readings and to formulate an opinion about some aspect of those ideas. 2. These essays also provide me with a sense of your engagement and understanding of the material we cover, as well as your ability to explain your position. 3. Each essay offers you a focused opportunity to improve your writing skills. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, and citation all figure in the act of scholarly writing. A short essay allows me to work with you on these details. 4. The 500-word essay represents a miniature paper that includes all of the same features of a longer paper. Indeed, the longer papers you will write as Skidmore students will often consist of subsections consistent with the goals of these shorter essays. That is, you can form a large paper by organizing your ideas into short subsections that address the different issues comprising your topic. Finally, you should have writing clearly as your unambiguous goal. Consult the The Skidmore Guide to Writing for examples of how to cite, to punctuate, and to improve your ability to communicate in writing. For my seminars and classes, I ask that students use the MLA style of in-text citations with a “References Cited” section at the end.

The Essay
A good essay has an arch with a beginning, middle, and end. Just like a half-hour (20minute) television show, you need to grab your audience's attention with your opening sentence,