Essay style help please

[shiggles]

OK, so I'm hoping some nerd folks can give me a bit of help here as I'm getting the feeling I'm the wrong type of nerd for this job.

I'm a science person and always have been. I've taken a couple of business courses at uni to broaden my horizons a bit. The trouble is as assessment they are asking me to write a 3000 essay on a topic. Now the length doesn't bother me and I pretty sure I have enough things to talk about. The trouble is I haven't written an essay in about 10 years. I have no trouble writing reports as for me they are easier as you can dump everything into different topics with nice headings. Even when I was writing some essays they were always argumentative so I got to take a point of view and argue it but I don't think I can do that with this topic as it's not a yes/no question.

The topic we have been given seems to me more applicable to writing a report about. Without giving you the actual topic it's worded like this with "health" and "bacon" replacing other words...

"What are the health benefits of bacon?"

So I'm asking for help. Can anyone help me choose which style is best suited to this type of topic? That's what I'm most having trouble with at the moment. My hypothesis is going to be something a bit vague like "The health benefits of bacon are varied and not always obvious", and then expand on this in subsequent paragraphs.

[leadchipmunk]

Sounds like a Critical essay is what is wanted, but you seem to be taking a neutral point. And since you're showing both sides ("bacon" has both good and bad "health benefits"), you may be able to get away with a Compare and Contrast style.

Tips for critical essay: http://www.ehow.com/write-a-critical-essay/

Tips for C&C essay: http://www.ehow.com/write-a-compare-and-contrast-essay/

Edit to say that I am not an English/writing nerd, but this is what it sounds like to me.

[Raincloak]

Oh, come on. If you've been to college, then I hope you already know how to write a damn essay. It's not rocket science. In theory you should have learned this art before you graduated high school (not that many people do ... but don't get me started on the pathetic state of American education).

I suggest you make a list of all the (X) benefits of (Y). Include everything you can think of. This is the brainstorming step. Example: eating bacon with friends improves relationships.

Next, write down all the drawbacks you can think of. Include counter-arguments to the benefits listed above. Example: some of your friends might hate bacon, which means eating it with them will make them angry, which is in fact bad for relationships.

Then write a paragraph discussing each benefit.

Then write a paragraph discussing each drawback.

Arrange the paragraphs in a logical fashion, matching up benefits and drawbacks where possible. Example: put the paragraph about bacon causing angry friends right after the paragraph about bacon making happy friends.

Write an intro paragraph stating what you're going to prove (eg: Bacon is good for your health) and a conclusion paragraph (eg: Overall, bacon is great despite its disadvantages). Read the essay and create a hypothesis that matches what the rest of the essay says. Create a conclusion that either matches or disagrees with the hypothesis (eg, Bacon is not so great and its critics are correct to hate it.)

Read through and edit for flow.

Read through again and edit for typos. Make sure the proper heading, title, page numbers, footnotes, and citations are all up to speed.

Then you're done! Sign it and turn it in.

[shiggles]

Thanks everyone.

After thinking over it a bit more I think I can make it into a critical essay (what I call argumentative). I'd rather do it this way because I think it suits the way I write and think better. Otherwise I tend to waffle on.

Other than word count the requirements are a bit vague, but I'll see what other information I can find.

Athena is correct about the differences in writing style between science (what I've done all the time) and other areas. There's a lot of slightly nasty jokes between the fields about this too. But I do have to admit I generally don't like writing in essay style. The two varieties can contain all the same information but the way they written and general flow of the document will differ greatly.

I'm not a big fan of this subject at the moment. So I'm tempted to now write an essay on bacon and submit that instead. Somehow I don't think that would go down so well.

High school was also a long time ago.

Bacon x 3000