HOW TO WRITE AN ESSAY OR AN ARTICLE

                                

I have written 1,585 articles in my blog so far from January 2006 to August 2018 and also I have written seven thesis, in which six have been published, five reports which has had an effect on the lives of a great many  Canadians, twenty-four speeches, in which fifteen have been given in United Nations Crime Congresses in Europe,   Africa, South America and in the Far East. One of them had an effect on the rights of millions of children world-wide. I have also written my speeches that I gave in Canada. Spain, Belgium and Peru. Further, I had written several hundred articles as a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist for eight years in the last century. I was also the assistant editor of one magazine and the editor of another. I was also one of ten persons who compiled a Canadian dictionary and I have written eight books (two are text books) and six books of fiction and two volumes of my memoirs. I think the above info re my writings qualifies me to write this article.

The subject of your article or essay you want to choose can be as broad as you like but after you narrow down the area of the subject you intend to write about, you can then work on your thesis or article. For example, if the subject is your views of current taxes (as I did years ago) that you intend to write about and you narrow down the subject to what was the federally proposed Goods and Services Tax which is applied to everything Canadians buy in stores and/or the bills of professionals such as lawyers etc., then that can be your article or your essay.  

The assertion or point that you wish to make about the specific subject you are writing about in your essay or article must be clear to your readers I will go to that later when you have read further into this piece Incidentally, articles are also referred to as a piece. I am also quoting from an article I previously placed in my blog.

                  

Writing an Essay/article

In order to relate what information you have to your readers, you must be sensitive to your reader's ability to comprehend what you are attempting to tell them. (1) Remember that any terms (2)   that you put in your work (2)  that may be misunderstood by your readers should be removed and better alternatives put in their place and if you can't use alternatives, then explain the terms.

1.  word or expression with a definite or precise meaning

 2.  your article

Please note: In this article, I will use the word, article both singular and plural for the purpose of also explaining how to write other forms of written communications.

Although you know the subject of your piece well, that is not to mean that your readers do. For this reason, you must guide them through your article until they are hopefully in complete agreement with the position that you have taken.

Your readers must follow a clear path to keep the ideas you are trying to bring to them on track. You must divide the information in your article in such a way that your readers can make the transition from one thought to another with as little difficulty as possible.

For the purposes of this article, I have chosen to write about the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and how it brought havoc to the Canadian Senate when that government body had to consider its ramifications.

This article is a dual-faceted piece because both subjects—the GST and the Senate are intertwined in such a manner that one cannot discuss one without discussing the other.

Years ago, the Manufacturer's Sales Tax (MST) was applied to almost everything manufactured in Canada (13.5%) which was later was replaced (3) with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which was to be paid by everyone directly to the seller or person who offered for sale goods or a services to the public. (7%) There were pros and cons on this changeover.

In order for the government to pass legislation that would make the GST law, it first had to get the approval of the Senate. Because the Senate had a Liberal majority, the prime minister decided to appoint his Tory (4) friends as senators to bolster his position on the proposed law many citizens thought that his actions were illegal.                                       

                    

 4.  Progressive Conservative Party

Please note: If you choose words that may be confusing to your readers, you have two ways of explaining them. The first way is what you have seen that is immediately before this particular sentence. The explanation is placed at the bottom of the page if you are writing a book. 

In this piece however, I am placing the explanations right after the sentences in which the confused words are written.  This way, you won’t have to go to the bottom of every page to find its meaning and then look for the last sentence you were reading. However, if you are writing your speech, it is better to use a word that everyone listening to you will understand.

One of the most important things you must do when writing anything and more importantly when writing an article; is to create a title that will draw your reader's eyes to your work.  In this piece, I have decided to title this article as I have.  It is eye-catching.

I will give you another example. Charlie Manson was a serial killer who was responsible for the torture and murder of seven persons in California in 1969. Those of us who were alive then, shuddered when we learned what his followers had done to those unfortunate victims.  Those who regularly read my blog will remember how I wrote the title to the blog. It was thus—

CHARLIE MANSON and his cult of killers

Now that is really an eye catcher. The words “cult” and “killers” are what drew my readers to that article. If I had chosen instead to write CHARLIE MANSON: His story, how many of my readers who didn’t know who that man was, would ask themselves, “Who is this man? Why should I bother reading that article?” 

Here is another example that is even more pertinent. In 1947/48 I lived with the man who was offered the job of being the captain of the Titanic and he turned the offer down.  What he told me about the sinking of that ship in 1912 was fascinating. I decided to write an article in my blog about that ship’s sinking. The title of the article had to be an eye catcher because there are hundreds of articles published about that ship. The title of my article is;

The Sinking of the Titanic: Who was to blame?

Now that is a real eye catcher. In fact, as many as 9,407 people from all over the world have so far read that article and almost every week, more people are reading that article even thought it was written years ago in my blog. They are either learning of it by word of mouth or finding it in the internet.

Incidentally, if you go to Google and type in the following words; Dahn Batchelor Titanic and press SEARCH, four articles written by me with respect to the sinking of the Titanic will appear on the first page of Google.   

You must include eye-catching words that your potential reader's eyes will see and their minds will comprehend and be attractive enough to follow through—not unlike bees that are attracted to colourful flowers for their pollen.

For the purposes of this piece, I will show you another example of how to get your reader's attention.

If you were writing about Canada's Goods and Services Tax' then the only thing more effective in getting the public's attention than a prime minister committing political suicide as a means of drawing to the attention of the voters that all is not right in our government, is describing a public hanging as a means of drawing to the attention of the citizens that all is not right in our nation.                             

         

In order to get my blog reader’s attention that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney bought this hated tax to Canada; was for me  to write an article about a rhetorical public hanging of this prime minster.

 I have underlined key words in that sentence because it is these words that the eyes of your readers are drawn to. By the time they read the sentence through, they will realize that the sentence isn't about a  suicide or hanging in the actual sense, but rather the words are being used in a colourful manner as a means of emphasizing a potential problem that is facing both the prime minister and the general public.

The sentence is amusing and is an eye-catcher and will, for the most part, cause the reader to read further.  By opening the piece with this paragraph, I have not only subliminally hinted that political suicide and public hangings are bad;   I have also suggested the fact that the conduct of our government (through the office of the prime minister) can be compared with the mayhem in our streets and that both are bad for the people of our nation.   

The next paragraph isn't as important as the first but after having fun in the first paragraph, my readers (and that goes for my publisher also) expect me to get to the gist of what I am writing about. I shall begin with the GST.

The proposed Goods and Services Tax' (GST) created more public discussion and awareness of taxes than any other proposed tax in Canada's history. This is probably due to the dog fighting in the Senate which had been brought to the attention of Canadians almost hourly via the news media.

Whenever you are writing about anything that is abbreviated, always spell out the full name initially and immediately follow that with the abbreviation (with brackets). Once you have bracketed the initials so that your readers will understand the meaning of the bracketed-abreviated letters, you don`t have to bracket them again when you use them further  in the rest of your piece. You can also write the full name further on in your article since your readers may have forgotten what the bracketed- abreviated letters stand for. 

You will notice that the first sentence of that article and for that matter the first paragraph is an eye catcher. This is an important lesson to learn. Novelists such as myself recognize how powerful the first paragraph is in order to get the readers wanting to read on. I will give you an idea of what I am telling you by giving you the first paragraph of my third published novel, The Courier.

Erich Kruger was a former SS officer and senior Gestapo agent who had been sentenced to death on July 2^nd 1945 for the murder of a Catholic priest and five Jewish prisoners. On the 15^th of September of that year he was standing on the scaffold that was originally built by the Germans in the prison yard of the Hameln Prison (near Hanover) in Germany which was in that particular month, under British jurisdiction.

Now what reader who read that first sentence of my novel wouldn’t want to read on in order to find out if Eric died or survived the hanging?

You will note that I used the words, dog fighting in this first paragraph of my article about Mulroney. It was my means as a writer to tell my readers that I disapproved of the antics going on in the senate.                                                               

            

When I coupled the words hourly with those of news media I am aware that my readers know that newspapers don't publish hourly so I can presume that my readers are thinking of radio and television as the news media in this paragraph.

I am not going to explain the dog fighting in the Canadian Senate at this part of the piece because I am hoping that you will read on in hopes that I will later return to the dog fighting in the Senate. At present, I am going back to the tax proposal.

            

For a long time, Canadians had paid a hidden tax, the  'Manufacturer's Sales  Tax  (MST)  on  every manufactured goods they had purchased. This federal tax had been hidden from the consumers because it was paid up front by the manufacturers themselves who then passed this tax onto the consumers without actually listing it on the price tag. In effect, the consumers had been paying 13.5 per cent over and above what the cost and profit of the manufacturer was.

I have told my readers about the MST because many Canadians were unaware that they had been paying it for many years. I also said kin my article;

The MST had been an accepted evil simply because of the fact that it had been unseen by the consumer. Then the federal government proposed that Canadians would not have to pay that kind of tax on manufactured goods any longer and was instead suggesting to the citizens that there was a palatable alternative.

              

I have underlined the abbreviation MST to point out that once you have described what the abbreviation stands for; you no longer have to bracket it in the rest of your article.

            

I have underlined the words palatable alternative because the word palatable' is used to define something that is pleasant to see or taste. The root word of palatable is palate, that which is the upper part of our mouths and where we experience pleasant tastes in our mouths.  I have suggested in this paragraph, (by using the word 'palatable' ) that the government was saying that their alternative was a pleasant alternative when in fact it had a very unpleasant taste in our mouths.

As I writer and as a concerned citizen, I did not agree with the government's proposal and will point this out in the next paragraph.

Many taxpayers looked upon the proposed GST as an alternative that would make even a vulture regurgitate because of the fact that the new tax would now be added to services rendered--something not done federally before.

Using words such as vulture regurgitate is strong . but I am suggesting that if a vulture which feeds on anything will throw up after tasting this government tidbit, there was no hope that the consumers were going to enjoy swallowing the government's proposed alternative.

The words, services rendered are words often tacked onto a bill submitted by professional people such as lawyers, doctors and dentists, just to name a few.

One is forced to ponder what the savings were  really going to be when you consider the fact that although the previous tax on goods was halved, there was a  new  tax  to  be  added  to  every  kind  of  service imaginable. The haircut in the barber shop will increase from $11.00 to $11.77. The cab fare from the airport to downtown Toronto increased from $25.00 to $26.75. Four nights in Los Vegas at the present $299 per person would cost an additional $20.93--the equivelant to two meals. The lawyer's bill for his or her services in court now is increased from $1000.00 a day to $1070.00 a day. That additional $70.00 in taxes for the lawyer's bill for his or her services in court is more than a great many people earn in a day.

When you want to get a point across, you have to give examples or facts that are meaningful. The aforementioned examples clearly point out that the proposed tax on services is going to take a big bite out of the consumer's pay cheque.

Now having used scare tactics on my readers to make them see that they are going to pay dearly tax-wise for the services they receive, I intend to frighten them even more with more information about the pitfalls of the proposed GST.

The government will take 15.88 per cent of your gross income. So if you are still earning $30,000, the government will take $4,764--an increase of $87.00 in deductions and payments under the new proposal. That additional tax over a period of a year may not seem like much to someone earning $30,000 a year but coupled with the fact that it represents four tank-fulls of gasoline for the car, sixty-eight trips on the TTC, approximately eighty litres of milk, haircuts for eight months--that additional $87 in increased taxes gives greater meaning to the words--feeling the pain.

In my preceding paragraph, I have brought to my readers, in terms they understand, the real impact of what the GST is really going to do to them as consumers.  But the loss to consumers is going to also hurt those who depend on consumers for their business.

The proposed GST is a logistics (5) nightmare for all businesses that sell goods or offer services, not to mention the federal government itself. Aside from listing the provincial tax of 8 per cent on the price labels, stores and other firms have to list an additional federal tax of 7 per cent towards the cost of the items or services they offer for sale. They have to separate the tax monies they receive from their customers and clients so that both governments get their piece of the action. The federal government must process thousands of GST forms daily at a cost of millions of dollars annually.

Something logistical means the organization of something complicated and with the GST, it involves complicated bookkeeping.

            

A suit which is listed at $150 will in fact cost an additional $22.50 in provincial and federal taxes. So what looks reasonable at $150.00 for a suit, will probably look unreasonable at $172.50. This will scare customers away when they realize that they have to pay 15 percent more than what the suit is actually listed for. Proponents of the GST say that the price of the suit will drop from $150.00 to $129.75 because the 13.5 per cent MST won't be added to the cost of the suit. But at the same time, there is no guarantee that the seller won't simply jack the price of the suit up to $150 in any case, and then force the consumer to pay the additional 15 per cent tax on top of the $150.00. The consumer will still be stuck with the additional tax burden, albeit it will be in the open and not hidden in the $150 asking price as before.

Anyone reading the aforementioned paragraph is going to see just how the GST hits their wallets. By using illustrations such as I have with reference to the cost of a business suit, I have pointed out to my readers that with the GST, nothing gets better—in fact, it gets worse.

It is now that I want to bring in the role of the prime minister and how he used his powers to enlarge and pad the senate to accomplish his goal of bringing the GST to Canadians.  

   To do this, I had to begin the next paragraph with such an impact, that my readers would be pulled forcibly from the GST issue and directly into the prime minister's role. To do this, I am going to bring you back to my very first paragraph in which I wrote about political suicide and public hangings.

When Prime Minister Mulroney decided to hit Canadians with the GST, he must have surely known that it was political suicide for him to do so. But not even he could have foreseen that his suicide was in fact going to be a public hanging. As he tried to sell the idea of the GST to Canadians, he was in actuality running up the thirteen steps leading to the platform of the gallows. If at this junction of his political career he decided to withdraw his proposal, Canadians per se,(6) may very well have led him gently back down the steps of the gallows and given him a second chance.

6. individually

But then, Mulroney thinking that he would be safe even if he stepped on the trapdoor of the gallows, ran pell mell (7) to that particular fixture and stood there for all to see.

7, recklessly

Now at this point of the article, I haven't really told my readers why I feel that Mulroney has done Canadians wrong. But I have certainly hinted that he has. But now it is incumbent upon me to prove my case or shut up.

As he began reaching for the hangman's rope suspended above him, he told Canadians that with refundable sales tax credits, all families earning under $30,000 would be better off after the GST reforms. His cries to the multitude gathered about to watch his public hanging, drowned out his voice. 

They were well aware that this prime minister, who handpicked many of his cabinet ministers from the depths of the public cesspool, was not that much better  than his cohorts (8) who had been hanged from the gallows earlier.

8 group of people supporting another person.

Mulroney knew that the mob screaming for his blood would show him no mercy. He knew that if his gang didn't come to his rescue, his political life would come to a disgraceful end. There was only one way in which Mulroney could save himself. He had to enlarge his gang, for without an increase in the number of members of his gang, he was outgunned.

Now I have to explain how Mulroney could pull this off.

Mulroney invoked section 26 of the Constitution which allows a prime minister to appoint up to eight extra senators to break up the vigilantes in the senate that were screaming for his blood. If the vigilantes outgunned the prime minister and his gang, then the GST would die right alongside the prime minister.

Prime ministers are the persons who appoint the senators but there has been a bad policy by prime ministers who appointed senators from their own parties. Hence, Canadians have never really been totally satisfied with the choices of senators appointed by their prime ministers especially when the prime minister’s intention was to increase his own party inside the Senate rather than consider what is best for the citizens of Canada.

The prime minister was desperate. He was so desperate that he pulled out of the local cesspool, a recently retired premier who was being investigated by the town marshal for wrongdoings. When Mulroney chose this gallows’ bait as a Canadian senator, some of the vigilantes clambered up the steps of the gallows and began helping him tie the hangman's knot at the end of the rope.

The Liberals in the senate began to feel the pressure as Tory appointees began squeezing into the Senate. Some must have wondered why Canadians in 1908 didn't follow the liberal slogan of that year--Reform the Senate.

As the new Tory appointees entered the red chamber, (9) some may have pondered the words of Sir Charles Metcalfe (Governor General of Canada) when he wrote to Sir Alexander Galt in 1843; “You may rest assured that those who support me, I will support.”

                

9, The Canadian Senate

As sure as day follows night, the eight Tory appointees came to the rescue of the prime minister. The vigilantes screamed  and  rang  bells  but  with  the independents and the new gang members pulling out their guns, the vigilantes had to retreat behind the bastions of the law.

            

The political situation hadn't changed. The prime minister placed the hangman's rope around his own neck and was ready for the big drop. But no matter what was to come, it was academic whether the trapdoor was sprung by the sheriff or whether the prime minister remained on the platform of the gallows with the rope around his neck until the end of the day (his term of office) for as far as the screaming mob at his feet was concerned, politically speaking, he was a dead man.

Finally, the crowd could wait no longer. The grumbling and then the screaming increased. A number of his own men crept up the steps of the gallows and approached the prime minister. They yelled in his ear that unless he jumped on his own, the crowd would come after them also and lynch the lot of them. They told him that he had to sacrifice himself for the good of his gang.

The day had been a long and hot one and was now coming to a close. The prime minister knew that his men were right. It was nobler to jump into the gaping hole in the platform than be lynched by the masses at his feet.

As he cried out to the angry populace below him, exhorting his virtues, some of his own men nudged him closer to the edge of the hole. Then he cried out, "I did my best!" and having said that, he jumped into the hole amidst the crowd's inevitable roar and as Canada's prime minister, he existed no more.

I have brought you right back to the beginning of my article in which I promised a political suicide and public hanging. Many readers of essays like to be titillated and this satirical (10) article is meant to do just that and at the same time, inform you as to of what is transpiring before you.

10 ridicule and mockery given as satire.

As a former columnist writing for a newspaper, I couldn't write like this but as a journalist with an opinion column, I could. I hope you have enjoyed this little romp through the fields of journalism.

I also hope that you have found this article useful, especially if you are a blogger like me.