The footnote that held the argument

A student's essay was returned with a single comment: the argument is in footnote four, and it should be in the second paragraph.

The observation is a common one and it describes a particular habit of thought. Footnote four contained the sentence that connected the two halves of the essay — the reason the first example mattered to the second. It had ended up in a note because the student was unsure of it, and uncertain material migrates downwards: into parentheses, into notes, into a final paragraph that begins 'it could also be argued'. The main text keeps what the writer is confident about, which is usually the material that needed least thought.

This produces an essay that is accurate and inert. Everything stated is defensible and nothing is risked, and the mark reflects the absence of a claim rather than any error. Examiners describe it as the commonest shape of a competent answer that does not do well, and the fix is uncomfortable rather than difficult: the sentence you are least sure of, if it is the sentence that connects your material, belongs in the body of the text where it can be defended or attacked.

There is a diagnostic that takes a minute. Read your own draft and find the sentence you would most want to discuss with someone who knew the subject. If it is not in the first half, the structure is working against you, because a reader reaches the second half already deciding what the essay is about.

The student's revised version moved eleven words up two pages and changed nothing else. The mark rose by two bands, which tells you something uncomfortable about how much of an essay's quality lives in its arrangement.