It’s pretty easy to look at a poorly written piece of writing and say, “Here’s what you shouldn’t do.” After all, most of us can recognize bad writing when we see it. We can recognize good writing too. But it’s not always that easy to identify what...

Hypothesis: (noun) a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. Yikes! That sounds pretty serious (and a little intimidating too). Don’t let it scare you, though. In simpler terms,...

I’m sure you’ve heard the terms active voice and passive voice and have probably even heard that you should usually write in active voice (and avoid passive voice). But what does that mean? And why should you even care? Let me explain. Here are three things...

In this week’s edition of LEWD (Literary Entertainment Weekly Digest), we’ll get the behind-the-scenes look at the lives of the hottest The Scarlet Letter characters. Connect with the characters you love and the ones you love to hate. See what Hester, Pearl,...

We’ve been reinventing Kibin over the last two years. It began in late 2014 with the launch of our essay examples database (EDB), a research tool to help students brainstorm ideas for their essay topics. This marked a major branch out from...

Tell me your life story. The older you get, the more of an impossible task this seems. Do you start with the day you were born? Do you include the story of your sixth birthday party or the story of when you were 17 and almost wrecked your mom’s car? How...

Do you ever get so connected to a character that it almost physically hurts when the character gets killed off? For me, it happens all the time when I watch Game of Thrones. You don’t have to watch an HBO series to get this reaction—characters in books...

You’ve just been assigned to write an opinion essay. “Opinions?!” You think, “I’ve got plenty of those!” But slow down, cowboy, you’re going to have to narrow it down to a single opinion. More than that, you must be able to support that opinion...

What’s your first reaction to these opening lines? The Egyptians lived a long time ago. Back in the day, kids worked in factories. If your reaction is a big yawn, I understand. Who wants to read lifeless writing like this? You might as well start your paper with,...

Remember the days of elementary school reports when you had to write about events like the first Thanksgiving or the signing of the Declaration of Independence? Those were the good ol’ days when you could look up a few facts about a historical event, summarize...

Let’s see, for your Ancient History 101 course, your topics so far look like this: The history of the landline phone Life before the Internet A world without Snapchat Even though these topics might seem like ancient history, they’re probably not what your course...

Do you take everything you see or read at face value, or do you think about it on a deeper level? Or think about it this way: if you were in The Hunger Games, would you be an inhabitant of The Capitol—carefree and enjoying the “entertainment” of the Games—or...

You know those classes that seem to drag on forever? The clock on the wall mocks you by moving slower. The breeze sweeps in through an open window and calls to you. These are examples of personification—the clock mocking and the breeze calling. I know you might...

“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” This clever quote from Romeo and Juliet sums up the drama in Romeo and Juliet’s relationship. But if you’re struggling to find a topic for your Romeo and Juliet essay, you might feel...

Ever watch an episode of CSI (or maybe binge-watched an entire season … or two)? If you have (or have watched just about any other TV crime drama), then you’ve seen a group of detectives investigating a crime. You’ve seen them trying to figure out if...

Don’t you just love when the name of an essay is straightforward? A classification essay is an essay in which you classify something—anything—based on shared characteristics. You can classify people, things, or even ideas. Your subject will represent a broad...

There are lots of times when doing something in reverse isn’t the best idea—like walking backwards through town or driving in reverse down the interstate. Neither of these serve any useful purpose (and can actually be dangerous). So don’t try these at home....

Gun control is a hot button issue, especially in the wake of so many recent, tragic mass shootings. It is also a polarizing issue, which means that it tends to divide people. When you’re writing an argumentative essay, it generally doesn’t matter what side...

Despite what our mothers may have told us when we were testing the more “colorful” side of language as children—raise your hand if you know what soap tastes like—there’s no such thing as a “bad word.” There are, however, words that are inappropriate...

Take a look at these four essay topics, and tell me why they won’t work as a topic for your paper: psychology Romanticism World War II music If you said that all of these are great subjects but they aren’t great topics because they’re too broad,...

You’re not too thrilled about writing another essay, but when you check your next assignment, it reads: PRO-CON ESSAY. “Whoa! Pro-Con,” you wonder out loud, “Is that anything like Comic-Con? If Comic-Con is all things comics and culture, maybe Pro-Con is...