Summary Essay

Paul Roberts, in "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words", talks about the mistakes that students often make while writing papers. One of the biggest issues with students when they are writing papers is the fact that they are too timid. Rather than thinking outside of the box, they focus on common issues and the simple, obvious answers to questions. To create a quality paper the writer must be willing to bring forth ideas that are not commonly used or else you will bore the reader. Another common mistake is beating around the bush, get to the point. Students are often under the false impression that loading up basic sentences with extra words can make a paper better, but they are falling victim to making a paper that is "a wolf in sheep's skin." Meaning, they are filling up a paper that is not necessarily good with big words and phrases in order to make it seem good. This is known as word-padding. One of the most effective ways to improve a paper is by incorporating examples of what is being written about. Mr. Roberts makes it a point to prove the importance of such examples. If the reader does not understand a part of the paper then having it broken down with an example can easily help to dismiss any confusion. There are three types of writing; the concepts of "colored writing", "colorful writing", and "colorless writing." Paul Roberts breaks down and explains the differences of these concepts.
Professor Roberts provides a very persuasive argument on examples and how the usage of them can make an average paper great. He defends his belief by using examples that explain the points of statements that he makes in his writing. Without his use of examples to help the reader to understand what he was trying to convey, he would have a very ro...

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...es the example that "driving fast is dangerous" to relate to "word-padding". He relates the two by saying that, even though they both can spice things up, they more than likely will backfire.
In "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words", Roberts stresses two main things. These two things are the importance of originality and the importance of providing examples in your paper. Every time that he covered a topic, he would provide an example to really break down what he was trying to say. I believe that the main thesis was Roberts telling the reader to write a paper as interesting and fresh as possible, and to use examples in order to be as easy to understand and straight-forward as possible. All of the supporting topics were used to talk about the importance of creating a simple, yet captivating paper, and the importance of examples was shown by the constant use of examples.