So, you’re new to essays. This is the first time that your teacher has set you a piece of work like this and you have no clue where to start. You turn your computer on and search the topic of choice in Google. Great start. Of course, you click on the first article that comes up. That’s where you get stopped in your track: Wikipedia. You vaguely remember your teacher saying something about it. You’re not supposed to use it, right?
Or maybe you’ve been writing essays for years and the Wikipedia hatred has never made any sense to you. You can’t get your head around why everyone always scoffs at it. I mean, it’s full of info that’s easy to read and easy to access. Google loves to recommend it. And most of the time, it seems to be pretty accurate. So why can’t you just slap your essay topic in there and hope for the best?
Whether you’re an essay newbie or a writing veteran, I get the struggle. I spend so, so many years asking myself questions about the famous free online encyclopaedia. What makes it so bad? Where did it get that reputation from? Is there a right way to use it?
Well, I’m here to tell you that there is a right way. You can use Wikipedia to help you with your essays if you know how to do it right. There is a right way. But that means there’s a wrong way to use it, too! And that’s the thing that your teacher hates so much. Read on to let me explain how you can use Wikipedia in your essays with ease.