Templates: The Secret to Writing Quick, Quality Solutions

One of the most effective ways to write quick, high-quality solutions is to create your own template for your work and fill it in with each subsequent problem. We've spoken to our most efficient and highest-scoring authors, and they've all said that they do some variation of this. Maybe the bulk of the solution cannot be cloned, but at least you can have ready the key elements of a solution and duplicate them over again to maintain consistency and quality overall. But first, what are these key elements of a good solution? We need to know that first and create the skeleton of the solution in each template.

Key Elements of a High-Quality Textbook Solution:

1. Introductory sentence. This can be short and just sums up what is being asked in your own words. This gives your solution a clear direction. 
2. If needed, a diagram to set up the problem. Point out the relevant areas in the diagram and label with Times New Roman size 12 font.
3. Set-up problem-solving tactic. Briefly describe how you plan to work through the problem. The textbook you're working from may specify a specific procedure. Make sure you review the worked out solutions in the book. 
4. Individual steps separated by delimiters (single lines). Steps should be direct and not get off track. You don't want to confuse students with unnecessary information. 
5. A conclusion that re-states the answer in a full sentence. 
6. A box around the final numerical answer. See how to do that in our blog post on the subject.

So you can see that you could easily have a template at-ready with your heading setup, delimiters in place, and a general introductory sentence in place. Once you have one top-quality solution, why not duplicate that quality over and again?

We highly recommend you create your own template that fits your style and your text. But to get you started, we'll link you to some of the best solutions we've seen in physics, statistics, engineering, and business. If you find these helpful and want to see more, just email me or Ryan. We'll be happy to set you up with templates. We may even have one for the book you're working on! Imagine all the time saved! Imagine all the money earned! 

• A Business Template (This is for a matching problem and can be used for any discipline): Here. 
• Several Engineering Templates in One Word Document: Here. 
• A Physics Template: Here. 
• A Statistics Template: Here. 
• A few levels of math templates can be found in another blog post: Here.