Essays are common in the middle, high school, and college; you may have to write essays or reports in the business world.
Do you know how to write a good essay?
An essay is an idea expressed as a short text relating to the author’s information and opinion on a subject matter.
Learn how to write an essay in 8 easy steps.
Writing an essay is as easy as picking up a pen or sitting at the computer and starting to type. However, writing a good essay involves a lot more planning.
If you have never written an essay before, are struggling with writing and want to improve your skills, or are tasked with writing an essay quickly, there are several important steps to follow.
Easy Steps On How To Write A Good Essay
1.Type Of Essay
Understanding what type of essay you are writing is the first step to writing a good essay. There are four main categories of grouping essays:
- Narrative Essay
Tell a story or communicate information about your topic in a straightforward and structured manner, as in a story.
- Persuasive Essay
Persuasion means giving and convincing the reader of a point of view.
- Expository Essay
Explain to the reader how to do the process. For example, you could write an expository essay with step-by-step instructions on how to make a peanut butter sandwich.
- Descriptive Essay
Focus on the details of what is happening. For example, if you wanted to write a descriptive essay about your trip to the park, you would go into great detail about your experienced.
- Argumentative Essay
Argumentative essays discuss a controversial issue and present evidence in favor of your position. If you were given an argumentative essay, check out these top 10 argumentative essay topics.
- Comparative Essay
Identify differences and similarities between two subjects that are usually under the same umbrella.
- Problem Solving Essay
Describe the problem, convince the reader to care about the problem, propose a solution, and be prepared to eliminate objections.
- Informative Essay
Informative essays educate the reader on a specific factual topic.
Read Also: 15 Sites To Answer Math Problems
2. Think About Your Topic
You can’t write an essay if you don’t know what to write about. Brainstorming is the process by which you come up with an essay topic. During this stage, you simply need to sit and brainstorm ideas.
Use the clustering method to brainstorm and come up with an essay idea. This means writing your idea or topic in the center of the paper and creating clouds or clusters of related or researched ideas about it.
Researching in this context means developing a topic more deeply and recognizing connections between different aspects of your topic.
Once you have created a list of realistic topics, you can choose the best one that will answer the question posed for your essay.
Choose the best topic idea from your list and start your essay. But before you move forward, pay attention to the words you need to avoid.
3. Explore The Topic
Once you have brainstormed and chosen a topic, you may need to research to write a good essay, go to the library, look up information about your topic online, and interview experts in the field.
Keep your research organized so you can refer back to it easily. This also makes it easier to cite sources when writing your final essay.
4. Choose A Writing Style
Your tutor determines the writing style and topic of your paper. You may encounter three essay writing styles in high school and college.
- MLA (Modern Language Association) is for humanities and language arts essays. It uses the page-author-number citation style used in schools and colleges.
- The American Psychological Association, the APA style, used the author-date citation style and was created for social science and psychology research papers and essays. It is the second most common writing style.
- The Chicago Manual of Style, also known as Turabian, has two writing styles: author-date and notes-bibliography. The author-date style, used mainly by college students and professionals, works for scholarly papers, while notes-Biblio makes arts and humanities papers a breeze.
Each writing style has its unique format for in-text citations and reference lists.
5. Develop A Thesis
Your thesis is the foci of your essay, and it is the part that describes what the essay is about.
Your thesis should be used as the basic premise to write the whole essay, remembering that all the different points throughout the text must lead back to this main thesis. You should usually state your thesis in your opening paragraph.
In addition, the thesis should be broad enough that you have enough to say about it but not so broad that you cannot be thorough. To help you structure a clear thesis, check out these thesis examples.
5. Outline Your Essay
Outlining your essay means you want to draw the skeleton of the paper, and an outline can help ensure that your paper is logical, well-organized, and flows properly. If you have been assigned an argumentative essay, here are the best outline templates.
- Always write your thesis statement at the top, then write topic sentences for each paragraph below. This helps you to know what each paragraph will be about before you write them.
- Don’t pack together too many ideas in each paragraph, or the reader might get confused.
- Ensure your paragraphs have easy transitions, so the reader understands how the paper moves from one idea to another.
- Fill in facts from to support your research under each paragraph. Ensure each paragraph builds on your thesis and creates an understandable and coherent essay.
Does your tutor follow the APA guidelines for writing papers? If so, these examples of APA outline format should help you organize everything.
As you progress into the essay’s body (following our tips below), these APA format examples should prove helpful! Or, if MLA is your teacher’s preferred style, check out these examples of MLA format.
6. Write The Essay
An outline kick-starts the writing process. Write using the outline, expanding on your basic outline and creating a complete, coherent, clear essay.
You might want to edit and re-read your essay to check that it sounds exactly the way you want it to. Here are a few things to remember:
- Revise for clarity, consistency, and structure.
- Support your thesis adequately with the information in your paragraphs. Each paragraph should have its topic sentence. It tells the reader what the rest of the paragraph will be about.
- Make sure everything flows together. Transition words will be most important as you move through the essay. Transition words are the glue that ties each paragraph together and prevents the essay from sounding disjointed. You can even use a list of transition words to help you get started.
- Re-read your introduction and conclusion. This will make the reader understand the importance of your piece.
It is important to include a hook in your introduction. This line or line entices the reader and encourages them to want to know more.
7. Check Your Spelling And Grammar
There are important steps to take after writing your essay:
- Re-read what you have written, and watch for mistakes and typos.
- Review for technical errors.
- Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. You can’t always count on the spell checker to catch every spelling mistake. Sometimes you can misspell a word, but it will also misspell a word, such as “from” as “form.”
- Another common area of interest is quotation marks. It is important to cite your sources accurately and clearly. Follow these guidelines for using quotation marks in essays and speeches.
- You might also consider the difference between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Citation is reserved for lines of text identical to the original text. Paraphrasing is reserved for large parts of someone else’s writing that you want to express in your own words. A summary puts the main points from someone else’s text into your own words.
Conclusion
Whether preparing for a school assignment, project, dissertation, or thesis, writing an essay is not as complicated as many think.
This article is poised to guide you on how to write a good essay. You will surely make an excellent piece if you follow the guidelines extensively.
