How to Start an Essay, How to Write an Essay Example
Table of Contents
How to Write an Essay?
In high school, middle school, and university, essays are popular. In the corporate environment, you may be required to write essays (although they are usually called reports at that point). An essay is a brief piece of writing that communicates both information and the writer’s point of view. Simple methods will teach you how to create an essay.
How to Write an Essay in Steps
Some people believe that writing an essay is as straightforward as sitting down at their computer and typing. However, properly writing an essay takes a great deal more planning. It is a good idea to follow many crucial phases in the essay writing process whether you have never written an essay before or if you struggle with writing and want to enhance your abilities.
To write an essay, for example, you should generally:
- choose the type of essay to write
- conceive of a topic
- investigate the subject
- decide on a writing style
- create a thesis
- plan for your essay
- compose your paper
- Make sure your work is free of errors in grammar and spelling.
1. Select the Essay Type
The first step in writing an essay is to figure out what kind of essay you’re going to write. Essays can be classified into four different categories:
- Narrative essay: In the style of a tale, tell a story or communicate facts about your subject in a plain, organized manner.
- Persuasive essay: Help convince the reader of your viewpoint.
- Expository Essay: Explain to the reader how to carry out a certain task. Write an academic paper providing step-by-step directions on how to prepare a peanut butter sandwich, for example.
- Descriptive essay: Concentrate on the specifics of what’s going on. If you wanted to write a descriptive essay on your trip away, for instance, you would go into great detail about what you saw and felt: how the grass felt under your feet, what the park chairs looked like, and everything else the reader would need to feel as if he were there.
Knowing what type of essay, you’re attempting to produce can aid you in selecting a topic and constructing your essay most effectively feasible. Here are some examples of different styles of essays:
- Argumentative essay: Take a stand on a contentious subject and support your argument with evidence. Check out these top 10 argumentative essay ideas if you’ve been given an argumentative essay assignment.
- Compare and contrast essay: Identify the similarities and differences between two subjects that are commonly grouped.
- Problem solution essay: Describe an issue, persuade the reader to care about it, offer a solution, and be ready to refute criticisms.
- Informative essay: Facts should be used to educate the reader on a certain issue.
2. Make a list of potential topics
You can’t create an essay if you don’t know what you’re going to write over. The method of researching is how you come up with an essay topic. During this period, you should just sit and brainstorm ideas.
- Make a list of anything that comes to mind; you can always filter down the themes afterward.
- To brainstorm and come up with an essay idea, use clustering or mind mapping. This entails putting your main concept or topic in the middle of the paper and surrounding it with bubbles (clouds or clusters) of related thoughts.
- Brainstorming is a terrific approach to go further into a topic and see connections between different aspects of your topic.
- Once you’ve compiled a list of potential subjects, it’s time to pick the one that best answers the essay’s question. You should pick a topic that is neither too broad nor too specific.
It would be way too much to write on “the history of the United States” in a one-page essay if you were given that task because that might fill entire volumes of books. However, you may write about a particular event in American history, such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence or the discovery of the Americas by Christopher.
3. Analyze the Subject
To create an excellent essay, you may also need to perform some research once you’ve done your brainstorming and picked your topic. Look up information about your topic in the library or on the internet. Interview persons who could know a lot about the topic.
Keep your work structured so you can easily go back to it. This also helps to cite your materials while writing your final essay a lot easier.
4. Select a Writing Technique
Your teacher or the topic of your project will define the style of writing you use for your essays. There must be three types of writing styles that you could encounter in high school and college.
- MLA (Modern Language Association) is a style guide for essays in the humanities and language arts. The writer number citation format is used. Students in high school and college utilize this writing style the most.
- The author-date citation format was developed by the American Psychological Association (APA) for social neuroscience research papers and essays. It is the second most used writing style.
5. Develop a Thesis
The essential topic of your essay is your thesis statement. It is just a single sentence that states the topic of the essay. “Dogs are derived from wolves,” for example, maybe your thesis statement. You may then utilize this as the foundation for the rest of your essay, noting that all your ideas must ultimately come back to this one major thesis. In most cases, your thesis should be stated in the first paragraph.
6. Outline Your Essay
The next stage is to plan out what you’ll write about. This implies you’ll need to create a skeleton for your paper. An introduction may assist you in ensuring that your work is clear, well-organized, and flows smoothly. If you’ve been assigned an academic argument, here’s the finest technique for creating an outline for an academic paper.
- Write a thesis statement at the top of the page, then a subject phrase for each paragraph below it. This implies that before you start writing, you should know exactly what each of your paragraphs will be about.
- If there are too many concepts jumbled together in each paragraph, the reader may become confused.
- Make sure there are transitions between paragraphs so the reader can follow the flow of the writing from one concept to the next.
- Under each paragraph, fill in supporting information from your study. Assemble a coherent, intelligible essay by ensuring that each paragraph relates to your topic.