How to Write an Essay 2021 See Tips Applied for Writing

Would you love to learn more about how to write an essay? An academic essay is a piece of writing that uses evidence, analysis, and interpretation to create an idea or argument. In this post, you will get to know the different types of essay as well as how to write a unique essay.

Essays are common in middle school, high school and college. You may even need to write essays in the business world (although they are usually called reports at that point

How to Write an Essay

Essays are common in middle school, high school, and college. You may even need to write essays in the business world (although they are usually called “reports” at that point).

An essay is defined as “a short piece of writing that expresses information as well as the writer’s opinion.”

A lot goes into writing a successful essay. Fortunately, these tips giving below, for writing essays can help you along the way and get you on the path to a well-written essay.

Tips for Writing a Perfect Essay

For some, writing an essay is as simple as sitting down at their computer and beginning to type. But, a lot more planning goes into writing an essay successfully.

If you have never written an essay before, or if you struggle with writing and want to improve your skills, it is a good idea to follow a number of important steps in the essay writing process.

For example, to write an essay, you should generally:

• Decide what kind of essay to write
• Brainstorm your topic
• Research the topic
• Develop a thesis
• Outline your essay
• Write your essay
• Edit your writing to check spelling and grammar

While this sounds like a lot of steps to write a simple essay, if you follow them you will be able to write more successful, clear, and cohesive essays.

1. Choose the Type of Essay

The first step to writing an essay is to define what type of essay you are writing. There are four main categories into which essays can be grouped:

• Narrative Essay: Tell a story or impart information about your subject in a straightforward, orderly manner, like in a story.
• Persuasive Essay: Convince the reader about some point of view.
• Expository Essay: Explain to the reader how to do a given process. You could, for example, 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 going on. For example, if you want to write a descriptive essay about your trip to the park, you would give great detail about what you experienced: how the grass felt beneath your feet, what the park benches looked like, and anything else the reader would need to feel as if he were there.

Knowing what kind of essay you are trying to write can help you decide on a topic and structure your essay in the best way possible. Here are a few other types of essays:

• Argumentative Essay: Take a position on a controversial issue and present evidence in favor of your position.
• Compare and Contrast Essay: Identify similarities and differences between two subjects that are, typically, under the same umbrella.
• Problem Solution Essay: Describe a problem, convince the reader to care about the problem, propose a solution, and be prepared to dismantle objections.

2. Brainstorm

You cannot write an essay unless you have an idea of what to write about. Brainstorming is the process in which you come up with the essay topic. You need to simply sit and think of ideas during this phase.

• Write down everything that comes to mind as you can always narrow those topics down later.
• Use clustering or mind mapping to brainstorm and come up with an essay idea. This involves writing your topic or idea in the center of the paper and creating bubbles (clouds or clusters) of related ideas around it.
• Brainstorming can be a great way to develop a topic more deeply and to recognize connections between various facets of your topic.

Once you have a list of possible topics, it’s time to choose the best one that will answer the question posed for your essay. You want to choose a topic that is neither too broad nor too narrow.

If you are given the assignment to write a one-page essay, it would be far too much to write about “the history of the US,” since that could fill entire volumes of books.

Instead, you could write about a specific event within the history of the United States: perhaps signing the Declaration of Independence or when Columbus discovered the Americas.

Choose the best topic idea from among your list and begin moving forward on writing your essay. But, before you move forward, take heed of these topics to avoid.

3. Research the Topic

Once you have done your brainstorming and chosen your topic, you may need to do some research to write a good essay.

Go to the library or search online for information about your topic. Interview people who might be experts in the subject.

Keep your research organized so it will be easy for you to refer back to. This will also make it easier to cite your sources when writing your final essay.

4. Develop a Thesis

Your thesis statement is the main point of your essay. It is essentially one sentence that says what the essay is about. For example, your thesis statement might be “Dogs are descended from wolves.

” You can then use this as the basic premise to write your entire essay, remembering that all of the different points throughout need to lead back to this one main thesis.

You should usually state your thesis in your introductory paragraph.

The thesis statement should be broad enough that you have enough to say about it, but not so broad that you can’t be thorough.

To help you structure a perfectly clear thesis, check out These Statement Examples.

5. Outline Your Essay

The next step is to outline what you are going to write about. This means you want to essentially draw the skeleton of your paper. Writing an outline can help to ensure your paper is logical, well organized and flows properly.

If you’ve been tasked with an argumentative essay, here’s the best formula for an Argumentative Essay Outline.

Start by writing the thesis statement at the top, and then write a topic sentence for each paragraph below that. This means you should know exactly what each of your paragraphs is going to be about before you write them.

• Don’t jumble too many ideas in each paragraph or the reader may become confused.
• Ensure you have transitions between paragraphs so the reader understands how the paper flows from one idea to the next.
• Fill in supporting facts from your research under each paragraph. Make sure each paragraph ties back to your thesis and creates a cohesive, understandable essay.

Does your teacher follow the APA guidelines for writing papers? If so, these APA Outline Format Examples should help you pull it all together.

As you progress into the meat of the essay (following our tips below), these APA Format Examples should prove beneficial!

6. Write the Essay

Once you have an outline, it’s time to start writing. Write based on the outline itself, fleshing out your basic skeleton to create a whole, cohesive and clear essay.

You’ll want to edit and re-read your essay, checking to make sure it sounds exactly the way you want it to. Here are some things to remember:

• Revise for clarity, consistency, and structure.
• Support your thesis adequately with the information in your paragraphs. Each paragraph should have its own topic sentence. This is the most important sentence in the paragraph that tells readers what the rest of the paragraph will be about.
• Make sure everything flows together. As you move through the essay, transition words will be paramount. Transition words are the glue that connects every paragraph together and prevents the essay from sounding disjointed.
• Reread your introduction and conclusion. Will the reader walk away knowing exactly what your paper was about?

In your introduction, it’s important to include a hook. This is the line or line that will lure a reader in and encourage them to want to learn more.

7. Check Spelling and Grammar

Now the essay is written, but you’re not quite done. Reread what you’ve written, looking out for mistakes and typos.

• Revise for technical errors.
• Check for grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. You cannot always count on spell check to recognize every spelling error. Sometimes, you can spell a word incorrectly but your misspelling will also be a word, such as spelling “from” as “form.”
• Another common area of concern is quotation marks. It’s important to cite your sources with accuracy and clarity. You might also want to consider the difference between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Quoting is reserved for lines of text that are identical to an original piece of writing. Paraphrasing is reserved for large sections of someone else’s writing that you want to convey in your own words. Summarizing puts the main points from someone else’s text into your own words.

Essay Examples

There are four main types of essays: narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative. Each has a unique purpose. Some tell a story, some are descriptive, and others attempt to alter opinions.

Also, one of the best ways to understand each type is to review a batch of essay examples.

1.Examples of Narrative Essays

“Looking back on a childhood filled with events and memories, I find it rather difficult to pick one that leaves me with the fabled “warm and fuzzy feelings.” As the daughter of an Air Force major, I had the pleasure of traveling across America in many moving trips.

I have visited the monstrous trees of the Sequoia National Forest, stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon and have jumped on the beds at Caesar’s Palace in Lake Tahoe.”

“The day I picked my dog up from the pound was one of the happiest days of both of our lives. I had gone to the pound just a week earlier with the idea that I would just “look” at a puppy. Of course, you can no more just look at those squiggling little faces so filled with hope and joy than you can stop the sun from setting in the evening.

I knew within minutes of walking in the door that I would get a puppy… but it wasn’t until I saw him that I knew I had found my puppy.”

“Looking for houses was supposed to be a fun and exciting process. Unfortunately, none of the ones that we saw seemed to match the specifications that we had established.

They were too small, too impersonal, too close to the neighbors. After days of finding nothing even close, we began to wonder: was there really a perfect house out there for us?”

The following is an example of a famous narrative written by John Updike, Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.

2. Examples of Descriptive Essays

“Like his twisted feathers, his many scars, the reliable old owl chose the gnarled, weather-beaten, but solid branch often – it being a companion to the wise alone with the night and the last branch to creak in the heaviest wind.

He often came to survey the fields and the clouds before his hunt, to listen to the steady sound of the stream passing through reeds under the bridge while combing his feathers for the unwonted – whatever they might be.”

A student at Roane State Community College managed to spice up the first visit to a diner. Watch how descriptive things get.

“When entering the door at Lou’s, two things are immediately noticeable: the place is rarely empty and seems to consist of a maze of rooms. The first room, through the door, is the main part of the restaurant.

There is another, rarely used, dining room off to the right. It was added during the oil well boom of the seventies. Through the main dining room is yet another room; it guards the door leading into the kitchen.

This room contains the most coveted table in the place. The highest tribute Lou can bestow on anyone is to allow them access to seats at this table.

This table is the family table; it is reserved for Lou’s, and her daughter Karen’s, immediate family and treasured friends.”

Examples of Expository Essays

“This family was a victim of a problem they could have avoided-a problem that, according to Florida park rangers, hundreds of visitors suffer each year.

“Several times a month,” Ranger Rod Torres of O’Leno State Park said, “people get scared and leave the park in the middle of the night.”

Those people picked the wrong kind of park to visit. Not that there was anything wrong with the park: The hikers camped next to them loved the wild isolation of it.

But it just wasn’t the kind of place the couple from New Jersey had in mind when they decided to camp out on this trip through Florida.”

However, this sample expository essay from Thoughtful Learning relies heavily on facts and statistics to explain the important concept of cheating.

3. Examples of Argumentative Essays

“Gun control has been a controversial issue for years. A vast majority of citizens believe that if gun control is strictly enforced, it would quickly reduce the threat of crime.

Many innocent people feel they have the right to bear arms for protection, or even for the pleasure of hunting. These people are penalized for protecting their lives, or even for enjoying a common, innocent sport. To enforce gun control throughout the nation means violating a person’s Constitutional rights.

Although some people feel that the issue of gun control will limit crime, the issue should not exist due to the fact that guns are necessary for self-defense against crime, and enforcing gun control is violating a citizen’s second amendment right to bear arms.”

An argumentative essay from Bogazici University offers a bit of a dramatic flair, which is important to make a strong argument.