Last Updated on by Michael Brockbank
Writing an essay doesn’t have to be the daunting task that a lot of college students dread. In fact, writing an essay is much like blogging or creating video content from scripts. All of them have a similar approach in structure, and they can be quite fun to write.
Well, that is, unless your professor assigns a question you feel is mundane. Still, with a bit of imagination and outside-the-box thinking, you can turn even the most dull topics into masterpieces.
In any case, let’s look at how we can structure a great essay that people will love to read.
Structuring the Essay
As I said, structuring an essay is similar to that of a blog. You have three primary elements: introduction, body, and conclusion. However, you can argue that Sources is a part of the structure as well, but few people recognize it as a main component.
The body can differ depending on the length of the essay that you’re writing. Shorter essays may only require one body segment.
For instance, the “5 Part Essay” is three body paragraphs that expand on the point of your thesis statement instead of one. Essentially, it all comes down to the required length of the piece, which is often determined by your instructor or professor.
The biggest difference between blogging and essay writing is the fact that you want shorter paragraphs on a webpage. An essay is more of a long-form read, which means you can write a 300-word paragraph and no one would bat an eye. You couldn’t do that on a webpage, as it would appear as a “wall of text,” making the content that much harder to read on a screen.
Standard Essay Formats
Different types of essays have varying formats. However, some are quite universal, such as margin placements. You’ll need to look up the exact specifications for your specific essay, but the most common elements include:
- Margins: One inch on all sides
- Font: 12-point Times New Roman
- Spacing: Double-space the paragraphs of the entire paper
- First Page Heading: Your name, the instructor’s or professor’s name, class, and date in the upper left-hand corner.
Again, make sure you’re looking up the correct type of essay before formatting. Not all of them will have the same requirements.
Most professors will include the formatting types for essays as part of the syllabus or project rubric. If not, the information for the type of essay is easy enough to find by searching Google.
As for the title of your essay, that is also dictated by the type. For instance, an MLA-style essay will have the title centered above the introduction without additional formatting. This means no bold, larger print, or quotation marks.
The title should have the same typography you use for the essay.
How Long Should Paragraphs Be in an Essay?
Unless your instructor or professor has specific requirements, there is no absolute one-size-fits-all answer for essay paragraph lengths. Generally speaking, they are often between 100 and 250 words long, according to the type of essay being written.
The most important thing to keep in mind about paragraphs is that each one has a specific point to make related to the thesis. Since you want to be as concise as possible, that means a paragraph could only be two or three sentences.
The flip side of that, though, is that shorter paragraphs could indicate the idea wasn’t fully fleshed out or that it lacks sufficient evidence or a weak explanation.
If you have a lot of information regarding the point of the paragraph, then it will be much longer. And if you’re writing a science paper, I’ve seen abstracts consist of more than a thousand words on their own.
If you’re unsure, however, a good rule of thumb is to try to keep paragraphs under 300 words.
You should also try to make the paragraphs appear uniform and balanced throughout the paper. This means you don’t want one paragraph to be two sentences long while another takes up a page and a half of text. Remember, you want to be concise while strictly providing information.
You might be able to break up long paragraphs depending on the information.
What is a Thesis?
The thesis is the part of the essay that promotes the claim you’re making about the topic. This can be a single sentence, and is often referred to as a roadmap of where you’re going to take the reader throughout the piece.
Everything in your essay needs to relate back to the statement you’re making in the thesis. In other words, you don’t want to stray from the point, and every sentence needs to have a specific purpose. That means no filler or fluff.
Lastly, the thesis needs to have a debatable point. The essay isn’t about demonstrating absolute facts, but more of a way to get a conversation started about the topic. Then, you use evidence to support the claim from your perspective.
Depending on the college course you take, you could have to defend your thesis, when a committee measures the quality of your work through key findings and methodology. But that is a blog post for another day.
Introduction
The introduction is where you lay out the topic while providing information for the reader about what they’ll learn from reading the piece. Much like blogging or video introductions, you can offer a similar experience with an essay by starting with a great hook.
When it comes to blogging, you have about 15 seconds to grab someone’s attention before they leave your website. In the event of writing an essay for college, on the other hand, you have a bit more time, but you still want to engage the reader from the jump.
Hooks can come in a variety of shapes and sizes, such as:
- Asking a question to the reader
- Telling a story about your own experiences
- Providing a gripping statistic
- Using quotes from famous people
- Starting with a storytelling narrative
- Delivering an anecdotal experience
These are just some of the ways you can start an introduction that has the potential to immediately engage your reader. I cannot guarantee they will, only because you still have to write what that aspect is in your essay. I cannot write the introduction for you.
The introduction is also where you will state your thesis, usually near the end, which leads into the first body paragraph.
Body
Every body paragraph should start with a topic idea that adds a new point to the discussion regarding the thesis. Remember when I said every sentence needs to have a purpose? So do paragraphs in an essay.
The body is also where you provide evidence by citing facts or by giving examples. You can also implore personal reasoning to support your claim, but keep in mind that anecdotal evidence is somewhat weaker than something that has been established by credible sources.
I often view anecdotal elements as a kind of hearsay approach as opposed to hard-lined facts. That’s because anecdotal evidence is based on personal experience and stories as opposed to quantifiable data. In other words, anecdotal evidence can’t be proven or disproven by peers.
Now, you don’t have to absolutely stay away from using anecdotal evidence in your essay. You could have some great experiences that contribute to the conversation and topic. But again, these truths cannot be substantiated in most cases.
Conclusion
The conclusion is where you reiterate your thesis, often by rewording it in other ways. You don’t want to repeat what you’ve already written in the introduction.
You also don’t want to include any new information or include additional arguments. Those elements are for the body of the piece itself. Essentially, you want to wrap up the essay in a nice bow, highlighting how you came to the decision of your thesis.
The process is similar to a well-written blog post. The conclusion is about summarizing your points while offering closure.
Sources
Sources is the section where you will add your citations. There are several types of methods to use for citations, and it is mostly up to the type of paper you’re writing and the requirements of your instructor or professor.
For example, APA (American Psychological Association) is used for educational, psychological, and scientific studies. MLA (Modern Language Association) is primarily used for humanities studies such as literature.
There are a lot of sources that can structure these for you quite easily for free. For instance, Citation Machine probably has one of the longest lists for citation styles, covering a wide swath of essay types for every point of academia.
In any case, the Sources section is where you would put all of your citations that help you argue the thesis and conclusion.
If you need help with setting up the correct citation type, I’ll show you a couple of tools you can use for free that may help you along the way. Essentially, they’ll build the citation after you input the information. And no, it’s not AI.
In reality, you could easily build a citation generator using the most basic of HTML programming skills.
5 Key Points of an Essay to Remember
While a lot of us can crank out an essay relatively quickly, there are a few points that may get forgotten. Writing a paper is more than just typing what comes to mind and then calling it a day.
Some things to keep in mind while writing an essay include:
- The Essay Requirements
- Citing Your Work Properly
- Being Precise In Your Text
- Avoid Using “It” and “That”
- Proofreading and Editing
1. The Essay Requirements
Most college students will have a specific project related to the essay. And a lot of professors will have exacting requirements and questions that go along with the project.
Make sure you have read the description and rubric according to your specific class. If you deviate from what is required, you may wind up losing points for something silly, such as not making sure you’re using the right typeface and font size.
2. Citing Your Work
I’ve been pushing citing facts since I started writing with Textbroker in 2012. Citations are exceptionally important, especially if you’re using a lot of data-driven facts and information from other sources.
Factual citations lend credibility to your project and provide evidence to your thesis, whether you’re writing an essay or a blog post. The only difference is that you don’t necessarily need to list the citations at the end of a blog.
3. Be Precise In Your Text
Be precise in your writing. The text may be a bit more clinical in flow, but being precise helps remove doubt from the reader. There is less of a chance to be misunderstood, in other words.
You also don’t want to fill an essay with filler and fluff. This is when you pad the writing with extensive and non-related text to make the word count.
4. Avoid “It” and “That”
Using the words “it” and “that” can lead to misinterpretation of your essay. Try to use those two words as little as possible. This is part of being precise in your writing.
There are always more words you can use that are descriptive of the article or manuscript. Besides, precision literacy makes your paper appear more professional.
5. Proofreading and Editing
Never turn in your first draft. This is true whether you’re blogging, writing a book, or putting together a 2,000-word college essay. You want to submit the best version of yourself, not half-assed work.
Proofreading and editing give you time to re-evaluate structure, include more concise language, remove fluff elements, and otherwise tighten up the essay. Never underestimate the value of editing.
Free Resources You Can Use
I’m compiling a list of free tools that you can use to work on your essay. If you know of others, feel free to comment so I can inspect and get them added to the list.
These are resources that I’ve either used in the past or am currently using.
Citation Machine
Citation Machine will help you create a wide range of citations. The web-based app is free to use, but there are several ads that can get distracting.
One feature I like about Citation Machine is that it will save your progress without creating a sign-in. My citations for a recent essay were available 20 days after creating them.
Citation Machine also has a plagiarism and grammar checker, a writing assistant that works similarly to Grammarly, and a variety of writing guides perfect for college-level papers.
Grammarly
I’ve been using Grammarly as an advanced spellchecker since the days of writing for clients through Textbroker. I don’t use the AI feature, and I rarely adhere to suggested improvements. But the platform is great for writing and highlighting problematic text.
You don’t get all of the neat bells and whistles unless you upgrade, but Grammarly provides a few aspects that may be helpful, such as readability scores, unique word usage, and word count.
On a side note, the Grammarly Chrome extension works great in WordPress. The plugin may help you tighten up your blog posts.
PapersOwl Plagiarism Checker
Perhaps one of the most vital elements of writing an essay is ensuring that you’re not plagiarizing anyone. PapersOwl has a free plagiarism checker you can use without a word limit.
Of course, you can upgrade and check for uniqueness, access high-quality checks, and use swift check functions. But as a standalone, the PapersOwl plagiarism checker isn’t a bad choice if you need a free tool.
PapersOwl also has a variety of free writing tools such as citation generators, paraphrasing tools, and more.
In Conclusion…
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to writing a good essay. Luckily, it’s not overly difficult to put one together that will please the reader.
Make sure you keep the important facets of the writing in mind while putting together your thesis and the evidence to prove your point. And if there is any doubt in your mind, it doesn’t hurt to turn to Google for greater explanation.
Follow the structure provided by your instructor and professor, and everything else will fall into place. That is, as long as you’re informed regarding the topic that you’re covering.
It takes more than mere proper essay structure to write a good paper. You still have to write it in your own words.
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