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How to Write a Comprehensive Essay| Steps and Examples

• Comprehensive Essay
• August 22, 2022
• Ellie Cross

How to Write a Comprehensive Essay| Steps and Examples? If you are planning to write an essay, you will have to follow a set of steps to make the entire process easy. These steps include: Writing a thesis statement, locating sources, drafting an outline, and creating a logical flow of ideas. If you don’t have any idea on how to write an essay, you can always refer to some examples to get some ideas.

Writing a thesis statement

In a comprehensive essay, the thesis statement provides a clear focus and points toward the conclusion of the paper. A weak thesis statement will undermine the entire essay. For example, I would argue that the death penalty is wrong for violent crimes, but not for nonviolent crimes. Furthermore, I would argue that more women should run for political office and become active members of society. These are just some examples of powerful thesis statements.

In addition to a strong thesis statement for an essay , you can also include supporting points in the body of the essay. One example is a book that embodies a social issue. Trust Me by John Updike provides valuable themes that can easily be related to other works. In addition, it is an important addition to the college syllabus and offers a number of easy-to-connect themes. You can also write several paragraphs on different ideas that support the thesis statement.

Finding sources

While it is essential to gather the right information and sources to write a high-quality essay, you should keep in mind that you must also adhere to a deadline. The amount of research required for an essay can take weeks, months, or even years. To help you save time, you can use a two-pronged approach to evaluate your sources: first, read the abstracts and introductions of the articles. Second, read the citations and references. Finally, you should learn how to use the information you have gathered.

Creating an outline

First, create an outline for your paper. Outlines help you organize your ideas and write more easily. Use sequential numbers to represent the major points in your paper. Organize your paragraphs and ideas in the same order and number each one consecutively. You can re-arrange your outline as necessary, but remember that an outline is not a final draft. If you need help creating an outline, visit the Writing Center.

After writing the outline, proofread and edit it thoroughly. Then, go over it one more time to check for errors. Check grammar and style and make sure all references are cited correctly. If you use proper grammar and citation styles, your essay will be a success. Remember to check all sources and check all spellings and grammatical errors! Following proper formatting and referencing style will make your essay look better and will boost your grades.

When writing a comprehensive essay follow a logical flow of ideas

When writing a comprehensive essay, it is imperative that you follow a logical flow of ideas. For example, if your topic is a family problem, your essay structure should move from a student problem to a family problem. The same holds true for an essay that deals with a complex issue. As such, your outline should include topic sentences and a brief summary of each paragraph.

For science articles, logical flow is crucial to the presentation of important results and the whole story. A well-structured, logical flow allows readers to grasp the main message and the argument more easily. In addition, a well-organized piece of writing will foster a valuable exchange of ideas between the author and the reader. The best scientific articles follow a logical flow of ideas.

Creating a conclusion

A comprehensive essay should be rounded out with a powerful conclusion. A conclusion should summarize the main points from the body paragraphs and not repeat them. It should be a clear statement that carries a persuasive message to the audience. It should also be free of quotations and information from outside sources. The conclusion should sound convincing and confident. It should also address the reader’s questions and concerns. Here are a few tips for writing an effective conclusion.

 The most important step in composing a conclusion is to make sure the reader knows the purpose of your paper. You want to capture their attention and make them feel as though they are reading your essay. Using an appropriate ending statement can make your audience feel connected to your argument and will leave a lasting impression. Try to make it as memorable as possible by addressing the most important points of the essay. It also gives the reader a sense of closure.

Ellie Cross is a research-based content writer, who works for Cognizantt, a globally recognised  wordpress development agency uk  and Research Prospect, a  Tjenester til at skrive afhandlinger og essays . Ellie Cross holds a PhD degree in mass communication. He loves to express his views on a range of issues including education, technology, and more.

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How to Write an Essay — A Comprehensive Guide

Table of Contents

Writing an essay can be a daunting task, especially if you are new to academic writing. However, with the right approach and a clear understanding of the essay structure, you can tackle this challenge seamlessly. In this article, we will guide you through the process of essay writing in a detailed manner. By following these guidelines, you will be able to gather your materials, develop a strong argument, and craft a well-structured essay that will leave your readers hooked.

Getting Started — Gather Your Materials and Research

Before you start writing your essay, it is important to gather all the necessary materials and conduct thorough research on your topic. This includes finding relevant books, articles, and online sources that will provide you with the information needed to support your argument. The more well-informed you are on the subject, the stronger your essay will be.

When gathering your materials, it is essential to consider the credibility and reliability of your sources. Look for reputable publications, academic journals, bibliography databases , and expert opinions to ensure that the information you include in your essay is accurate and trustworthy. Remember, the quality of your research will greatly influence the overall quality of your essay.

Additionally, conducting thorough research will not only provide you with the necessary information but also help you gain a deeper understanding of your topic. As you delve into different sources, you may come across various perspectives and arguments that will enrich your own analysis. This exploration will allow you to develop a well-rounded and comprehensive essay that considers different viewpoints.

While conducting your research, it is crucial to take organized and detailed notes. Jot down key points, quotes, and any thoughts or ideas that come to mind. This will not only help you remember important information but also assist you in organizing your thoughts and structuring your essay effectively. By keeping track of your sources, you will also avoid any issues with plagiarism and ensure that you can properly cite your references.

Furthermore, the research process provides an opportunity for you to engage critically with the topic. As you read and analyze different sources, you may encounter conflicting information or gaps in the existing literature. This presents a chance for you to contribute to the academic discourse by addressing these discrepancies or proposing new insights. Your essay can become a platform for advancing knowledge and sparking further discussions.

Lastly, remember that research is an ongoing process. Even after you have gathered your initial materials, it is important to remain open to new information and perspectives. Embrace this continuous learning and be willing to revise and refine your arguments as you progress.

Create an Outline

Once you have gathered your research materials, it is time to create an outline for your essay. An outline will serve as a roadmap for your writing, helping you organize your thoughts and ensure that your essay flows logically.  Start by identifying the main points you want to cover in your essay. Then, arrange these points in a logical order, considering the overall structure of your essay.

When creating an outline, it is important to consider the overall structure of your essay. Think about how you want to introduce your topic and engage your readers. Consider what information is essential to include in each section of your essay and how you want to transition between different ideas.

Understand the Essay Structure

Before diving into the essay writing process, it is important to understand the basic structure of an essay. Most essays follow a standard format, consisting of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The introduction should grab the reader's attention and provide a clear thesis statement that reflects your main argument. The body paragraphs should expand on your argument, providing evidence and examples to support your claims. Finally, the conclusion should summarize your essay and restate your main points.

Write the Introduction

The introduction is the first impression your essay makes on the reader, so it is essential to make it engaging and captivating. Start with a hook that grabs the reader's attention and introduces the topic. Then, provide some background information and context to set the stage for your argument. Finally, end your introduction with a clear and concise thesis statement that reflects the main point you will be discussing throughout your essay.

Develop Your Argument

Once you have established your thesis statement, it is time to develop your argument in the body paragraphs of your essay. Each body paragraph should focus on a specific point that supports your thesis. Commence with each paragraph by presenting a topic sentence that serves to introduce the main idea to the reader. Subsequently, provide evidence and illustrations to support your argument. Be sure to use clear and concise language and vary your sentence structure to keep the reader engaged.

Use Evidence to Support Your Argument

To strengthen your argument and validate your claims, it is crucial to use evidence and examples throughout your essay. This can include research findings, statistics, quotes from authoritative sources, or real-life examples. Make sure to cite your sources properly and provide enough context for the reader to understand the significance of the evidence you are presenting.

Write the Body Paragraphs

With your argument and evidence in place, it is time to write the body paragraphs of your essay. Each body paragraph should focus on a separate point that contributes to your overall argument. Start with a topic that introduces the main concept of the paragraph. Then, provide supporting details and evidence to expand on your point. Use transition words and phrases to ensure a smooth flow between the paragraphs.

Craft the Conclusion

The conclusion is the final opportunity to leave a lasting impression on your reader. In this section, you should summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement. Do not introduce new information or arguments in the conclusion section. Instead, focus on wrapping up your essay and leaving the reader with a thought-provoking closing statement. Make sure to leave a lasting impact and reinforce the significance of your argument.

Edit and Proofread

Once you have finished writing your essay, it is crucial to edit and proofread it thoroughly. Check for grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, and awkward phrasing. Ensure that your sentences flow smoothly and that your ideas are clearly expressed. Trim any unnecessary information and make sure that your essay is concise and focused. Consider seeking feedback from your peer or teacher to get a fresh perspective on your work.

Final Touches and Submission

Before submitting your essay, take some time to add the final touches. This includes formatting your essay according to the guidelines provided by your instructor or educational institution. Make sure that your essay is properly formatted, with consistent font, spacing, and citation style . Double-check that all your sources are properly cited, both within the text and in the bibliography or reference list. Finally, read your essay once more to ensure that it is polished and ready for submission.

Wrapping up

By following these guidelines, you can approach essay writing with confidence. Remember to gather your materials and conduct thorough research, create a well-structured outline, and develop a strong argument supported by evidence. Craft an engaging introduction, write clear and concise body paragraphs, and wrap up your essay with a thought-provoking conclusion. Finally, edit and proofread your essay, ensuring that it is well-written and free of errors. By following these steps, you can write an essay that will ingrain your readers and showcase your skills as an academic writer.

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How to Write Your College Essay: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide

Getting ready to start your college essay? Your essay is very important to your application — especially if you’re applying to selective colleges.

Become a stronger writer by reviewing your peers’ essays and get your essay reviewed as well for free.

We have regular livestreams during which we walk you through how to write your college essay and review essays live.

College Essay Basics

Just getting started on college essays? This section will guide you through how you should think about your college essays before you start.

• Why do essays matter in the college application process?
• What is a college application theme and how do you come up with one?
• How to format and structure your college essay

Before you move to the next section, make sure you understand:

How a college essay fits into your application

What a strong essay does for your chances

How to create an application theme

Learn the Types of College Essays

Next, let’s make sure you understand the different types of college essays. You’ll most likely be writing a Common App or Coalition App essay, and you can also be asked to write supplemental essays for each school. Each essay has a prompt asking a specific question. Each of these prompts falls into one of a few different types. Understanding the types will help you better answer the prompt and structure your essay.

• How to Write a Personal Statement That Wows Colleges
• Personal Statement Essay Examples
• How to Write a Stellar Extracurricular Activity Essay
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• Tips for Writing a Diversity College Essay
• Diversity Essay Examples
• Tips for Writing a Standout Community Service Essay
• How to Write the “Why This Major” Essay
• How to Write a “Why This Major” Essay if You’re Undecided
• How to write the “Why This College” Essay
• How to Research a College to Write the “Why This College” Essay
• Why This College Essay Examples
• How to Write The Overcoming Challenges Essay
• Overcoming Challenges Essay Examples

Identify how each prompt fits into an essay type

What each type of essay is really asking of you

How to write each essay effectively

The Common App essay

Almost every student will write a Common App essay, which is why it’s important you get this right.

• How to Write the Common App Essay
• Successful Common App Essay Examples
• 5 Awesome College Essay Topics + Sample Essays
• 11 Cliché College Essay Topics + How to Fix Them

How to choose which Common App prompts to answer

How to write a successful Common App essay

What to avoid to stand out to admissions officers

Supplemental Essay Guides

Many schools, especially competitive ones, will ask you to write one or more supplemental essays. This allows a school to learn more about you and how you might fit into their culture.

These essays are extremely important in standing out. We’ve written guides for all the top schools. Follow the link below to find your school and read last year’s essay guides to give you a sense of the essay prompts. We’ll update these in August when schools release their prompts.

See last year’s supplemental essay guides to get a sense of the prompts for your schools.

Essay brainstorming and composition

Now that you’re starting to write your essay, let’s dive into the writing process. Below you’ll find our top articles on the craft of writing an amazing college essay.

• Where to Begin? 3 Personal Essay Brainstorming Exercises
• Creating the First Draft of Your College Application Essay
• How to Get the Perfect Hook for Your College Essay
• What If I Don’t Have Anything Interesting To Write About In My College Essay?
• 8 Do’s and Don’t for Crafting Your College Essay
• Stuck on Your College Essay? 8 Tips for Overcoming Writer’s Block

Understand how to write a great hook for your essay

Complete the first drafts of your essay

Editing and polishing your essay

Have a first draft ready? See our top editing tips below. Also, you may want to submit your essay to our free Essay Peer Review to get quick feedback and join a community of other students working on their essays.

• 11 Tips for Proofreading and Editing Your College Essay
• Getting Help with Your College Essay
• 5 DIY Tips for Editing Your College Essay
• How Long Should Your College Essay Be?
• Essential Grammar Rules for Your College Apps
• College Essay Checklist: Are You Ready to Submit?

Proofread and edited your essay.

Had someone else look through your essay — we recommend submitting it for a peer review.

Make sure your essay meets all requirements — consider signing up for a free account to view our per-prompt checklists to help you understand when you’re really ready to submit.

Advanced College Essay Techniques

Let’s take it one step further and see how we can make your college essay really stand out! We recommend reading through these posts when you have a draft to work with.

• 10 Guidelines for Highly Readable College Essays
• How to Use Literary Devices to Enhance Your Essay
• How to Develop a Personalized Metaphor for Your College Applications

How to Write the Perfect Essay

06 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , English Language Articles , Get the Edge , Humanities Articles , Writing Articles

You can keep adding to this plan, crossing bits out and linking the different bubbles when you spot connections between them. Even though you won’t have time to make a detailed plan under exam conditions, it can be helpful to draft a brief one, including a few key words, so that you don’t panic and go off topic when writing your essay.

If you don’t like the mind map format, there are plenty of others to choose from: you could make a table, a flowchart, or simply a list of bullet points.

Discover More

Thanks for signing up, step 2: have a clear structure.

Think about this while you’re planning: your essay is like an argument or a speech. It needs to have a logical structure, with all your points coming together to answer the question.

Start with the basics! It’s best to choose a few major points which will become your main paragraphs. Three main paragraphs is a good number for an exam essay, since you’ll be under time pressure. 

If you agree with the question overall, it can be helpful to organise your points in the following pattern:

• YES (agreement with the question)
• AND (another YES point)
• BUT (disagreement or complication)

If you disagree with the question overall, try:

• AND (another BUT point)

For example, you could structure the Of Mice and Men sample question, “To what extent is Curley’s wife portrayed as a victim in Of Mice and Men ?”, as follows:

• YES (descriptions of her appearance)
• AND (other people’s attitudes towards her)
• BUT (her position as the only woman on the ranch gives her power as she uses her femininity to her advantage)

If you wanted to write a longer essay, you could include additional paragraphs under the YES/AND categories, perhaps discussing the ways in which Curley’s wife reveals her vulnerability and insecurities, and shares her dreams with the other characters. Alternatively, you could also lengthen your essay by including another BUT paragraph about her cruel and manipulative streak.

Of course, this is not necessarily the only right way to answer this essay question – as long as you back up your points with evidence from the text, you can take any standpoint that makes sense.

Step 3: Back up your points with well-analysed quotations

You wouldn’t write a scientific report without including evidence to support your findings, so why should it be any different with an essay? Even though you aren’t strictly required to substantiate every single point you make with a quotation, there’s no harm in trying.

A close reading of your quotations can enrich your appreciation of the question and will be sure to impress examiners. When selecting the best quotations to use in your essay, keep an eye out for specific literary techniques. For example, you could highlight Curley’s wife’s use of a rhetorical question when she says, a”n’ what am I doin’? Standin’ here talking to a bunch of bindle stiffs.” This might look like:

The rhetorical question “an’ what am I doin’?” signifies that Curley’s wife is very insecure; she seems to be questioning her own life choices. Moreover, she does not expect anyone to respond to her question, highlighting her loneliness and isolation on the ranch.

Other literary techniques to look out for include:

• Tricolon – a group of three words or phrases placed close together for emphasis
• Tautology – using different words that mean the same thing: e.g. “frightening” and “terrifying”
• Parallelism – ABAB structure, often signifying movement from one concept to another
• Chiasmus – ABBA structure, drawing attention to a phrase
• Polysyndeton – many conjunctions in a sentence
• Asyndeton – lack of conjunctions, which can speed up the pace of a sentence
• Polyptoton – using the same word in different forms for emphasis: e.g. “done” and “doing”
• Alliteration – repetition of the same sound, including assonance (similar vowel sounds), plosive alliteration (“b”, “d” and “p” sounds) and sibilance (“s” sounds)
• Anaphora – repetition of words, often used to emphasise a particular point

Don’t worry if you can’t locate all of these literary devices in the work you’re analysing. You can also discuss more obvious techniques, like metaphor, simile and onomatopoeia. It’s not a problem if you can’t remember all the long names; it’s far more important to be able to confidently explain the effects of each technique and highlight its relevance to the question.

Step 4: Be creative and original throughout

Anyone can write an essay using the tips above, but the thing that really makes it “perfect” is your own unique take on the topic. If you’ve noticed something intriguing or unusual in your reading, point it out – if you find it interesting, chances are the examiner will too!

Creative writing and essay writing are more closely linked than you might imagine. Keep the idea that you’re writing a speech or argument in mind, and you’re guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention.

It’s important to set out your line of argument in your introduction, introducing your main points and the general direction your essay will take, but don’t forget to keep something back for the conclusion, too. Yes, you need to summarise your main points, but if you’re just repeating the things you said in your introduction, the body of the essay is rendered pointless.

Think of your conclusion as the climax of your speech, the bit everything else has been leading up to, rather than the boring plenary at the end of the interesting stuff.

To return to Of Mice and Men once more, here’s an example of the ideal difference between an introduction and a conclusion:

Introduction

In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men , Curley’s wife is portrayed as an ambiguous character. She could be viewed either as a cruel, seductive temptress or a lonely woman who is a victim of her society’s attitudes. Though she does seem to wield a form of sexual power, it is clear that Curley’s wife is largely a victim. This interpretation is supported by Steinbeck’s description of her appearance, other people’s attitudes, her dreams, and her evident loneliness and insecurity.

Overall, it is clear that Curley’s wife is a victim and is portrayed as such throughout the novel in the descriptions of her appearance, her dreams, other people’s judgemental attitudes, and her loneliness and insecurities. However, a character who was a victim and nothing else would be one-dimensional and Curley’s wife is not. Although she suffers in many ways, she is shown to assert herself through the manipulation of her femininity – a small rebellion against the victimisation she experiences.

Both refer back consistently to the question and summarise the essay’s main points. However, the conclusion adds something new which has been established in the main body of the essay and complicates the simple summary which is found in the introduction.

Hannah is an undergraduate English student at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and has a particular interest in postcolonial literature and the Gothic. She thinks literature is a crucial way of developing empathy and learning about the wider world. When she isn’t writing about 17th-century court masques, she enjoys acting, travelling and creative writing. 

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How to Write an Essay - A Professional Step-By-Step Guide

• How to write an A+ grade Essay

19 common types of Essays students write

Phrases that dictate the type of essay you will write.

• Tips for writing a comprehensive essay

The standard format of an academic essay

• Great essay checklist
• 9 Common essay writing mistakes and how to avoid them
• FAQs about writing an essay

Here is a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to write a good essay. We cover this topic because essay writing is an important practice that equips you with writing skills to survive academics and the real world.

As a student, you are forever condemned to write good essays, contributing to your GPA. While a good deal might consider the process easy, many students need guidance on writing a good essay.

If your main worry is how to write an essay that scores you a good mark on the Rubric, this in-depth, step-by-step essay writing tutorial will be useful. Any student who wishes to achieve an A+ in their essay must ensure that they utilize this detailed guide.

We believe that this comprehensive guide on how to write a good essay will help any student easily score an A. It does not matter the topic you've chosen; so long as you follow these ten steps to writing, check samples of well-written essays, and proofread your papers well, you will succeed. If you are a parent seeking a great essay writing resource, this tutorial is the best on the internet.

We make writing essays such an easy task that all you have left is to ask when you are being assigned an essay next. Our website offers reliable essay help services, which you could use. However, if you want to take the bull by its horns, here is our comprehensive beginner's guide to writing an essay.

10 Steps to write an A+ Grade Essay: The Essay Writing Process

The following steps will help you write an essay, starting with nothing but the essay instructions (prompt and Rubric) and ending with a well-crafted comprehensive essay. We are determined to share this tips so that you make a top-quality essay that has clarity, wonderful organization, and a good flow of ideas.

Step 1: Read the essay prompt and instructions

Although overlooked, getting familiar with any assignment is vital to understanding what your professor, instructor, or teacher is asking for before even starting to write your essay.

Most students give in to the temptation of skipping this step and then end up with a low grade on an essay they probably spent a lot of time on or had high hopes of scoring a better grade. The primary source of poor essay grades is consistently failing to read the instructions.

Take some time to go over the assignment, understand it, and ask your professor/instructor for clarification early enough. You must carefully go through the prompts, grading Rubric, or any material given alongside the essay assignment. The better if you can highlight and take brief notes on your essay assignment.

Reading the instructions helps you understand how the essay will be graded and what your instructor wants to see for them to give you the best grades. With the instructions understood, you are on the right track to writing a good essay.

Step 2: Select a suitable topic for your essay

Understanding what you are being asked to write in your essay is now time to decide what to write about. Typically, you can't just begin writing about everything; an essay is a specific paper that focuses on a single topic.

This is the most daunting of the essay writing processes, but do not get agitated. Although some instructors will give you essay topics to write about, it is usually never given. Instead, in most cases, instructors prefer that students write essays on topics of their choice, leaving you with an elephant hill to climb. Trust us, none of the two options is a walk in the park.

Given that students mostly have to choose from a myriad of ideas when generating topics and get limited to specific topics from the instructors. It becomes a quagmire either way. But let that not confuse you, not with this comprehensive essay guide, never!

Let's crunch the process of choosing a suitable topic for your essay.

Simple steps to choose a pleasant topic for your essay

We can sum up the process of choosing an excellent topic to this statement: Choose a topic that can reasonably address the essay length and one you will most likely have fun writing your essay. A reasonable topic is not too narrow or too broad; it interests you and has research resources that can support your arguments or thesis.

If you are wondering how to choose a good topic, here are some critical seven steps to follow:

• Re-read the assignment instructions. Although you are probably familiar with the instructions, skim them and your notes. This way, you can visualize the structure of the paper and choose an exciting topic that befits the essay you are about to write. In addition, you can go back to the clarification your professor or instructor gave in case you sent a clarification email or messaged them over Canvas.
• Brainstorm your topics. If you are to select the best topic, brainstorm by developing different ideas and looking up general information. This is a stage where you can comfortably use sources such as Wikipedia, which are forbidden to be cited in academic essays. Information search when developing a topic helps you widen your scope of understanding and visualize your essay's thesis or main arguments. When you have all the information, select a suitable topic that appeals to you and meets the essay requirements.
• Focus on a single topic. You only have limited words to write an essay, so you would technically want to keep everything focused. As you select the topic, focus on a narrow topic, but not too narrow to impact your research. Do not choose too broad topics, because you will struggle to write without overgeneralizing.
• List the valuable keywords. When you've settled for a topic or a given direction, list the words that matter when describing, explaining, or analyzing a topic. Then, you can use them in crafting a title for your essay.
• Close in on one topic. You'll probably end up with many topics and have 2-3 topics of preference. At this point, you select one among those and die with it to the end of your essay or change it if you experience challenges.
• Research about the topic. Now that you have the topic, you should research more about it and proceed to the last step below.
• Formulate a title. After you've narrowed it down to a topic, use the keywords you found when researching to formulate a good title for your essay.

Guidelines/tips when choosing essay topics

In academic writing, two events are likely when choosing a topic: (i) you are assigned a specific topic or asked to choose among several, and (ii) you can be asked to come up with a topic and write your essay or send the topic for approval.

When you have to choose your own topic, keep these five tips in mind:

• Select a topic that is appropriate to the essay's length. We have seen students pick topics that are too broad to cover in a short or long essay, which denies them the chance of scoring an A+ on an essay. We urge you to select narrow topics that often lead to close observation instead of broad topics resulting in overgeneralization . This applies to every essay you write: five-page, two- or three-page, six- or ten-page, descriptive , or personal essays . But, again, don't choose a topic that is too narrow that you lack enough to write about or have difficulty finding research sources.
• Choose a topic that interests you. If you suck at writing about cigarettes and alcohol and lean more towards history, go for essay topics on history and run with the topic to an excellent grade. If you pick a topic that interests you, you will probably have more to say. Chances also are that you will write better. Ultimately, you impress the reader: your professor or instructor, and take the best grades home.
• Do not summarize but analyze and discuss. If, for instance, you are writing about The Great Gatsby , avoid the temptation of choosing the entire plot. Instead, choose specific characters, actions, or plot parts that display a given theme. The latter allows you to narrow down to a specific and reasonable thesis.
• Choose a topic you can find material. Even when writing a personal narrative essay or personal statement, you need to ensure that you have the right content to fulfill the requirements of the essay. If you have to use research, although you are not writing a research paper, select a topic where you can find good scholarly sources to support the ideas and develop coherent claims and arguments.
• Be flexible with your topic . After picking a topic, be open to changing it if it seems not working. Instructors love it when you write a good essay rather than grinding out pages and sweating over something with a regrettable topic: a reflection of a poor choice.

Step 3: Research your chosen topic

The moment of truth is finally here: research! Although different people have their own research approach, making it the most flexible essay writing process, you must remain focused and do it fast. After all, you do not have forever to write your essay.

Three quick things about researching your topic: skim, find reliable scholarly sources, and do not ignore/overlook any information.

By skimming, we mean that you do not have to read the entire internet, book, journal, or articles about everything that has been written about your topic. The truth is, you probably can't: technically, it is impossible. So, you should scan things and identify the major points or arguments without bogging down and reading every word you find.

You should find reliable sources to use in your essay. As mentioned, non-scholarly sources like Wikipedia can be used when writing an essay. However, you cannot use them as a definitive source. Instead, you use such general sources as Wikipedia to familiarize yourself with the topic, generate keywords that drive your research, and get a summary of a large pool of information available. However, for the information you will cite in your essay, you must find reliable sources such as books, journals, articles, etc.

After seeding the keywords from general sources, dig deeper into the internet and academic databases or ask an expert where you can find reliable sources: a librarian can come in handy.

Note: You can use Wikipedia for your initial research, but you should never use it as a source for your essay.

Lastly, avoid overlooking or ignoring information. Any article will say whatever it says. Just because an article claims something is wrong or true does not mean it is a proven fact to use in your essay. So, it would help if you verified by researching deeper to find the right facts. Correlate findings from one author with those of authors writing on the same topic for the information's relevance, credibility, and authenticity.

Step 5: Organize your Research

So now that you have all the information you would need, you need to have it organized to make work easier. This is also another essay process that allows flexibility: most people have diverse preferences for organizing information. After all, the end justifies the means here.

You can create a bibliography now that you've selected the best resources. MS Word document allows you to enter bibliography information. Alternatively, you can use online citation tools to organize your bibliography. Online digital bibliography tools help link to sources you found online and can always refer to.

Organizing research helps you to cite every idea as you read and write your essay. For example, instead of writing a paper and then citing later, which often leads to poor in-text citations. Therefore, citing the essay as you write the first draft is advisable.

Besides, it is also a great idea if you have to submit or turn in a bibliography alongside an outline or an annotated bibliography before getting the go-ahead to write your essay.

Either way, create a bibliography that meets the requirements of your essay. Another organization strategy is having your articles bookmarked, downloaded, and saved in a specific folder. Other people prefer writing and printing a list of resources; if it is your thing, go for it!

Step 6: Formulate a strong thesis: the working thesis

At this stage, you have owned your essay writing process. You know what is required of you, have the right topic, and have researched and organized your research. You are ready to formulate your argument, assertion, claim, or opinion. Even when there is nothing apparent to argue against, your paper needs a strong thesis statement.

Find out more about writing a thesis statement for your essay .

You must create a specific, arguable, and strong thesis statement for your essay. Our professional essay writers agree that this is the most critical part after choosing a topic because it defines the direction and scope of your essay.

A thesis is a succinct statement, usually a sentence or two, that you put forward to your readers as to what you are writing about or proving. It is the central argument or idea of your essay. It simply defines what the essay is all about.

A good thesis statement helps you to develop solid arguments and allows you the flexibility to test your ideas. For example, when developing the thesis, you can begin with a one-sentence answer: what is my essay about?

Suppose, for example, you are writing an animal testing essay. In that case, the answer could be something like this: My paper is about the abuse of animal rights by including them in research when there are alternative methods to animal testing.

Suppose you are writing about university policies on freshmen living on campus. In that case, it could read: My essay is about university policies on freshmen students living on campus.

Your essay can be about how media influences children, which means your one-sentence statement can be: My essay is about how media can influence children.

That does not sound hard, does it? However, this is just the beginning. Most students stop here and present this as a thesis statement, only to be disgruntled when an instructor grades their essays poorly.

The truth is that you have to have a definitive thesis that is not about yourself. So, for example, the above statements would transform to:

• Research has proven that there are better alternatives to animal testing, especially for the cosmetics industry, which can be pursued to save animals from unnecessary pain when used in research.
• Most colleges and universities make it mandatory for freshmen students to live on campus during their first year, which helps keep them out of trouble, enables them to concentrate on their studies for better grades, and improves their social skills.
• Media, specifically television, plays a significant role in the lives of children, so it can influence them positively or negatively depending on the programming content.

You can see the glaring differences between the first two sentences in which we began drafting the essay and the second working thesis statement. The bottom line is to eliminate boring words such as "my paper argues," "my paper is about," "this essay argues that," or "I think." Such will automatically lead to lower grades on your essay.

Avoid being too vague but make a powerful statement that makes a specific point about the topic. When crafting your strong thesis statement, ensure that it is arguable. It does not necessarily mean that you choose a controversial or opinionated thesis; it means that someone could disagree with it altogether. Such an approach helps you to create a powerful thesis. The thesis is called a working thesis because it is possible to tweak it as you write the paper.

Step 7: Create a comprehensive essay outline

You now have great ideas from your research and a working thesis. Besides organizing the research, you must organize the ideas for an impressive presentation. Creating an essay outline is a vital step, lack of which your essay will most likely lose its focus, and you'll probably spend more time revising the draft to make sense of the scattered points and thoughts.

An outline is a blueprint or a roadmap for your essay - it helps you structure your paper. For example, you probably wrote three or five-paragraph essays in high school. Maintaining the same structure when writing college, university, and graduate-level essays is okay. However, the specific format you choose should align with the length requirements, the aim of your essay, and the scope of your thesis.

When creating the outline, think critically about the central idea of your thesis, then structure your essay to organize the flow of ideas.

General Essay Outline

Here is a sample general outline for an essay. You can use it to craft your own based on your topic.

I. Introduction

• Hook statement e.g., statistics, quote, or anecdote
• Thesis statement

II. Body Paragraphs (Three)

• Topic sentence supporting the thesis
• Evidence supporting the argument on (a): data, facts, examples.
• Explain how they relate to the thesis
• Closing sentence and transition to the next paragraph

III. Conclusion

• Restate the thesis
• Summary/Synthesis
• Importance of topic
• Strong closing statement

Typical Structure for an Academic Essay

Remember that most essays follow the five-paragraph format ; when writing an academic essay in English, it will be divided into an introduction, body, and conclusion.

Below is a visual representation of the structure of an ideal essay. You can adapt it when writing your next essay assignment.

Image credit: Bethlehem College and Seminary

Step 8: Write the essay systematically

With everything else done thus far, it is finally the time the rubber meets the road. Although you might feel you should have started writing sooner, your progress so far is critical and rewarding. It will enable you to create a strong, well-organized, interesting essay.

A warning, though: DO NOT be a perfectionist when writing. Do not give in to the hype of finding the perfect words, focusing too much on excellent subtitles or grammar, or at least making everything in your essay perfect. There is time to polish and perfect your essay. But right now, write.

We have outlined in-depth how to write an eye-catching essay introduction in a separate guide to help you craft introductions that stand out and grab the readers' attention. Of course, any essay writer would tell you that your main focus should be on the reader's attention. So, most importantly, begin your introduction with an essay hook or an attention grabbers such as a statistic, alarming fact, general thought, anecdote, or quote. The introduction should also have a background statement and then be finalized with your thesis. Sometimes, your instructor might ask you to write the roadmap of your essay after the thesis, where you highlight how points are laid down in the body paragraphs and conclusion.

You should have a good paragraph when undertaking academic essay writing. An introduction has different parts, including:

• Essay hook: This is your first sentence, also called the attention grabber. It can be a quote, statistic, fact, anecdote, rhetorical question, or unique statement.
• Background information : You should have two sentences explaining the topic.
• Thesis statement : the thesis statement should feature the argument or chief topic of the essay.
• Outline : Your introduction should let the reader know the logical arrangement of the essay.
• Scope : In this introduction section, narrow the essay's focus.

With the outline, it is time to fill the flesh to the skeleton to make sense of it. If you evolve and find out you need to tweak your outline, you have all the freedom on Earth and outer space. The main issue here is to maintain a focus on your thesis by providing evidence, facts, and points that support the thesis.

Each body paragraph begins with a topic sentence, the arguments and relevant evidence to support it, and finally, the closing sentence. The closing sentence transitions your reader to the following body paragraph. As you write, remember only to maintain one key idea/point per each body paragraph: do not jumble up the points to the extent of confusing your readers.

In terms of paragraph length, maintain a word count of 150 words per paragraph or balance 80% of the total essay word count among the paragraphs. Mix short and long sentences as you present evidence, give examples, and illustrate points. The paragraphs can have 5 to 7 sentences each, where you thoroughly support the topic sentence.

When writing the body paragraph, use appropriate sentences to connect the paragraphs. Besides, back your arguments using evidence from literature through in-text citations. Finally, your concluding sentences should summarize a paragraph by restating the central point of the paragraph and including transitions to the next paragraph. Ensure that your body paragraphs have:

• Topic Sentence: This should be the chief argument of the paragraph. It comes first.
• Supporting sentence using evidence: Here, use information from credible sources such as journals, books, government websites, and periodicals to support the topic sentence. Use the relevant transition words to bring flow to your essay.
• The concluding sentence: This sentence winds up the paragraph. It should give a transition to the next paragraph for a good flow.

Wind up the essay by writing a powerful conclusion. Look at our guide to writing solid conclusion paragraphs for your essays. In a nutshell, the conclusion is the final paragraph of your essay. A firm conclusion is neatly written, clear, concise, and elaborate. A strong conclusion is necessary because:

• It shows the value of your argument and why it matters.
• It leaves the readers with a strong impression of your essay writing prowess
• it ties together the focal points in your essay.
• Restates your essay's thesis in a rephrased style to show its development from the introduction through the body paragraphs.
• Reviews the major points in your essay in summary form.

Since your conclusion offers some sense of closure or ends to your argument, it must be written well. In addition, it must show new questions or possibilities that your argument has opened up.

When writing a conclusion, never introduce new evidence. Any evidence supporting the thesis is expected to be already in the body paragraphs. Therefore, you are not allowed to introduce new ideas or sources that need further explanation.

Also, avoid cliché words like in conclusion to sum up or in summary. Although the statements are not forbidden, they water down your writing, making it sound weak. Immediately you return to your thesis; it becomes clear to a reader that you are concluding the essay .

Another tip, when concluding, do not to undermine your argument. This means that you should avoid using apologetic phrases that are uncertain and appear confusing. Even when exploring many positions, your main argument should be clear to your reader.

To write a great conclusion for your essay :

• Present a rephrased version of the overall thesis statement
• Write a brief review of the key points in your body paragraphs
• Show why your argument matters
• Reflect on the broader implications of your argument, demonstrating how your ideas can be applied in different contexts.
• Ensure it is 10-15% of the total word count for the essay

Step 9: Make your Reference and Title pages

So, you've slain the dragon already; what remains is just a bit, and you are done. Assuming you were writing your essay as you insert the in-text citations, the second last ritual is to set up your reference page, which is the last page of your essay.

When writing the references, reference list, bibliography, or works cited page, strictly adhere to each style's formatting and style requirements. Online bibliography makers allow you to save your organized bibliography and change the format without losing the entries. The same applies to the bibliography feature on MS Word.

If you use the digital bibliography, copy and paste your references and format them accordingly.

After the reference page, create a relevant title page for your essay , depending on whether it is in MLA (Modern Language Association), Harvard, Chicago, or APA (American Psychological Association) format. Ensure you use the latest formatting styles, such as MLA 8 or 9 and APA 7 or otherwise directed.

Step 10: Proofread, edit, and polish your first draft into a final draft

The final ritual in the essay writing process is to review it and edit for content and grammar before submitting your essay.

Usually, you need to pause after creating the first draft of your essay and do the revision and polishing when your mind is free, re-energized, and objective enough to see things from a different view. This is where now you can unleash your perfectionist side because it is a do-or-die stage.

Here are some tips to polish your draft into the final comprehensive essay (the final draft worth submitting for grading):

• Edit for content . Check your essay's structure, organization, flow, wording, and length. You can check your essay structure against the outline you created. If the paper is too long or too short, either lengthen or shorten it appropriately . A comprehensive essay must meet the ideal length specified in the Rubric. With the changes, counter-check whether the paper makes sense.
• Edit for grammar . It is important to edit for grammar. For this process, you can use grammar editing software such as Grammarly, Ginger, or Hemingway Editor. In addition, you can read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style , which can help you write better, especially punctuations such as commas and semicolons, and how to avoid run-on sentences. Editing might essentially take a few run-throughs. So, you can take breaks to maintain your frame when editing. Returning to the paper with a fresh mind helps focus, which helps identify and fix mistakes.
• Re-read the entire essay . Once you are done editing grammar and content, take a break, then re-read the entire essay. As you read, focus on proofreading to remove the syntax, mechanical, and style errors. Double-check your paper against the Rubric and the instructions as well. Countercheck the flow of the body paragraphs and remove any complex sentences. Also, check the format of your essay, including the indentation, alignment, margins, and page numbers. You can always use online essay grading or editing services if your essay needs more polishing.

When self-editing an academic essay, focus mainly on improving the flow of your essay. Here is a checklist to guide you:

• Subject-verb agreement
• Sentence fragments
• Confusing phrases or words
• Pronoun agreement mistakes
• Spelling mistakes
• Grammatical errors
• Misplaced words
• Run-on sentences
• Missing words
• Passive tense
• Missing references
• Missing citations
• Punctuation mistakes

We hope this makes you a better editor for your essay if you can write one.

Re-cap of how to write a good essay like a pro

We can summarize all the ten steps of writing a good essay into three main stages: preparation, writing, and revision.

• The preparation stage involves deciding on the topic, conducting your research, organizing research, formulating the thesis, ad creating an essay outline.
• The writing stage entails writing the introduction, developing the thesis using evidence in the body paragraphs, and writing a summative conclusion.
• The revision stage entails editing for content, proofreading, and polishing the essay to ensure your essay's style, format, grammar, and organization are okay.

On a typical day, our top-rated essay writers confirm that they religiously follow the steps, which is why we end up with quality written essays. The writers also confirm that once you learn how to maneuver the three stages, you will do them involuntarily when writing essays. No wonder we write last-minute essays that score A+. Equally, all the steps matter and contribute to your final grade.

Now that we know how to write a comprehensive essay that scores the best grades, wouldn't it be an injustice if we failed to cover some common types of essays you will probably encounter to know how to go about each? Well, let's jump to it, then.

There are more than five different types of essays. However, the main types of essays include expository , narrative , compare and contrast , persuasive/argumentative , and descriptive essays . Now, you might only know these five. Still, we bet you there are more than ten variants of essays you will encounter in your high school, college, or university life.

Advantages and Disadvantages Essays

Contrary to argumentative or persuasive essays, advantages and disadvantages explore the pros and cons of a given issue without convincing the audience to adopt the author's side of the argument/perspective. An example of a topic for this essay: Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of renewable energy sources or the pros and cons of legalizing medical marijuana.

Analytical Essays

An analytical essay presents an argument or claims on what the author is writing about. For instance, it could involve a movie, film, play, literary work, or a piece of art. It could also entail the analysis of behavior, tendency, occurrence, or event. To write an analytical essay, the author often uses logical reasoning, critical thinking, and sound judgment to achieve some natural flow. The common analytical essays include persuasive analytical essays, analytical expository essays, analytical history essays, and analytical comparison essays. Example of a topic for an analytical essay: Why do teenagers run from home? Or why do stalkers like social media?

Argumentative Essays

Argumentative essays entail the author trying to persuade the readers to adopt their perspective by immaculately presenting the pros, cons, and counterarguments on a given issue. It is among the common types of essays assigned as homework in college. However, all disciplines are likely to write an argumentative essay when it comes to written assignments. Example of an Argumentative Essay Topic: Is social media a surveillance tool than a communication medium?

Classification Essays

The primary role of a classification essay is to group and separate objects, things, events, or places according to salient characteristics. Therefore, finding a unique approach to classifying things is always advisable. For instance, you can be asked to write about the five types of personalities.

College Admission Essays

Every year, students are required to submit a college application essay as part of their application process. In this type of essay, your role is to convince the admission board/committee of the reason they should admit you to the college or university. You could be out there wondering how to choose the best topic for a college essay or how to write it better, but when you are done reading this, it will be history. This is similar to the common APP essays or personal statements.

Compare and Contrast Essays

The name lays bare what a compare and contrast essay is. It simply involves comparing the differences and similarities of phenomena, events, occurrences, physical features, countries, celebrities, comedies, books, vehicles, people, etc. For example, a good topic would be to compare and contrast communism and capitalism.

Critical Essays

In a critical essay , you are meant to criticize and evaluate a piece of art, literature, or anything presented by revealing its strengths and weaknesses. It entails presenting a deep analysis of a given topic critically, logically, and flowingly.

Cause and effect essays

In a cause-and-effect essay, writers aim to explore the causes and consequences of a given phenomenon or event. There are methods or approaches to follow. You can begin by outlining the causes and then the effects or do a cross-comparison in paragraphs. You can choose an appropriate cause-and-effect essay topic from our topics for cause-and-effect essays.

Definition Essays

In this type of essay, you define a term, concept, idea, vocabulary, process, phenomenon, or occurrence by providing in-depth details. When writing one, you should explore the origin/genesis, meanings, applications, and maybe pros and cons, where necessary. For instance, an excellent topic for a definition essay would be Exploring the concept of divorce. Or Define the concept of social media or Hacktivism.

Descriptive/Description Essays

Your role as an author of a descriptive essay is to describe things, people, events, or phenomena. It should be written from a personal perspective point of view and should offer your general impression. For example, describe the appearance, smell, feeling, etc.

Discursive Essays

In a discursive essay , the role of the author is to offer an unbiased and reliable assessment of a given issue. It is close to an argumentative essay in that it requires choosing a controversial topic, only that the discursive essays present a balanced discussion. Common discursive essays include opinion essays and for and against essays.

Expository Essays

An expository essay explores a subject or phenomenon from the author's point of view. It is all about simplifying an explanation to a given topic without trying to prove anything. Your key role is to present the advantages and disadvantages, merits and demerits, or pros and cons to the readers. Example of Expository Essay Topic: Explain why art therapy can be used in mental health hospitals. Or Explore the possibility of using laughter as medicine.

Narrative Essays

In a narrative essay, you must always use the first person to tell a story about yourself. It is like writing an autobiography.

Personal Essays

These are essays you write about yourself. It is almost similar to the narrative essay. It is a variant of a narrative essay. Examples of personal essays are essays about yourself, such as scholarship essays, statements of purpose, transfer letters, appeal letters, and admission essays.

Persuasive Essays

This type of essay is the extreme opposite of an argumentative essay. It is meant to change the readers' point of view so that they adopt that of the author as an axiom. Even though it sounds simple, it is one of the toughest types of essays. Write it well so everyone who reads your essays eventually agrees with your thoughts and reasoning. In a persuasive essay, the reader must find worth in your statements. Here is where your negotiation skills and power of conviction play a role.

Poetry Essays

A poetry analysis essay , as the name suggests, entails discussing the critical components of an essay. For example, it could explore a poem's literary devices, themes, and central claims. Example of a poetry essay topic: Explore the theme of heroism in the Beowulf Poem.

Process Essays

As the name suggests, you offer a step-by-step guide to the readers in this type of essay. It should be loaded with comprehensive information. This article could easily be a process essay as we explore the essay writing process. Example of a process essay topic: Explain the Solvay process. Or Explain how to choose an outstanding essay topic.

Profile Essays

Profile essays are essays where you describe a person, place, event, or anything in detail. It could be an essay you write about yourself or one you write about someone. For instance, you can write an essay about Elon Musk, Bill Gates, President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump, and President Vladimir Putin.

Synthesis Essays

Ranked among the type of essays as advanced-level writing, a synthesis essay explores a unique viewpoint on a central idea, a topic, or a theme.

Problem-solution essays

A problem-solution essay is a persuasive essay where the writer describes a problem, convinces the readers to care about the problem, and proposes the most effective solution while rebutting any objections. It can either describe multiple solutions or focus on a single solution to a problem.

Informative Essay

An informative essay is meant to educate your readers about a specific topic. It can define a term, compare and contrast things, analyze data, demonstrate how-to, or outline processes without presenting opinions or persuading the readers.

There are direction words that guide you on what to do to your essay.

• Describe:  Here, you should write about facts, events, and processes. It should follow a specific order and emphasize the importance of something. It is best if you interpret or explain when writing descriptive essays.
• Explain:  In such essays, you are required to analyze and clarify points. It is a common approach in cause-and-effect essays. This is a common approach to narrative essays.
• Discuss:  Such essays require that you give a point of view or perspective or expound on something. While doing so, use examples, arguments, and evidence from credible sources.
• Compare and contrast:  Just as the name,  compare and contrast essays  require that you find the differences and similarities between events, ideas, or interpretations.
• Critique:  critique essays discuss the strengths and weaknesses of articles, books, or art.
• Argue:  argumentative or persuasive essays require that you systematically or logically reject or support an idea through proper evidence.
• Classify : it should be all about clustering ideas based on given criteria. This is a common practice in  classification essays .
• Critically analyze : it should be a critical analysis. This means it can be an analytical essay.

Check out our guide on the power words to use in your essay to impress your professors and readers. 

Tips for Writing a comprehensive essay

Like any other game, some guidelines guide how essays are written. Here are the rules of academic essay writing.

• Use formal academic English . Disdain using slang when writing your academic essay. On the same note, avoid using tough English words. Instead, use appropriate academic writing phrases to present ideas in your essay. Simplicity is king when writing essays.
• Analyze the questions to ensure you write an essay that answers the prompt or assignment Rubric.
• Everything you write should be well-cited . Back up ideas using evidence from credible sources to avoid plagiarism .
• Wikipedia is never a source in academic essay writing. However, you can use it to familiarize yourself with the topic, brainstorm ideas, and gather useful knowledge on approaching a question or topic.
• Whenever you use information that is not your original idea, reference the source to avoid plagiarism. For instance, when paraphrasing an idea of an article, ensure that you correctly provide the in-text citation and the references.
• Always follow your instructor's particular formatting and citation styles relevant to your field.
• Avoid plagiarism at all costs. Professors love plagiarism-free essays.
• Write your essays in prose. However, use well-balanced paragraphs. A paragraph should never exceed 150 words.
• Always follow the five-paragraph essay format: introduction, body, and conclusion.
• Your introduction and conclusion should each be 10% of the total word count.
• An essay must have a hook and thesis as part of your introduction.

Like writing research papers, term papers, or reports, writing essays differ from the instructions provided. You need to thoroughly check the assignment instructions to get an insight into the formatting guidelines to use. However, most academic essays would require that you use the following:

• 5 by 11-inch paper
• Double spaced
• Font 12 pt. (the standard legible font)
• 1-inch margins on all sides of the paper
• Page number
• Cover page/title page
• First-line indentation for the paragraphs
• Left-aligned paper
• Times New Roman, Arial, or Calibri fonts.

The assignment rubric will also contain the headings and subheadings breakdown instructions. Some professors like giving the number of pages and references for academic essays.

How to Cite Ideas in an Essay

The citation format depends on the subject matter. Sometimes, if left with the choice, it is a matter of preference of the student. However, the most common citation styles include MLA, APA, Harvard, Chicago, ASA, and Oxford.

• Academic essays on subjects within social sciences mostly use APA and  ASA style  citations.
• Academic essays are written in humanities subjects, including history and literature, and use Turabian, Chicago, or MLA style citations.
• Most medical, psychology, criminology, and nursing essays or health-related essays such as nursing academic essays are written in AMA style.
• It is good to have a clue about the citation you are using. Otherwise, you should seek essay writing help from Gradecrest. Our essay writers can format, edit, and proofread your essays. All you need to do is to request assistance from our editing and proofreading service.

Features of a Comprehensive Essay

When assigning an essay, instructors, and professors often remind you that they look forward to a comprehensive essay.

• It is thorough, well-composed, and deep. A comprehensive essay is an essay that thoroughly discusses a particular issue or presents compelling arguments that support or prove a thesis statement. Its content focus on explaining issues at a deeper level without deliberate omission of some important facts.
• It is well written. Writing a comprehensive essay is not rocket science. It is like giving your best when preparing, writing, and revising your essay. After all, any well-written essay is a comprehensive essay.
• Easy to spot and understand the main argument. When an audience reads such an essay, they should be able to understand the author's arguments, make up their mind about the topic, and reason with the content.
• Has balanced paragraphs. Depending on the length, a comprehensive essay has a well-balanced introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs.
• Has a substantial, elaborate, and reasonable thesis. The introduction of a comprehensive essay has a strong thesis that informs the readers of the essay's central aim or argument.
• Does not have errors. A perfect essay's structure, presentation, organization, and flow are flawless. Each paragraph has transitions connecting it to the following and knits the entire essay.

Thus far, we hope you will write a perfect essay to score you a better grade. If not, you can buy essays from our website to supplement your writing process. Our bespoke essays are written from scratch following the ten steps outlined above to give you plagiarism-free essays.

9 most common Essay Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Every student writing an essay expects that it will earn them the best grades. However, a thin line exists between a well-written academic essay and garbage. Yes, garbage in the sense that it makes no sense. To avoid corrections with comments from your professor, lower grades, and resubmission requests, you must avoid these nine common mistakes students make when writing their essays.

• Writing vague thesis statements . Writing a good essay depends on coming up with a strong thesis. Having a vague, weak, and unsupported thesis statement is a suicide mission on your grades. State your thesis to be specific as possible.
• Using too many quotes . An essay demonstrates your understanding of the topic and how well you research to back up arguments. Overusing quotes in an essay from the text you are analyzing r from the resources from research denies you the authority on the topic. Use quotations sparingly, and leave them out if they are unnecessary.
• Plagiarism . Avoid directly taking words from a source and using them as your own. Equally, do not reword an entire article or a section of it and claim it as your work. Instead, read, internalize, summarize, paraphrase, and cite ideas. Then, write an essay from your understanding of the topic and use facts from other sources to support your argument. Plagiarism has serious consequences, such as expulsion. There are rigorous university and college anti-plagiarism policies, adhere to them.
• Punctuation mistakes . Mind your Ps and Qs when writing your essays. Also, dot your I's in the essay. In simple terms, ensure that the commas, hyphens, semicolons, colons, quotation marks, full stops, and question marks are placed and used correctly.
• Using hard-to-read sentences. This is a common mistake most students make. They write lengthy, complex sentences, sometimes run-on sentences. Surprisingly, these sentences do not cut it. Write clear, concise, and coherent sentences instead of using complex words (jargon), phrases, and many words. Let the reader see sentence variety in your essay: you can achieve this by mixing short and long sentences.
• Using non-scholarly sources. Yes, you can use Wikipedia and other sources from the internet but do not cite them in your essay: only use them to familiarize yourself with the topic. Use scholarly sources written by academic experts and professionals. When using websites, use credible .edu, .org, and .gov websites.
• Writing descriptively and not analytically . The entire point of writing an essay is to create an argument and defend the thesis. Therefore, it is crucial to be critical. Instead of telling (restating), show your readers.
• Rewording the introduction as your conclusion . Conclusion is not rewording your introduction. Also, students begin concluding paragraphs with cliché words. To avoid this, rephrase the thesis in your opening sentence for the conclusion paragraph, summarize the main points, and reflect on the argument you made: the bigger picture.
• Lacking enough evidence to support the thesis . Students sometimes pick a topic they struggle to understand and write an essay on it. Other times, it focuses too much on the opinions and ideas of the writer rather than the evidence. To avoid this, remain flexible when writing an essay. Also, choose a topic that is narrow and has evidence. Finally, select a topic where you can find information to support ideas.

FAQs about writing a good essay

Here are some questions that students frequently ask when writing their essays. We have provided answers that can point you in the right direction with the right trajectory. Our professional essay writers  brainstormed on these questions and provided some concise answers:

Can I use images in my essay?

Yes, you can use and cite illustrations such as photos, graphs, images, and etch in your essays as long as they are directly related to your essay. However, unless your instructor wants you to use them, leave them out when writing an essay. Do not use them, thinking they will take up space. The use of images is encouraged for ad analysis essays, geography essays, visual analysis essays, or art analysis essays. Still, each image, graph, or illustration must be cited with an appropriate in-text citation.

When do I cite sources in an essay?

At high school, college, university, and graduate-level essay writing, you must properly cite the sources of your essay, just like you do when writing a research paper or a dissertation, or other academic tasks. Citations should be used when paraphrasing, quoting, or summarizing information or ideas from a scholarly source. Apart from in-text citations, you must also provide the full details of the referenced source in your references, reference list, or works cited pages, which come at the end of your essay.

Why does an essay need a thesis statement?

A thesis statement is a sentence or two sentences that summarize the central idea of your essay or any academic paper. It is the main argument you make in the paper. It is essential when writing academic papers because it gives your text's scope, direction, and focus. It equally helps the readers to understand your main point concisely. It is the frame upon which you build your arguments in the essay.

Is the thesis the same as the claim in an essay?

In essay writing, the thesis is synonymous with your central aim, central argument, or main argument since it unifies the rest of the essay.  It is the reason why it should be interpretive or analytical rather than factual or descriptive.

Is a thesis the same as a research question?

No, while a thesis statement is a short and concise sentence or two that summarizes the main point or idea in an essay or research paper, a research question is a question that indicates the direction of research. A research question is often an open-ended query and not a final claim as the thesis. A thesis makes a specific claim or assertion about a topic that can be challenged or debated. On the contrary, a research question helps determine the methodology to use in subsequent stages of inquiry.

Must I write a topic sentence in an essay?

Yes, a topic sentence is a sentence that comes first in your body paragraphs. It is very critical in that it expresses the main idea of your paragraph, meaning that everything else in the paragraph that comes after it is related to it. You develop arguments, provide evidence, and offer examples supporting the topic sentence.

How do I nail the introduction of my essay?

To nail your introduction paragraph:

• Start with an appropriate opening hook or attention grabber to catch your readers' attention.
• Provide clear, concise, and coherent background information about the topic that your readers must know.
• Write a thesis that presents your major argument, main claim, or central idea.

Distribute the word count of your introduction according to the length of your essay.

Where do I find good sources for my essay?

To find good sources for your essay, research on the internet, scholarly databases, google scholar, and trustworthy websites, newspapers, and magazine articles such as the Guardian, TIME, Wall Street Journal, or New York Times . Some online scholarly databases include EBSCO, InfoTrack, ProQuest, LexisNexis, Google Scholar, or JSTOR. Avoid using non-scholarly sources in your essay. Rather, these non-scholarly general sources can be used when developing an understanding of your topic.

Gradecrest is a professional writing service that provides original model papers. We offer personalized services along with research materials for assistance purposes only. All the materials from our website should be used with proper references. See our Terms of Use Page for proper details.

Learning through every step of comprehensive essay formatting

Jun 14, 2019 | Essay Writing , Writing

As students progress in their studies, they write different essays. As they progress, the writing gets more complex and demanding. This underscores the importance of learning how to comprehensively format these essays, communicate effectively, and accomplish the primary objective of the work. There is no proper way of writing any academic paper, but there I a leeway through some existing guidelines on how best to make the work have an excellent flow. The guidelines provide a standard Formats for essay that one ought to follow when writing a research paper, informative essay, descriptive essay, college application essay, and so on.

These guidelines are:

• Choosing a topic
• Researching the topic
• Creating an outline

Peer review

• Essay format (structure in MLA, APA, Chicago)

Choosing the topic

Regardless of the essay formatting that you are following, choosing a good topic is crucial. Many students have a problem in this area. With proper understanding, one can choose a topic that is specific enough and interesting first to themselves. Henceforth, they can explore it exhaustively and meet the basic requirement of the word count. A good and fascinating topic is not supposed to be too broad, such that you feel overwhelmed, nor is it supposed to be too narrow such that you lack sources on it. The topic ought to be reasonable, in that the sources you use are easy to find, compelling, and in light with your topic. You can consult your instructor for guidance on topic selection.

Research on the topic

If it is an academic paper, you have to research on the topic exhaustively. Ensure that you know what you are looking for in the sources that you gather. You have to gather every relevant and hard-hitting information on the topic. Do not feel limited by what you are searching for. Explore every possible avenue for your topic. This information is useful when arguing your points out. Formatting essays is easier when you have your reliable and credible sources, even though it comes later during the writing process. Remember, your sources must be specific and compelling.

Credible websites, scholarly journals, articles books, and so on ought to be in your list of sources so that you can cite them at the end of your essay.

Outlining your essay

Outlining is a major way to map out your essay. It is the plan and is a crucial part of the writing process. Having an essay outline and specific goal of the world makes it easy to refer to it in case you get sick. It saves you a lot of time because you know where to put the information. You can enumerate keywords to boost the scope of your information. Essay formatting does not define your outline, which is why it is subject to change. If you have specific keywords for the subject and every section, it is easy to see the direction of the work and the information criteria to use.

Writing the first draft

Before you delve into the writing process, ensure that the outline is replete with information to support your argument. Feel free to le reasonable creativity into the paper. The standard five-paragraph structure is the best structure to start with. Remember that the draft is also subject to change.

After finishing your draft, you can have your classmate a relative or anyone knowledgeable in essay writing to go through the work, comment or contribute. The feedback is important in shaping your argument

Writing the final copy

Before you can submit the final copy, go through it one last time through proofreading. Essay formatting must be as expected, and your argument must be in line with your primary goal.

Formatting your essay

Formatting an essay should follow she guidelines preferred by the instructor. Essay formatting refers to the structure that the paper is going to take. Structure is essential, and it applies to all essays and the guidelines provided, be it MLA, APA, Chicago or any other format, have to be followed to the letter. For instance, an outline for an extended essay would look like this:

The above example of an extended Essay formatting is applicable when dealing with research, especially when using MLA format. Essay format examples are all over the internet, and you can check them out.

Do you need any help in writing your essays? EssayMin has professional writers with 7+ years of experience in essay writing.

Formatting an essay in MLA

The modern language association{MLA} is a standard format for essays and research papers in any academic setting. Formatting an essay in MLA requires you to:

• Use a 12-point size (Times New Roman)
• Double space everything, but leave no extra spaces between paragraphs
• The heading ought to be on the upper left of the first page
• Margins ought to be one-inch on top, bottom, left and right
• The last name and page number must be put on every page of the paper as the header to avoid going in place of the text.
• The title must follow MLA essay formatting in that it is centred and above the first line of the essay. It should be of the same font and size of the text.
• Indentation has to be half an inch
• The work has to be evenly aligned to the left.
• A Works Cited page on a separate page at the end of the paper

Formatting an essay in APA

The American Psychological Association {APA} has four major sections, which are the Title page, Abstract, Main Body, and references. Format for essays demands the following:

• The fonts ought to be 12-point Times New Roman
• The essay must be double spaced
• The margins have to be one inch on the top, bottom, right and left
• The title page must contain the title of the paper, author’s name, institutional affiliation. Additionally, you can have the course title, name, and date included on this page.
• The title of the paper has to be typed in upper and lower case letters, flushed to the centre in the upper half of the page and should be 12 words long without abbreviations or words with no purpose.
• When typing the name, do not use titles. You start with the first name, middle initial and the last name.
• The abstract should be a single paragraph of 150 to 250 words, and double-spaced. You can also list the keywords in the abstract to help researchers find your work in databases.

However, some professors may have slight changes to some of the APA characteristics like the ones above.

Formatting essays in Chicago Manual Style

In this format, the overall page layout is as follows:

• One inch margins on all sides
• 12-point Times New Roman
• Double spaced text
• The text should be flushed to the left
• ½ inch indented paragraph beginnings, block quotes and hanging indents (bibliography)
• Page numbers must include the last name, page number in the heading of every page on the top right. However, do not number the title page and the first page of the text should be numbered 2.
• Footnotes come at the lowermost of the page where the reference happens
• Endnotes appear on a separate page after the body of your essay. both footnotes and endnotes use the same essay formatting guidelines
• The bibliography is similar to that of MLA and should appear on a new page after the work is done

Similarities between PA and MLA

Differences

The differences between the two formats for essays are what make them unique. They include:

Harvard style of essay formatting

The general guidelines here require you to have:

The essay format examples provide a great guide as to how you have to structure and format your paper. You have to follow the outline closely to avoid veering off the topic.

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How to write a good essay: A Comprehensive step-by-step Guide

Essay writing has become an important activity in all academic work today. Scholars can’t run away from the fact that good essays will impact their academic results. It is, therefore imperative that any student needs to be guided on how to write a good essay. And with a detailed step-by-step tutorial, any student will score an A in the essays he or she writes using this comprehensive guide.

This is a complete guide on how to write a good essay that scores an A on any topic. Learn 9 steps to essay writing and get free examples & outlines. Writing essays has never been an easy thing to do therefore you will appreciate learning how to write essays and perfect your writing skills. We offer essay help services but if you are writing it yourself, here is a comprehensive guide.

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How to Write an Essay that Scores an A+

To write a good essay, you have to have a good topic for, research it well, create a thesis, detailing a good outline, starting with an introduction and following up with good body paragraphs to draft an essay. After that, conclude the essay and cite your sources as you polish it to a final draft. Here are the steps in brief

• Choose a good topic for your essay
• Do thorough research for the topic
• Formulate a strong thesis you will present
• Make a detailed outline for your essay
• Write an interesting introduction for your essay
• Write strong body paragraphs for a draft essay
• Make a summative conclusion
• Cite your sources and make a reference page
• Revise your rough draft to polish it to the final copy

Of those 9 steps. having a strong thesis is the most important. We asked our professional essay writers about the importance of a thesis statement and they confirmed it as the main thing in an essay. Let us now take a detailed and comprehensive look at each of these steps and how to complete them successfully.

1. Choose a Good Topic for your Essay

Instructors can give essay topics to their students or suggest that the students write essays on topics of their own. None of these situations is simple. Students have to choose from a vast of ideas when topics are theirs to choose and their ideas are locked and limited when instructors give specific topics to them.

How to choose a good topic for your essay

When students are choosing topics of their own, the following are required in order to select a good topic:

• Understand the parameters of the assignment given

This involves knowing what your instructor really wants. The structure of the assignment should guide you on choosing an interesting topic that fits the assignment well. If you don’t understand the parameters you can ask for help from people or the instructor to make sure you don’t write a topic that is not relating what is required.

• Brainstorm your topics of interest that fits the structure of the assignment

Most probably, instructors give a broad topic area that you are expected to chose one topic from. Access the different topics and settle with one topic that you are comfortable with.

Lookup for general information by searching on all available sources. Do not limit yourself when searching for information. The main sources of information are books, journals, and the internet. Gather all topics of study relating to the information and choose a suitable topic of your interest.

• Focus on one topic

Manage your topic well. Too narrow and too broad topics are difficult to research. Broad topics may lead to increased business and too narrow topics may lead to scarcity of information sources.

• Make a list of useful keywords.

Identify the words that are mainly used in your topic of study. Look for them in your information sources and write them down.

• Be Flexible with your topic

This means broadening your information when you have less and narrowing your information when you have excess. Flexibility is mostly determined by the length of the essay.

• Research more about your topic and formulate a title.

Find more information about the topic using keywords identified and come up with a suitable title for your essay.

2. Research the Essay topic Thoroughly

To research is to systematically investigate various topics of study in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions. Researching is a comprehensive process that requires the following steps for it to be successful:

• Going through the instructions given.

Make sure you are in line with the requirements the instructor has given in the instructions.

These instructions determine the freedom you will have concerning various topics when writing the essay.

When instructions are not clear liaise with the instructor to come up with a solution on the way forward.

• Brainstorm on topics of interest

When an instructor has given a wide and broad topic area, choose your best topic of interest from that category.

• Gather information about the topic

Use sources such as the internet, books, journals, and people to find information on the selected topic of interest. Collect as much relatable information to the topic selected as possible.

Determine the question that you are answering with your research

What issues of concern are under your topic? These issues raise questions that you will use your research to get answers. Identify the question.

• Find Information about your specific question and refine it

Gather information about the specific question and the number of results you get and the quality of the sources you obtained the information. After that, you need to refine your question based on found information. Adjust the question’s scope by looking at who, where and when.

• Find keywords from the topic to guide your research

Brainstorm a list of keywords that usually play part in the success of your research by helping you find initial resources.

• Categorize your information in groups and draft an outline.

Put information about similar categories together. After creating different categories create a rough outline of your essay.

• In case of holes in your research, find additional sources.

If after going through your research you realize that there are points that need further clarification or any point that may be omitted, find new sources that will help fill them.

3. Formulate a strong Thesis Statement for the essay

The third stage of writing a good essay is to formulate a strong and relevant thesis for your essay. A thesis is a position that or a claim that your essay seeks to make by directly answering a certain question. Basically, itis one sentence that contains the main idea of an essay by stating the main argument.

A thesis should clearly state the topic of your paper and comment about your position on what you argue in the essay. Most essay readers rely on thesis statements to get a clue or a guide of what the essay is all about.

At the same time, a thesis statement is important because they help you as the essay writer develop and organize arguments and test your ideas. Having a good thesis should present what you plan to argue and show how you plan to argue it. When developing a thesis, the following steps should be followed.

Steps and Tips of writing a thesis statement for your essay

• Analyze your primary sources.

Look for credible information before formulating a thesis. Access any contradictions of authors, ambiguity tension and controversy in the information you have before formulating the thesis. From the information gathered to come up with ideas about your thesis.

• List the ideas and arguments you will make

To make sure you don’t forget ideas you are obtaining from different types of sources, put them down for reference later.

• Draft the thesis statement

Access logically and clearly the ideas you have and start writing down the thesis. It’s advisable to begin your thesis as rough work because most thesis statements do not become perfect after the first attempt.

• Write your thesis in the introduction part

At the end of your introduction, include your thesis statement. This is where most readers can find it easily. The thesis statement plays an important role in influencing the reader and placing them where readers can easily locate them is a win situation for any essay writer.

• Know the arguments against your thesis

Once you have your thesis statement, you should think of any criticisms that it may face. This will help you argue your ideas in the right way as you continue writing your essay and also assist in refining your essay.

• Avoid vague or combative questions

Thesis statements should never be questions, combative, vague or written in a list. They should be arguable claims that should be specific and clear.

4. Make a detailed Outline for your essay

Outlines are writing plans that aid in organizing ideas and information when writing an essay. A good essay is defined by the quality of the outline because it guides the writer to understand the content they should place in the various essay sections. It is the part that gives the essay structure and gives you a skeleton to fill the essay with.

How to write a good outline for your essay

To make a good outline the following need to be done:

1. Research on the topic.

To write a good outline one should know the topic under study very well. Search for information on available materials and identify the keywords of the topic.

2. Know the objective of the essay.

What is the main thing required in your essay? This can either be a question or a thesis statement that will guide you through the essay for all discussions should be related to the objective of the essay. This makes sure that you don’t go out of topic.

3. List main research points.

A sketch of your paper is required on this stage. On the sketch write the ideas found through research on the introduction, body, and conclusion of your essay. Brainstorm to add more points to each part.

4. Organize your ideas

This helps in polishing your outline by arranging your ideas in the order that will likely make sense. Put ideas that are similar together and summarise them to make sure that you don’t forget on what you want to talk about in each idea.

5. Revise your ideas

Go through your points and determine whether they fulfill the objective of your essay, which is genuine and relevant. Ideas that look similar can be combined to provide much more meaning. This process helps you have topics that will bring out the objective of the essay clearly.

All the irrelevant ideas and points found that do no help in disclosing the objective of the essay should be scrapped out. To organize your ideas well, consider using models of outlining an essay. A famous method is the Jane Schaffer essay method that helps organize your points and ideas logically in support of each other.

5. Write an interesting introduction for your essay

The introduction of an essay is important because its main aim is to grab the reader’s attention in order to make him or her continue reading. When writing the introduction, the essay writer should focus on points that will draw the reader’s attention. The focus should be on the following;

How to write an eye-catching essay introduction?

1. start with interesting facts and sentences.

Tell an interesting story. The story should be relevant to your essay topic and not too long that it will take much space. Consider stories that will entertain the most readers of your essay.

2. Be unique in your ideas

You can begin the essay with statements that one cannot connect the essay with. This will make the reader wonder, gain attention and will want to know how the statement will relate to the topic of the essay.

3. Write a humorously warm introduction

Consider writing an introduction that is not only funny to you but also to the readers of your essay. This makes sure that you don’t embarrass yourself to the readers or confuse them. Laughing is one of the best ways to calm a reader, attract them to your essay and prepare them for what is further written in the essay.

However, jokes are not applicable to all essays. Essays on topics such as hunger, homelessness, political issues, economic issues, diseases, and revolutions requite utmost seriousness for they are matters that may be negatively affecting the reader. For example, writing an introduction for IELTS essay should be much more formal.

4. Write an unusual introduction.

Surprise your reader by using an irregular approach in your essay introduction. Don’t use introductions that the readers could have suggested. Be unpredictable by using your creativity and imagination to write an interesting introduction.

KEY POINT: The introduction is the only attempt to impress the reader first and the writer should utilize it to the fullest. At the end of the introduction, write the thesis statements. For more information, read our guide on the 5 parts of an introduction paragraph , and learn more about each of them.

6. Write strong body paragraphs supporting your thesis

Body paragraphs are written between the introduction part and the conclusion part. They contain the main content of your essay and depend on the length required. The paragraphs number of words should not vary much from one paragraph to the other.

Paragraphs should have the following elements; a topic sentence that carries the content of the paragraph, examples which should provide a detailed explanation about the topic sentence, a clear structure, evidence supporting the topic sentence and a clear connection with the thesis.

How to write strong body paragraphs for your essay

1. prioritize your points.

In order to make a good impression, paragraphs with the strongest points and content should be prioritized and appear before paragraphs with shallow content. Each paragraph should represent one point at a time to avoid confusing your readers.

2. Write paragraphs with optimal length

Paragraphs should be 5 to 7 sentences long. Points in each paragraph need to be thoroughly explained. This cannot be possible with a few sentences. When the paragraphs are too long the reader I likely to get bored and lose interest.

3. Use transition sentences to connect paragraphs

Connect your main body paragraphs by providing a transition from one paragraph to another. For example, if one is writing an essay involving both the advantages and the disadvantages of a product, it is advisable to write the advantages first followed by disadvantages or vice versa.

4. Do not mix points up

Avoid mixing points and arguments. To create a logical flow of issues and arguments, only argue one point per paragraph. Points that are close should follow each other when paragraphed to keep the reader focused and avoid confusion.

5. Use a sub-conclusion paragraph

Sub-conclusion of paragraphs is optional in essay writing and is rarely used by scholars today. This is where one can provide a conclusion at the end of a paragraph concerning the point written in the paragraph.

This may offer contradictions when writing the essay because one paragraph may require a different conclusion and can eventually distract the reader. This makes the overall conclusion at the end of the essay more acceptable.

6. Use evidence to back your arguments

To back your arguments, use evidence from literature and other sources. Use quotes related to the essay you have written or reference one of your sources. This will help stress on your final point and confirm that all you have written is true.

7. Write relevant concluding sentences

At the end of every paragraph, it is good to write a sentence that sums up the main argument of the whole paragraph but also supports the points. The best way to write a concluding sentence for any paragraph is to restate the major point in the paragraph supporting it with reliable facts. After that, include a transition sentence that joins one paragraph to another.

7. Write a Good Conclusion

The conclusion step is the tail-end of the essay writing task. If you have reached here, you should part yourself in the back for a job well done. The conclusion is the part where you give a synthesis of what the reader has already read.

This is arguably the most important part of your essay because it is likely to stick into the reader’s memory. We asked 10 of our homework writing experts and they all stated that the conclusion is key to seal your targeted grade on your assignment. When writing a good conclusion, you should consider the following:

How to write a good conclusion for an essay

Use questions to create conclusive remarks. Asking questions may motivate readers to make readers provide their own research and think over your essay.

Give hints about developments of your topic using aspects that are interesting to the reader. This involves some further important information that your essay is related to, which is not under the topic given.

In addition, give an extremely thorough answer to the question within your conclusion. Hit the nail on the head by combining all the information on all the paragraphs and coming up with one common point that your conclusion will encompass.

Paraphrase your thesis statement or give the main idea of the first, second or third body paragraph as a conclusion for your essay. This will also help stress the essay points on the conclusion

The number of sentences or length of your conclusion depends on the length of the body paragraphs. The conclusion should not be bigger or smaller compared to the body paragraphs of your essay.

At the same time, an essay conclusion should end with something specific and unique as opposed to the introduction where general statements begin the essay.

Conclusions should not have the following; more data and facts that are not stated in the body paragraphs, new ideas, unnecessary details, changed essay tone as that used in your essay and any kind of an apology or limitation for not considering a certain fact in your essay.

8. Cite and Reference the Sources in your Essay

Citing involves the identification of the original sources of information and ideas in your essay in order to avoid plagiarism. It is important because it provides evidence for your arguments and helps people find more information on the cited sources. Citing also shows that you have researched and found out what experts have had to say about your topic and show that you understand writing ethics well.

Citations for the sources used in the essay should be done in the body paragraphs. After that, you should create a reference page at the end of your paper. One should cite quotes, information that is not common and formats. Citing varies depending on the writing style you are using.

How to cite your sources and make a references page 

Different disciplines have different approaches to writing academic papers. These approaches are the formatting styles and are supposed to be standardized and accepted by various research and educational institutions. There are no widely accepted formats because different institutions prefer different approaches. These approaches include:

How to Cite your essay in APA

The acronym APA was the short form of an organization, the American Psychological Association which created this format. Most essays that require this format are behavioral and social discipline essays. The 7th APA edition requires a title page and has a running head at the top of every page. The reference page includes the page that shows the information sources.

How to cite when Paraphrasing a source

When paraphrasing, reference the author, the year of publication and the page number.

For example: According to Jane (2000)

How to cite multiple authors

Each time you cite work done by two authors name both the authors in the signal phrase. Use an ampersand in parentheses and use the connector “and” in between the words. For example research by (Carlos and Isaac, 2004)

When three to five authors are involved, cite the source by listing all the authors in parentheses or signal phrases. For example: (Courtney, Ken, Janet, Albert & Japhet,1999)

When citing information, where six or more authors are involved, use the first author’s name followed et al. in parenthesis and signal language. For example: (Janice et al.,2006)

Citing two or more works by the same author in the same year requires one to use small letters of the alphabets in their order. For example: (Caleb, 2003a), (Caleb, 2003b)

If two or more different works appear in the same parenthesis cite them in the order they appear separated by a semicolon. For example: (Ferdinand, 2004; Mercy, 2005)

When a source you obtain information is cited in another source, name the original source in your signal phrase and include the secondary source in parenthesis. For example, Wycliffe argued that…. (as cited in Warren,1997, p. 108)

In works that the authors are unknown cite the work by its title, by underlining or italicizing the book titles and using quotation marks for titles of articles and magazines.

Use the words in the parenthesis or the title in your signal phrase with the abbreviation “n.d” (no date) when no author or date is indicated in the source. For example: (Wildlife, n.d)

When the source has no page numbers do the citing using the abbreviation “para” followed by the paragraph number. For example: (Rio,2010, para. 6)

How to cite and reference your essay in MLA

Modern Language Association style does not require a title page and is mainly used in humanity and liberal arts essays. Italics are allowed for emphasis. On the first page include your name, instructor’s name, the course, and date on the upper left Conner.

Double spacing is required when using the MLA 8th Edition . There is an order in MLA citing that one should apply based on the type of source information is obtained. The order is as follows:

• Last name of the author, First Name
• The title of the source
• The title of the container
• Other various contributors
• The version of the source
• The number of publication
• The publisher
• The publication date
• The location of the source.
• The accessed date. This is only applicable to online sources.

In MLA citations capitalize nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, adjectives and subordinating conjunctions in the titles of books, journals, and articles. Do not capitalize articles such as “a” or” an”, coordinating conjunctions such as “but” and “nor”, prepositions and “the” used in infinitives. MLA citations are done in the following ways:

How to cite authors in MLA

When citing sources of authors with the same last names use the first name initials. For example, (Mount 46) and (Mount 37)

When citing a text, use the name of the author and the page the information is found. For example: ‘Criminals can be identified by their physical appearance (Lombrosso 230).

When citing work done by different authors, not more than three, list the authors’ last names in the text. For example: “Crime causation can be explained” (Emille, Ceasare and Watson 45). When listing four authors and above use the abbreviation “et al.” and only one name of the authors for example: (Smith et al 5).

When you need to cite multiple works by the same author include the title of the source you have obtained the information to make it different from the other. Titles of articles should be quoted and those of books should be italicized.

For example, Garry argued that glaring at computers are dangerous to our eyes (“Effects of Computers” 37), though he suggested several methods of preventing the damage (“Control Measures” 48)

If you need to cite multiple sources in the same parenthetical reference, use a semi-colon to separate the citations. For example: (Mark 4; Craig 7)

How to make a reference page for your essay

1. how to make a reference page in apa.

A reference page is a page that has all the list of sources you used in your essay. References are also arranged in order of the alphabet appearing in the last name of the author.

At the end of the paper move to a clean page and type References at the top. Leave some margins as in the rest of your essay by double-spacing the whole page. Alphabetize the references and indent line of each reference. Remember all references must be from the work cited in your essay.

2. How to make a Works Cited page in MLA

In this format, it is mostly referred to as a Works Cited page. All sources sited here must be the same as those in your essay.

On a clean page at the end of your essay begin the Works Cited page with the title Works Cited at the center of your page. Do not skip places within the entry and create a 0.5 inches ident between the second and subsequent lines.

List the page numbers of the sources you obtained information and type the online database in italics for online sources. Each word of the titles of books and articles need to be in uppercase except prepositions and conjunctions and use quotations in titles of short works and italics in titles of broad works.

Other referencing styles to format your essay

There are other styles used to format and cite sources for your essay. The one you apply depends on the instructions given by your instructor and the subject of the essay. For instance, ASA is used by sociologists, while APA by psychologists.

Another unique one is the Chicago format, also known as Turabian. It is mainly used by Americans to format essays on different disciplines. Reference is done using footnotes and headnotes and the use of bibliography pages. This formatting style is therefore preferable for papers that mostly concentrate and focus on the source of origin.

9. Revise and Polish your essay into a Final Draft

Before submitting your essay, you must go through it again and again and edit places where mistakes could be.

Before handing in your essay you need to ask yourself a number of questions to interrogate the quality of your current draft.

Such questions include;

• Has my essay responded to the question?
• Did I follow the essay’s guidelines?
• Is my essay explaining the thesis?
• Am I within the submission deadline?
• What grade can my essay score as it is?
• Where can I improve in the current draft essay?

How to Polish your Draft into a Final Comprehensive Essay

Confirm that you followed the instructions and guidelines.

These guidelines include following the format the instructor specified, the word limit that was provided, reading materials that were provided, referencing the essay correctly and meeting all the requirements needed.

2. Check is the structure of your essay is perfect

These include assessing the introduction and conclusion and knowing if they talk about what was entailed, accessing the thesis statement in your introduction, checking if the topic sentences in paragraphs are clear, and checking whether the ideas in paragraphs link with each other from the previous to the next.

3. Proofread the language to ensure it is correct

This includes determining whether you have used formal language, reading through the sentences and determining whether they make sense.

Also, be keen to ensure that you check the spelling of the words and the correct use of conjunctions and abbreviations.

4. Review the structure of your paragraphs

This involves checking whether sentences in paragraphs relate to the title of the essay, whether the topic sentence determines the content of the paragraph and if each paragraph in your essay develops only one idea.

5. Read the essay aloud to ensure the sentences are correct

Proofread again by reading the essay aloud. This involves checking whether the sentences express themselves clearly grammatically and if they are complete. This step will tell you whether the length of the sentences does not vary too much and whether the punctuation of the sentence and use of articles is correct.

6. Format your paper

You can also make your final draft more perfect by doing the following:

• Numbering the pages in your essay.
• Attaching the cover sheet requested with correct information.
• Formatting your essay where necessary.

12 common Types of Essays that you may encounter

There are different types of essays. Some essays may require different approaches than others.

1. Narrative essays

These are essays that tell stories about events that have occurred in one’s personal life experiences. The writers are free to express a personal feeling of things that affected them.

Examples of such topics include;

• Why I have decided to quit alcohol.
• Narrate how you decided to pursue the career you have
• Why schools have been forced to close early.

It is like writing a story; the paper is organized according to the sequence of events or chronology. The primary objective of this type of essay is to ascertain your story-telling ability. 

2. Descriptive Essays

As the name suggests, these essays describe details of the topic given. You can describe the smell, looks or working aspects of the object under study. Examples of descriptive essay topics for your essay include;

• My troubling school life.
• Describe your childhood diary.
• My high school experience.

3. Definition essays

These essays main goal is to define subjects and review their origins. They aim at providing a more extensive definition than what is provided in dictionaries. Examples of definition essays may include;

• Define the term “judicial precedence.”
• Describe and discuss the term “ethnocentrism.”
• Define the term “forensic criminology.”

4. Analytical essays

As the name suggests these essays requires logical reasoning and structure to analyze the behaviors, tendency, events, people, among other examples. Below are a few examples of analytical essay topics.

• Why do universities have security check-ups at the entrance gates?
• Explain why most teenage boys get violent?
• Why do university students fail their main exams?

Sometimes, this type of essay needs you to focus on the methodology, conclusions or findings of previous researchers. You should conclude your research by summarizing the results and recommending a framework for use in further studies on the issue.

5. Cause and effect essays

These are essays that explain how a certain problem occurred and the consequences of the occurrence. The essay writer investigates the cause and shows the effects of the problem. Examples of common topics for Cause and effect essays include;

• What are the main causes of cholera?
• Did post-election violence sabotage the Kenyan economy?
• How do drugs affect the mental stability of an addict?

6. Process essays

These essays provide instructions on how something is done. One is required to perform the process for easier identification of the process. Example of topics fit for process essays can be as below;

• How to control your ego?
• Ways of solving your anti-social problem?
• How to take care of the environment?

7. Advantages and disadvantages essays

These are essays that show both the pros and cons of a given topic. The opposite opinions make sure that the writer doesn’t defend any side. Foe example;

• Pros and cons, of course, outlines in university studies.
• Advantages and disadvantages of being a die-hard football fan.
• Pros and cons of critical thinking before decision making.

8. Classification essays

These are essays that require the writer to put together ideas, objects, and other things into particular groups. examples of such essays are;

• Five types of crime
• Seven types of police forces.
• Types of anti-social behavior.

9. Argumentative essays

These are essays that persuade the readers to side with the writer’s viewpoint. One is supposed to use proved facts and correct illustrations in order to manipulate the reader.

Here you required to present both sides of a controversial issue objectively and factually. The examiner expects you to present valid arguments on each side without bias. You must include the arguments for and against each case. 

10. Critical essays

These essays provide the reader with weak and strong characteristics of the subject for them to determine the good and bad of the subject. Examples include;

• Access separation of powers in the building bridges initiative.
• What role does humor play in the novel “Don Quixote.”
• Access the theme of mystery in the movie “Manifest”

11. Compare and contrast essays

These are essays that require the writer to show the similarities and differences of two tendencies, devices, organs, etc. Below are examples of compare and contrast essays;

• Literature vs Real life happenings
• Waterborne diseases vs Airborne diseases.
• College students’ performances vs University students’ performances.

12. Persuasive essays

These are essays whose main aim is to change the thinking and view of the reader completely. It should be influential and deal with topics that are relevant today. Some examples include;

• Are football video games good for young boys?
• Are beauty contest and modeling practices more important to children than they are to adults
• Does marrying an older wife affect one’s marriage eventually?

13. Expository essays

These essays are aimed at estimating the subject of study in your own study view. Here are some examples of expository essays;

• Explain how lecturers influence student grades.
• Explain how fear affects one’s self-confidence
• What are the symptoms of mental illness?

Check our guide to writing a good TOK essay and learn more of another type.

Other Types of Essays

We have written a detailed guides on how to write other types of essays whose format may not necesarilly follow the flow we have taught in this comprehensive guide. This guide mostly applies for the types of essays discussed in the columns above. However, read our lessons how how to write the following types of essays.

• A guide how to write a Theory Of Knowledge (TOK) essays
• Detailed steps how to write an opinion essay
• Read more on writing a good issue paper or essay .

What is a Comprehensive Essay

A comprehensive essay is one that exhaustively discusses an issue or a topic to a deeper extent so as to prove the thesis that a writer wants to put across. It is an essay whose content explains the issue in its entirety, thereby leaving no doubt of unresolved facts. This is achieved through extensive research on an issue or a topic. After reading it, the audience will understand everything the author was discussing and agree with him or her.

A comprehensive essay has a good introduction that opens the issue being discussed in detail. That sets a place for a good thesis that is given in the last sentence of the introduction paragraph. This is followed by well researched paragraphs that deeply explain the issue to support the thesis. The conclusion paragraph of a comprehensive essay summarizes all the points and gives conclusive support to the thesis.

Common mistakes students make in Essay Writing and how to Solve them

The readers can judge the writing skills of a writer after reading an essay. To write good essays writers must avoid several mistakes when writing essays. These mistakes are:

1. Lack of concentration.

This occurs when the writer is not focused on the essay and mixes thoughts.

For an essay to be good one must be able to organize thoughts and be logical in arguments.

2. Omitting the thesis statement

If your essay doesn’t have its foundation in the introduction paragraph, then it loses the structure. The thesis statement is the origin of your writing and it makes your essay logical.

3. Writing unsupported ideas

Your readers may judge you as thoughtless and unreliable if your ideas are unsupported by the use of facts, examples and available statistics

4. Punctuation mistakes

The writer should take note of using punctuation marks correctly because they play a part in making the reader understand the meaning of your essay. Use commas, colons, semi-colons question marks and full stops correctly.

5. Misuse of words

Writers should be careful with words that have the same pronunciations and different meanings for they may distort the meaning you want to put across. Some examples of these words are “hit and heat” or “had and heard.

How to find Credible Sources for your Essay

It is very important that you use credible and authoritative sources when writing your essay. If you don’t and use weak ones, your essay will not be authoritative. In fact, readers will demean your work if you use dubious sources to obtain the information you will write in your essay. To determine the credibility of sources , you need to ask whether some kind of information is reliable, at least several sources must have talked about it.

1. Use the Internet

The internet today is the main source of information and sometimes it’s hard to differentiate credible sources with mediocre sources. When obtaining data from the internet consider the trustworthiness of the domain. .edu domain is used by education institutions and information obtained here is most reliable.

2. Follow credible domains

In addition, .org is mostly used by non-profits organizations and is reliable for they are not concerned with cheating or tricking you. .gov is used by governmental institutions and information is mostly credible but can be biased considering the political views of the different institutions.

3. Be Cautious with commercial websites

Be careful when using online sources from a .com domain. They are mostly used by commercial institutions and one must be careful when obtaining information from them because they may contain hidden content and are not careful about data provided. Learn if your source is credible from a guide by the University of Maryland.

4. Use Libraries and Journals

Other credible sources of information include online news agencies and newspapers that are well known, scientific journals, public libraries, online encyclopedias, non-fictional books, and academic libraries. Writers should avoid sources such as Wikipedia, personal blogs, word of mouth, fiction books and glossy magazines. You can also go old school and look for books in your library.

Get a Brilliant Essay today!

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Brief Summary of this Guide on writing Essays

To help you know how to write essays that improve your GPA, we have put a comprehensive step-by-step guide for you on any subject or topic. The guide gives you examples and free outlines on how to organize and write your essay. However, if you like guidance from our essay writing experts , feel free to ask us and we will respond and guide your essay homework.

• How to choose a good essay topic
• Making good research for a topic for an essay
• How to write a strong thesis
• How to make an outline for your essay
• Writing a good introduction for an essay
• How to write strong body paragraphs?
• How to write a good conclusion?
• Citing sources and how to make a reference page?
• How to polish the final and review key points?
• Types of essays and common examples of each
• Common mistakes in essay writing
• Credible sources for your essay

Alternatively, you can watch how to write a good essay below,

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How to Write a Narrative Essay: A Comprehensive Writing Guide

Are you struggling with how to write a narrative essay that can engage your readers and leave a lasting impression? Look no further, as this comprehensive guide will provide you with all the necessary information, tips, and examples to craft a compelling narrative essay that not only tells a story but also conveys a meaningful message.

Table of Contents

Narrative Essay Writing: Key Takeaways

• Narrative essays are a form of writing that allow authors to share personal experiences or fictional tales with readers.
• They should include elements such as characters, plot, conflict, setting and dialogue to create an emotional connection.
• Examples and analysis can provide guidance for creating engaging stories that communicate meaningful insights.

What are Narrative Essays?

Narrative essays are a unique form of writing, allowing the author to share a personal experience or a fictional tale with the readers while providing personal insights, experiences, and lessons learned. The narrative essay definition differs from a descriptive essay , which offers a vivid portrayal of a location or individual. A narrative essay narrates a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end, immersing the reader in a captivating journey.

Most narrative essays differ from other types of essays due to their storytelling nature, whether it’s recounting a personal experience or a fictional tale. A good narrative essay has a relaxed structure, imaginative language, and only one requirement: a narrative essay tells a story that captivates the reader and conveys a meaningful message. In this context, a short narrative essay can be just as impactful, as long as it effectively tells the story.

With this foundation in place, let’s delve into the characteristics and purpose of a narrative essay.

Characteristics of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay should encompass the following elements:

• Point of view

It should utilize engaging language, personal pronouns, sensory language, and dialogue to captivate the reader. The essay should have a distinct beginning, middle, and end, with a central point or theme that guides the reader through the story.

Vivid descriptions and captivating language are essential in creating a strong emotional connection with the reader. By incorporating these characteristics, your narrative essay will not only be more engaging, but also leave a lasting impression on your audience, ultimately achieving the goal of sharing your personal experiences and insights.

Purpose of a Narrative Essay

The primary intent of a narrative essay is to impart personal insights, experiences, and lessons learned to the reader. This type of essay allows the writer to share their perspective and insights, making it more relatable and emotionally compelling for the reader.

As you embark on your narrative essay journey, remember that the purpose is to share your personal experiences or fictional tales, conveying a meaningful message that resonates with your audience. With this in mind, let’s explore how to choose the perfect topic for your narrative essay.

Choosing Your Narrative Essay Topic

The initial step in composing a narrative essay is identifying the subject. Generating ideas for a narrative essay may involve consulting writing prompts online, reflecting upon formative moments in your life, or reading guidance on how to brainstorm story ideas. The topic you choose should be meaningful and engaging to both you and your reader, as it will form the foundation of your captivating story.

When selecting a narrative essay topic, consider whether you want to share a personal experience or create a fictional story. Both options offer unique opportunities for exploring themes, ideas, and emotions, so let’s dive into each one.

Personal Experiences

Personal experiences can serve as the basis for a relatable and emotionally impactful narrative essay. By recounting your own life experiences in a personal essay, you can create a connection with the reader, allowing them to see the world through your eyes and empathize with your emotions. Sharing your personal story in this manner can make your narrative essay even more engaging.

Some potential topics for personal narrative essays include life-altering events, special moments with loved ones, challenging decisions, journeys of self-exploration, or moments of triumph. When crafting your personal narrative essay, be mindful of the same storytelling techniques employed by fiction writers, such as setting, word choice, point of view, and dramatic structure. To help you get started, consider exploring some narrative essay ideas that can inspire your writing journey.

Fictional Stories

Fictional stories offer a creative outlet for exploring themes and ideas in an engaging way. By crafting a fictional narrative, you can immerse your reader in a world of your creation, allowing them to experience the emotions, challenges, and triumphs of your characters.

Suitable topics for a fictional story may include personal experiences, travel adventures, challenges and obstacles, and unique life events. When writing a fictional narrative, make use of literary devices such as imagery, sensory details, metaphors, and similes to enhance your story and captivate your reader.

With your chosen topic in hand, it’s time to create a compelling narrative essay outline.

Crafting a Compelling Narrative Essay Outline

A well-structured narrative essay outline is crucial for guiding the reader through your story, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable reading experience. By creating an effective outline, you can maintain focus on your central theme and message, allowing your narrative to flow seamlessly from beginning to end.

A narrative essay outline should consist of an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Each of these components plays a vital role in crafting a captivating story, so let’s explore each one in greater detail.

Introduction

The introduction of your narrative essay should grab the reader’s attention and set the stage for your story. This can be achieved by including a hook, such as a startling piece of dialogue, an extraordinary event, or a picturesque backdrop. Following the hook, provide background information and a thesis statement that outlines the main point of your essay.

By crafting an engaging introductory paragraph, you can:

• Captivate your reader
• Establish a strong foundation for your narrative
• Pique your reader’s interest
• Eagerly anticipate the unfolding of your story in the body paragraphs.

Body Paragraphs

Body paragraphs are essential in a narrative essay, as they advance the main story and provide supporting details and evidence to validate the thesis statement. Begin each body paragraph with a topic sentence that conveys the primary idea, then provide pertinent supporting sentences and evidence to corroborate your point.

As you describe events, settings, and characters, focus on building tension and moving the story forward. This will keep your reader engaged and eager to discover the outcome of your narrative.

The conclusion of your narrative essay serves several purposes.

• Provide closure for the reader
• Outline the main points of your story
• Leave a lasting impression
• Restate your thesis
• Reflect on the significance of the experience
• Communicate a takeaway message to the reader

By following these guidelines, you can create a strong and impactful conclusion for your narrative essay.

By crafting a thoughtful and introspective conclusion, you not only wrap up your narrative, but also leave your reader with a sense of satisfaction and understanding of the lessons learned from your story.

Enhancing Your Narrative Essay with Literary Devices

To elevate your narrative essay, consider incorporating literary devices such as:

• Sensory details

These devices can create a more immersive and engaging reading experience, allowing your reader to fully appreciate and connect with your story.

By skillfully employing literary devices, you can transform your narrative essay into a captivating and emotionally resonant piece that will linger in the minds of your readers long after they have finished reading.

Imagery and Sensory Details

Imagery and sensory details play a crucial role in helping your reader visualize and experience your story more vividly. By incorporating language that appeals to the reader’s five senses, you can create a more immersive and engaging narrative.

For example, instead of simply stating that a character is angry, describe their flushed face and clenched fists, allowing the reader to infer their emotions. By employing imagery and sensory details, your narrative essay will come to life in the minds of your readers, leaving a lasting impact.

Metaphors and Similes

Metaphors and similes can add depth and meaning to your narrative by drawing comparisons between different elements of your story. These literary devices can help emphasize, exaggerate, and add interest to your writing, creating a more vivid and captivating narrative.

For example, instead of describing a character’s sadness, you could use a simile like “she felt as if her heart was encased in ice” to convey the depth of her emotions. By skillfully incorporating metaphors and similes, you can enhance your narrative essay and create a more memorable and emotionally resonant reading experience.

Revising and Editing Your Narrative Essay

After completing your narrative essay, it’s essential to revise and edit your work to ensure clarity, coherence, and emotional impact. This process involves self-review and peer review, allowing you to identify areas for improvement and make the necessary changes to create a polished and engaging essay.

By dedicating time and effort to revising and editing your narrative essay, you can ensure that your story is not only captivating but also free of errors and inconsistencies, ultimately achieving the goal of sharing your personal insights and experiences with your readers.

Self-Review

Self-review is an essential step in the revision process, as it allows you to take a step back from your essay and identify areas for improvement. By critically evaluating your work, you can make necessary changes to ensure that your narrative is clear, coherent, and emotionally impactful.

During the self-review process, consider the structure and flow of your essay, the effectiveness of your storytelling techniques, and the clarity of your message. By reflecting on these aspects, you can refine your narrative essay and create a more engaging and meaningful reading experience for your audience.

Peer Review

Peer review is a valuable step in the revision process, as it allows you to gain new perspectives and insights on your essay. By seeking feedback from others, you can identify any errors or areas that require improvement that you may have overlooked.

When conducting a peer review, follow these steps:

• Be open to constructive criticism and treat the reviewer’s opinion with respect.
• Use the feedback you receive to make revisions and improve your narrative essay.
• Ultimately, aim to create a more captivating and emotionally resonant piece for your readers.

Narrative Essay Examples and Analysis

Analyzing narrative essay examples can be a valuable source of inspiration and guidance for crafting your own compelling and engaging essay. By examining the structure, style, and storytelling techniques used in these examples, you can gain a better understanding of how to create an effective narrative essay that captivates your readers.

Whether you are writing a personal narrative or a fictional story, examining narrative essay examples can provide you with the tools and insights needed to craft a captivating and emotionally resonant essay that leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Personal Narrative Essay Example

A personal narrative essay example can demonstrate how to effectively convey personal experiences and insights to your readers. By analysing the structure, style, and techniques used in these examples, you can learn how to create a captivating and emotionally impactful personal narrative essay that resonates with your audience.

Consider the example of a personal narrative essay about a life-altering event. The author might use vivid descriptions, engaging language, and emotional storytelling to bring their experience to life, allowing readers to empathize with their journey and learn valuable lessons from their story.

Fictional Narrative Essay Example

A fictional narrative essay example can showcase creative storytelling techniques and the exploration of themes and ideas. By analysing the structure, style, and storytelling techniques used in these examples, you can gain a better understanding of how to create an engaging and thought-provoking fictional narrative essay.

For instance, consider a fictional narrative essay about a young girl who discovers a magical realm hidden in her backyard. The author might use vivid descriptions, engaging language, and emotional storytelling to bring the story to life, allowing readers to immerse themselves in the girl’s journey and learn about the power of friendship and courage.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you start a narrative essay.

To start a narrative essay, begin with an engaging anecdote that draws the reader in and sets the scene. Use descriptive language to give the reader a vivid picture of your story and paint a clear picture of the main theme.

Establish the plot elements in the first paragraph before diving into the details of the story.

How do you write a narrative essay step by step?

To write a narrative essay, begin by choosing a topic and generating ideas for your essay. Create an outline and write a first draft, followed by editing and proofreading the draft before submitting it as your final copy.

When crafting the essay, use a formal tone and make sure to include a clear conclusion in the opening sentence.

What is an example of narrative essay?

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” is a classic example of a narrative writing , while an essay about your first day at school or a memorable class trip are also examples of this genre.

These types of essays are often used to tell stories, share experiences, and provide insight into a particular topic. They can be written in a variety of styles, from formal to informal, and can be used to explore a wide range of topics.

What is the main purpose of a narrative essay?

The main purpose of a narrative essay is to share personal insights, experiences, and lessons learned with the reader.

It is an opportunity to reflect on the events that have shaped your life and to share these experiences with others.

By writing a narrative essay, you can explore your own thoughts and feelings.

How do I choose a topic for my narrative essay?

Think of meaningful and engaging stories from your personal experiences or fiction that will resonate with readers.

Take time to reflect on potential topics before deciding on one.

In conclusion, crafting a compelling and emotionally resonant narrative essay requires a clear understanding of the purpose, structure, and storytelling techniques essential to this unique form of writing. By choosing a meaningful topic, creating a captivating outline, and incorporating literary devices, you can create a narrative essay that not only entertains but also imparts valuable insights and experiences to your readers. So, are you ready to embark on your narrative essay journey and captivate your audience with your storytelling prowess?

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Guide to Writing a Comprehensive Essay Introduction

Table of Contents

Today, essay writing has become a crucial component of all academic work. The importance of strong essays on academic performance is something that students cannot ignore.

A comprehensive essay introduction prepares the audience for what they are about to read. It piques readers’ curiosity and compels them to continue reading.

This article will guide you to write an enticing intro and make your reader hang on to every word.

What Is a Comprehensive Essay?

A comprehensive essay is an academic writing assignment that requires you to use everything you learned in your course to explain something. This is the opposite of the common type of essay, which aims to convince the reader of a certain point of view.

Don’t write a long or fancy introduction; instead, go right to the point. Your essay should have a clear thesis at the beginning and an orderly structure where you provide enough evidence to support your thesis.

Comprehensive essays often require the learner to present more details and use more supporting evidence to back up their argument. This is to make the essay stronger and more convincing to the reader.

What Is the Purpose of an Essay Introduction?

Writing introductory paragraphs can be very challenging for students, let alone making sure they capture the reader’s attention. It is usually difficult to start something than continue something already underway.

The importance of the essay introduction is continuously stressed to you. But it is even more important to understand its purpose. The introduction serves as the roadmap to your essay. It introduces the topic and clarifies the context by providing background information.

Therefore, it is crucial to start your essay right and give a perspective and purpose to your paper.

How to Write a Comprehensive Essay Introduction?

There isn’t a single best approach to begin an essay. Some people like to begin writing the essay right away and then compose the introduction at the end. Whenever you write the introduction, make sure to focus on the tone and purpose of your essay. Here is a quick instruction on how to construct a comprehensive essay introduction .

Start With an Engaging Hook

Instead of beginning the introduction with a long buildup, use a short, catchy opening sentence or two. Start with something engaging, clear, and concise to pique the reader’s interest. A hook will help the reader understand the main idea you’re trying to convey. It will also keep them interested until you get to the main points of your paper.

Provide Background Information

Provide some background information on the topic before deciding on the theme. The introduction always begins with a clear direction. It includes statements about how the subject relates to more significant concerns covered in the next sections of the essay.

The information you provide here should be concise and related to your essay’s main thesis. You can make reference to issues you’ll cover in the body section. However, don’t give away a lot of details.

Set the Limitations of Your Essay

You must limit the discussion of your essay topic. It’s essential to keep your talk to a reasonable scope because you can’t cover everything relevant to the topic. Narrow your focus and explain to the audience why and how you chose the suggested topic or issue.

State the Thesis Statement

The introduction must establish your thesis to write a cohesive and coherent essay. The introductory paragraph ends with the thesis statement. A brief summary of the entire essay is provided in the thesis statement. This illustrates the writer’s central concept and method of approaching the essay topic.

It’s important to write a thorough, engaging introduction for your essay to capture your audience’s attention. You want to create an essay that will hold their interest, so they will be eager to explore the rest of your essay.

The introduction of your essay should contain an attention-grabbing hook . It should also state the thesis statement and leave the audience wanting to delve further into your paper. This article aims to explain the importance of your essay introduction and how to write one.

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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How To Write A Comprehensive Essay?

Writing well and writing critically as well as completing a comprehensive, will surely and does affect your grade and GPA when it counts your writing as part of your overall results. Writing with quality might not come to many students naturally because they exert so much thought into finding the right words to pen down. This is because they struggle with the knowledge of the essay or topic they are attempting to write, or their brain at that moment is not ready to write due to over-load of information, stress or poor time management. Writing a comprehensive essay, means that your essay might not be detailed, consisting of tens of pages, but it should have enough information to complete your writing and give your readers an impressive read to go through.

Comprehensive writing does not necessarily have to be too lengthy, but it should have the right message and information as well as relevance. Students, find it hard to make that happen, more so often if they are working on multiple assignments in the given time period. There are several things they need to consider, if working on an essay which needs perfect comprehension. Today, our academic blog post will talk about four ways through which students can easily ensure that their essay is not only comprehensive but also completely relevant to the topic.

Writing a Funneled Approach Introduction

When you sit down to write an introduction, do not jump into too many ideas at once. It will only create clutter from the first word of your essay and nothing else. You can use an upside down pyramid or a funnel approach to creatively write your introduction. For example, when you start your introduction, you can start with some of the generic and general statements gradually leading the readers into something more serious and very specific which completely fits your topic. This way you start with a perfect background to your essay and also then quickly bring it to the most relevant point.

Write your Body Paragraphs in Two Steps

When you are working on the main skeleton of your essay which is the body, then you can use a two step approach to ensure you complete the most required things within the essay. In your first step you can list or talk about few arguments that have the most weight in the essay and then following that, you can start mentioning the detailed aspects of those arguments as part of your justifications and rationale to those arguments.

Use the Arguments to Lead to a Conclusion

Your arguments should be organized in such a way that they automatically lead readers to a perfect conclusion point. Arguments in an essay should have a strong closure point and by the conclusion part your arguments should all be giving their analysis perfectly.

Give the Best Closure

Finally, once you reach the concluding point, start by comparing your arguments and giving your own analyses of them. Once you do that, you are at a point of ending the essay with a good message and view something which completes the topic.

Author Bio:

Trisha Smith is a freelance academic writer, at present affiliated with Essay Writing Service , a leading academic writing firm. Professionally, she is an academic writer and a proofreader, however, in her free time she dabbles in writing short fictional stories, poems and feature pieces on political as well as fashion magazines and blogs. For more information follow here at Facebook-Twitter-Gplus.

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Amanda Hoover

Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

Andy Greenberg

Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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• How to conclude an essay | Interactive example

How to Conclude an Essay | Interactive Example

Published on January 24, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The conclusion is the final paragraph of your essay . A strong conclusion aims to:

• Tie together the essay’s main points
• Show why your argument matters
• Leave the reader with a strong impression

Your conclusion should give a sense of closure and completion to your argument, but also show what new questions or possibilities it has opened up.

This conclusion is taken from our annotated essay example , which discusses the history of the Braille system. Hover over each part to see why it’s effective.

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

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Table of contents

Step 1: return to your thesis, step 2: review your main points, step 3: show why it matters, what shouldn’t go in the conclusion, more examples of essay conclusions, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay conclusion.

To begin your conclusion, signal that the essay is coming to an end by returning to your overall argument.

Don’t just repeat your thesis statement —instead, try to rephrase your argument in a way that shows how it has been developed since the introduction.

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Next, remind the reader of the main points that you used to support your argument.

Avoid simply summarizing each paragraph or repeating each point in order; try to bring your points together in a way that makes the connections between them clear. The conclusion is your final chance to show how all the paragraphs of your essay add up to a coherent whole.

To wrap up your conclusion, zoom out to a broader view of the topic and consider the implications of your argument. For example:

• Does it contribute a new understanding of your topic?
• Does it raise new questions for future study?
• Does it lead to practical suggestions or predictions?
• Can it be applied to different contexts?
• Can it be connected to a broader debate or theme?

Whatever your essay is about, the conclusion should aim to emphasize the significance of your argument, whether that’s within your academic subject or in the wider world.

Try to end with a strong, decisive sentence, leaving the reader with a lingering sense of interest in your topic.

The easiest way to improve your conclusion is to eliminate these common mistakes.

Don’t include new evidence

Any evidence or analysis that is essential to supporting your thesis statement should appear in the main body of the essay.

The conclusion might include minor pieces of new information—for example, a sentence or two discussing broader implications, or a quotation that nicely summarizes your central point. But it shouldn’t introduce any major new sources or ideas that need further explanation to understand.

Don’t use “concluding phrases”

Avoid using obvious stock phrases to tell the reader what you’re doing:

• “In conclusion…”
• “To sum up…”

These phrases aren’t forbidden, but they can make your writing sound weak. By returning to your main argument, it will quickly become clear that you are concluding the essay—you shouldn’t have to spell it out.

Don’t undermine your argument

Avoid using apologetic phrases that sound uncertain or confused:

• “This is just one approach among many.”
• “There are good arguments on both sides of this issue.”
• “There is no clear answer to this problem.”

Even if your essay has explored different points of view, your own position should be clear. There may be many possible approaches to the topic, but you want to leave the reader convinced that yours is the best one!

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This conclusion is taken from an argumentative essay about the internet’s impact on education. It acknowledges the opposing arguments while taking a clear, decisive position.

The internet has had a major positive impact on the world of education; occasional pitfalls aside, its value is evident in numerous applications. The future of teaching lies in the possibilities the internet opens up for communication, research, and interactivity. As the popularity of distance learning shows, students value the flexibility and accessibility offered by digital education, and educators should fully embrace these advantages. The internet’s dangers, real and imaginary, have been documented exhaustively by skeptics, but the internet is here to stay; it is time to focus seriously on its potential for good.

This conclusion is taken from a short expository essay that explains the invention of the printing press and its effects on European society. It focuses on giving a clear, concise overview of what was covered in the essay.

The invention of the printing press was important not only in terms of its immediate cultural and economic effects, but also in terms of its major impact on politics and religion across Europe. In the century following the invention of the printing press, the relatively stationary intellectual atmosphere of the Middle Ages gave way to the social upheavals of the Reformation and the Renaissance. A single technological innovation had contributed to the total reshaping of the continent.

This conclusion is taken from a literary analysis essay about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . It summarizes what the essay’s analysis achieved and emphasizes its originality.

By tracing the depiction of Frankenstein through the novel’s three volumes, I have demonstrated how the narrative structure shifts our perception of the character. While the Frankenstein of the first volume is depicted as having innocent intentions, the second and third volumes—first in the creature’s accusatory voice, and then in his own voice—increasingly undermine him, causing him to appear alternately ridiculous and vindictive. Far from the one-dimensional villain he is often taken to be, the character of Frankenstein is compelling because of the dynamic narrative frame in which he is placed. In this frame, Frankenstein’s narrative self-presentation responds to the images of him we see from others’ perspectives. This conclusion sheds new light on the novel, foregrounding Shelley’s unique layering of narrative perspectives and its importance for the depiction of character.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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Your essay’s conclusion should contain:

• A rephrased version of your overall thesis
• A brief review of the key points you made in the main body
• An indication of why your argument matters

The conclusion may also reflect on the broader implications of your argument, showing how your ideas could applied to other contexts or debates.

For a stronger conclusion paragraph, avoid including:

• Important evidence or analysis that wasn’t mentioned in the main body
• Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
• Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

The conclusion paragraph of an essay is usually shorter than the introduction . As a rule, it shouldn’t take up more than 10–15% of the text.

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McCombes, S. (2023, July 23). How to Conclude an Essay | Interactive Example. Scribbr. Retrieved April 11, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/conclusion/

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Guest Essay

You Don’t Just See a Total Solar Eclipse. You Feel It Completely.

By Ryan Milligan

Dr. Milligan is a senior lecturer in astrophysics at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Almost one year ago, in the middle of the night, I drove from my hometown, Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Dublin to catch an early morning flight to Munich. From there I caught another plane to Bangkok, another to Singapore and yet another to Perth in Western Australia. There, I rented a camper van and began a drive of more than 750 miles north to the town of Exmouth on a remote peninsula on the northwest coast of the continent.

This was the only reasonably accessible location on the planet with decent weather prospects from which to view the total solar eclipse on April 20, 2023. The entire event lasted 62 seconds. It was the 10th total solar eclipse I’d traveled to witness.

Even as a professional solar physicist, I find it difficult to convey why eclipse chasers like me go to such extraordinary lengths to witness such a fleeting phenomenon, again and again. I was extra determined to make the pilgrimage last year after I was thwarted by clouds in Chile in December 2020, and I couldn’t afford the eye-watering cost of traveling to Antarctica in 2021. I needed to whet my appetite before embarking on another expedition to see the totality of the April 8 eclipse in Mazatlán, Mexico.

It may sound absurd, but there is no other celestial event that anyone I know would devote so much time and effort to seeing. If you wish to see the northern lights, you can hop on a plane to Iceland or Norway and have a fairly decent chance of seeing them in the winter months. If you are on the nightside of the planet during a lunar eclipse and the skies are clear, you just need to go outside and look up to see it happening. But unless you are fortunate enough to live within or close to the path of totality, witnessing a total solar eclipse will probably require meticulous planning and marshaling time and money to get you to an optimal location and a bit of luck to make sure the weather forecasts you’ve pored over hold true.

Believe me, it is worth the effort.

A total solar eclipse is not something that you see — it’s something that you experience. You can feel the temperature around you begin to drop by as much as 15 degrees over the five to 10 minutes that lead up to the eclipse. The birds and other animals go silent. The light becomes eerie and morphs into a dusky, muted twilight, and you begin to see stark, misplaced shadows abound. A column of darkness in the sky hurtles toward you at over 1,000 miles per hour as the moon’s shadow falls neatly over the sun, turning day into temporary night — nothing like the calming sunset we take for granted every day. Sometimes, a few stars or planets begin to appear faintly in the sky as your eyes get used to the new darkness.

The hairs stand up on the back of your neck and the adrenaline kicks in as your brain tries to make sense of what is going on. But it cannot. It has no other point of reference to compare these sensations to. A total eclipse elicits a unique, visceral, primeval feeling that cannot be evoked by a photograph or a video or a newspaper article, and that can be experienced only within the path of totality when the moon completely obscures the disk of the sun.

And then of course there is the crowning glory: the sun’s corona, the pearly white outer atmosphere of our nearest star that we can otherwise see only using a fleet of dedicated solar-observing spacecraft. It has an ethereal beauty that is challenging to articulate.

For those brief few moments when the corona appears bright in the sky, all the effort made to experience the totality becomes worth it. You want to soak up every second of it and process every feeling, because it is over all too soon. Once the moon’s shadow has passed you feel both exhilarated and deflated because the next opportunity to experience this sensation again could be years away and on the other side of the world. And it is something that you will crave.

There is also, of course, the professional motivation for me to gaze upon the subject of my research with my own eyes. Most other astrophysicists only get to look at exploding stars or distant comets through gargantuan telescopes, where they appear as mere pixels on a computer screen or a squiggle on a graph. It’s easy to get detached from the beauty of astronomy when your job becomes more focused on securing grant funding, teaching, administrative duties and bureaucracy. Eclipse chasing reminds me why I chose this field of work in the first place and reignites my passion — and I want to inspire my students with that same passion.

Each eclipse is different. The shape and structure of the solar corona varies over the course of each solar cycle. The longer the duration of the eclipse, the darker one’s surroundings are likely to seem. And sandwiched between the sun’s “surface” and the corona is the crimson red chromosphere, the layer of the sun’s atmosphere that I have been researching for almost 20 years to understand its relationship to solar flares. In Australia the briefness of totality meant that this region was exceptionally bright and distinguished, and one could even spot some solar prominences (clouds of hydrogen gas suspended above the chromosphere) with the naked eye. That may also be the case on Monday.

People mistakenly think that a partial eclipse is good enough. It is not. When outside the path of totality, the visibility of even 1 percent of the sun’s disk is enough to outshine the entire corona. The buzz around this year’s eclipse through North America has reached a fever pitch not seen since the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017. The duration of totality will be almost twice as long — almost four and a half minutes. (Whether the weather will cooperate is still an open question .)

This is far from the first time I’ve tried to cajole people into experiencing the totality in full. In 2017, I persuaded several of my friends in the United States to join me in Nebraska to enjoy the spectacle without forcing them to traipse halfway across the globe. They later told me that they at first thought I may have been somewhat exaggerating the experience because of my professional bias, but when the eclipse was over, I knew that they finally got it. Their faces were overcome with emotion and they struggled to articulate how they were feeling. Because it wasn’t just about what they had seen — it was about what they had experienced.

Ryan Milligan is a solar physicist at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has held research fellowships at NASA and the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Britain and was affiliated with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for over a decade.

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