Top Tips for Structuring your Essays

Writing an essay for college or high school is no easy task. You might have difficulty getting started or putting words to your thoughts and ideas. Whatever the case, essay writing is a skill to be practiced to be good at. One of the skills to develop to write better essays is structuring them to convey more clarity. Knowing the basic structure of any essay will enable you to write complex essays that touch on various topics. The basic structure of any essay is divided into three major parts – Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. This basic structure helps an author state their personal opinions, engage their readers, and tie contrasting arguments and claims together.

Basic Structure of an Essay:

An introduction is where you start your essays; however, you don’t need to start your writing process here. The introduction is where an author briefly summarises the points and ideas discussed in the essay. The introduction is also where you state your thesis. This is an important step in establishing your opinions to the reader. A thesis is a concise statement that summarises your essay. The body of an essay is where you expand on your thesis by providing evidence, facts, and figures. The Essay body should be divided into brief paragraphs, each talking about different ideas. Make sure each paragraph only discusses one argument, and it should move from the simplest claim to the complex in order. Remember to provide the background information at the beginning of any paragraph. This will make sure that you are presenting your ideas with clarity. Another important thing to take care of is to connect the different paragraphs with the help of transition sentences. Conclusions are where you tie everything discussed so far in the essay together. It helps the reader to summarize and understand the concepts discussed in an efficient manner.

Different kinds of Essays:

If you are asked to write an essay about a historical event, it is significant to state it in chronological order. When you address events and incidents chronologically, it helps the reader understand the material better. On the other hand, if you are asked to compare and contrast, you can discuss the similarities between two subjects in one paragraph and follow it with the differences between them. Another common essay pattern is where you discuss a problem, explore different ways to solve it and suggest the best possible solution based on the pros and cons. In such essays, you can talk about the problem in the introduction, explore different ways to solve it in the essay body, and state your opinions in conclusion. With the basic structure of an essay in place, you can start by forming a flat outline. This outline will serve as the guidepost while you write the essay.