How to write an essay?

Today it’s very easy to write an essay if you have your own internet. An essay is one of the most common types of written assignments in school. It is a written piece that is meant to convey an idea or an argument. It is based on the writer’s knowledge, ideas or a personal stance on an issue. There are many different types of essays: persuasive, descriptive, expository, admission, process, cause and effect essays, just to name a few. You can find all the necessary information here.

If you are in college, chances are you have already been acquainted with the majority of the types of essays. You might have even experienced writing an admission essay. But as you can surely recall, you were not taught all those types of essays in just one sitting. Due to the vastness of the spectrum that is essay writing, students are taught the various types of essay in an incremental manner (i.e. descriptive essay first, then response essay, so on and so forth). Curricula are designed in such a way that the student can assemble the building blocks of essay writing basics in order to apply what he has learned in the most effective way. All this while he goes up the academic and professional ladder.

Here are some types:

Compare And Contrast Essay
Narrative Essay
Creative Essay
Persuasive Essay
Expository Essay

You most certainly have already been taught how to format an essay back in grade school. Regardless of the type of essay, the format more or less adheres to the 5 paragraph system, especially if the word count requirement ranges from 400 to 900 words. The first paragraph contains the introduction and the thesis statement, the next three paragraphs for the body that is composed of your arguments and supporting evidence, and one paragraph for the conclusion. For longer essays (900 words and above), the format remains the same, only with an increased number of paragraphs within the body, and the only differences will be in the citation style and referencing.

While personal, informal, descriptive, and narrative essays rely more on the argumentation and writing style of the writer, the same does not apply when you are writing argumentative, persuasive, expository, and classification essays. These types of essays need to be supported by evidence and resources, therefore necessitating the need to reference and cite properly. As a result, you also need to master the different citation styles so you can write essays that require research and citing of resources. Mastery of the characteristics of the major academic citation styles is not only beneficial to your essay writing ability, but also a boost to your skills in writing a research paper.

Citation and referencing style for essays and research papers: