An essay is a tool that facilitates presenting an idea in a non-fictional manner. The purpose of an essay is to present an idea, express the emotion about a phenomenon, initiate a debate, and propose an argument.  Essay writing is not limited to providing a political manifesto and criticism over a phenomenon. Multiple applications of essay writing go beyond this. It may include personal observation and the reflection of the author. An essay can be as short as a 500 words document. It can be as long as 5,000 words. However, in most situations, an essay falls between 2000 to 3000 words. A writer requires this much word range in order to develop an argument.

The origin of writing an essay goes back as long as six years. Essays were used to question assumptions, argue opinions, and initiate discussions. An essay comes in many shapes and sizes. It may focus on personal experience or may use for purely academic exploration. As an essay include expository elements, researchers consider it a subjective form of writing. Most of the students who don’t know how to write an essay, prefer to buy essay online from the best writers.

Types of Essays:

Before providing a guide on how to write an essay, it is important that you know the different types of essays. The following is a brief introduction of a few types of essays that are most common in Academics.

Five Paragraph essay:

This is the most common type of essay writing. I bet when you first heard of an essay, you must hear of this essay writing form. This essay follows a very simple structure. It starts with an introduction paragraph. To expand the thesis, there are three paragraphs in the body of the essay. Then to sum it all up, there is a conclusion paragraph.

Argumentative essay:

An author usually explores this type of essay writing while discussing a controversial issue. The aim of this essay is to identify major positions on each side. The writer supports one side by giving evidence to the argument.

Compare and contrast essay:

This essay writing form compares two items, like two articles on the same topic. The author can provide similarities and differences. It is quite possible that compare and contrast essay focuses on more than just two items.

Definition essay:

This essay writing form focuses on defining turn on the concept. The most important part of a definition essay is to discuss different dimensions of the concept. Select the topic for a definition essay keeping in mind that you will have to define it from multiple angles.

Descriptive essay:

A descriptive essay can be the most fun form of writing. The writer aims to fully describe a topic by giving details on every aspect. When you are writing a descriptive essay, you can align your paragraph by a sense of the idea.

Illustration essay:

The purpose of using an illustration essay is to describe an idea with the help of examples. It means that each statement requires to be supported by example or evidence.

As mentioned above, this article discussed a few types of essays; it is now time to move to know how you can write an essay. The writing process of an essay contains three major components. It includes the preparation for the essay, writing of the essay, and revising the essay. The following section of the article will provide information on these three components. Let’s walk you through the essay writing process by briefly describing what each component is about.

Essay Writing Guide:

Preparation

This component of the essay writing process is significantly important. If you are not well prepared to write your essay, there is a wide chance you may not be able to write a quality piece of work. The preparation component consists of three stages.

1.  Selecting a topic
2.  Researching  the topic
3.  Creating an outline of the essay

Let’s look at these three stages of preparation individually.

Topic Selection:

The selection of the topic is an important part of the preparation component. In some cases, you are given a topic, but you may have to find a topic on your own. If you are given a topic, there is not much that you can do about that. There are a couple of things that you can consider if you need to select your topic on your own. It is important that you select a topic that seems interesting to you. If the topic is not interesting for you, writing an essay can be a very boring task.

This topic can be a hobby of yours, something that you are interested in gathering information about etc. Keep in mind that you will have to discuss different aspects of the topic you select. If you are not sure about your topic, you may find it difficult to build your argument while writing the essay.

Research:

Once you select a topic, the next stage is to research the topic. The clearer you are about the topic, the more quality you can bring to the essay writing process. Even if you don’t know much about the topic, at this stage, you can explore different dimensions of the subject matter.

For better research, you need to explore primary and secondary sources regarding the topic.  While you are reading about the topic, take notes. These notes will help you work out your position. You will be able to identify the angles about the topic you are interested in talking about. Besides, these notes will help you as evidence for your argument.  Ultimately, your research will take you to a central point or an argument. This central point is the thesis of your essay. It is important that you have a clear thesis to develop a focused essay.  This thesis is something that you will keep referring back to while you are writing your essay.  So, make it a clear argument so that there is no confusion while you are writing the essay.

Outline:

The next step in the preparation component is to create an outline. At this stage, you are able to make a rough outline of your essay. With a clear understanding of your topic and effective knowledge through your research, you will be able to map out this rough structure for an essay. Besides, this outline will make it easier to start the writing process and keep you on track.

Writing the Essay

Now you are ready for the next component of the essay writing process. This part contains information about writing the essay. If you look at the structure of the essay, it has three essential parts. The first part is the introduction, which sets the tone for your piece of work. Your introduction should be able to grab the interest of your reader. It also gives the reader a sneak peek at the topic and what to expect. The introduction part of the essay comprises around 10 to 20% of the text. The first sentence of the introduction section should intrigue and interest the reader.

Therefore, the first sentence is sometimes called the hook sentence. Your hook sentence can be a surprising Fact and interesting question for a bold statement about the topic. Besides, the hook sentence of your introduction section contains a piece of background information about the topic. This is the section where you will provide your thesis statement. Your thesis statement will provide information about what to expect further in the essay. To facilitate the reader more in this manner, you can provide a brief outline of the complete essay. However, it depends on the length of your essay.

If you do not have many words to dedicate to the introduction section, you may want to add a one-liner or two as an outline. The body and conclusion parts come after the introduction section. In the body, you will develop your argument and provide evidence to support your argument. The conclusion section is self-explanatory. Summarise your essay in this section; you can also make certain recommendations in this section.

Revising the Essay

The revision section is about checking the content, grammar, spelling, organisation and formatting of the essay. Proofreading is a significant part of revision. At this stage, you will be able to eliminate any typos, mistakes in sentence structuring etc. A grammar and spelling check at this point will also help along with the formatting of your essay. At this stage, you may find you may have made certain mistakes in the organisation of your essay. You can eliminate these mistakes and reorganise the essay. This component of the essay writing process is important as this is your last chance to make any changes to the essay. Revision can play a critical role in improving your essay.

The article provides a guideline to write your essay. This guideline can help you in many ways, therefore your academic purposes or in your career. It is important that you pay equal attention to all parts of this essay writing process guideline. In order to produce a good quality essay, this guide helps you how to improve your writing process.