Guide to Essay Writing
Feel passionately about something and want to share it? Write an essay!
Disagree with a popular opinion and wish to convince others to join you? Write
an essay! Need to write something because the college you dream of
attending is making you? Write an essay!
“Essay” is a loose term for writing that asserts the author’s opinion on a topic,
whether academic, editorial, or even humorous. There are a thousand
different approaches to essay writing and a million different topics to choose
from, but what we’ve found is that good essay writing tends to follow the same
framework.
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Below we discuss that framework and how you can apply it to your essays,
whatever types they may be. But first, let’s start with the nucleus of any good
essay: the topic.
Your essay needs a thesis statement
There are three things to consider before writing your essay: thesis, type, and
audience. Of these, the most important by far is your thesis, or the crux of
what your essay is about.
Your thesis, encapsulated in your thesis statement, is the central point you’re
trying to make. The thesis of Bertrand Russell’s essay “In Praise of Idleness,”
for example, is that people focus too much on work and don’t value time spent
idly. Essays can occasionally stray and go into related tangents, but they
always come back to that one core idea in the thesis.
You should always pinpoint your thesis before writing. If you’re having trouble
nailing it down, ask yourself, “What’s the one thing I want my reader to
remember when they’re done reading my essay?”
The best practice is to include your thesis as soon as possible, even in your
topic sentence if it’s appropriate. You’ll want to reiterate it throughout the
essay as well, especially when wrapping up everything in the conclusion.
The rest of your essay, then, supports your thesis. You can include empirical
evidence, testimonials, logical deductions, or even persuasive rhetoric—
whatever gets the job done. The point is that you’re building upon your initial
thesis, not switching to completely different topics.
Types of essays
Like any form of writing, essays come in many different types. Sometimes the
assignment dictates the type, as with admissions essays, and other times the
thesis will determine it. Regardless, it helps to know what your options are, so
here are some of the most common essay types:
Argumentative essay
Argumentative essays assert or defend a position. This is the most common
type of school paper, so keep that in mind when writing your first college
essay.
Admissions essay
Most colleges request an admissions essay in applications, which typically
revolve around why you’re interested in their school.
Persuasive essay
A persuasive essay is just as it sounds: an essay to persuade or convince the
reader of a certain point. It’s similar to an argumentative essay— they both
strongly favor a particular point of view, but the difference is the end goal:
Argumentative essays just have to present their case, while persuasive
essays have to present their case and win over the reader.
Compare-and-contrast essay
When you want to devote equal attention to two opposing things, a compare-
and-contrast essay works better than argumentative or persuasive essays,
which lean to one side over the other.
Personal essay
Personal essays are often anecdotal or real-life stories of the authors, like the
works of David Sedaris. Because they tend to follow narrative structures, the
thesis can be flexible or interpretive.
Expository essay
An expository essay thoroughly explains a certain topic to expand the reader’s
knowledge. It is similar to an argumentative and persuasive essay in format,
but with one key difference: expository essays don’t have a bias.
Know your essay’s audience
Your final consideration is who will read your essay—a teacher, an
admissions counselor, your peers, the internet at large, etc.
No matter what you’re writing, your audience should influence your language.
For one thing, your readers determine whether the essay is formal or casual,
which has an enormous impact on language, word choice, and style. Take
emojis for example: In a casual essay they might be welcome, but for formal
writing they’re not the most appropriate choice. 😓
Your audience also affects the essay’s tone, or how you sound on an
emotional level (enthusiastic, cautious, confident, etc.). If you’d like to know
more, you can read about the 10 common types of tone here.
The essay writing process
If you’re writing an essay, research paper, term paper, novel, short
story, poem, screenplay, blog article about essay writing—when writing just
about anything, really—it’s crucial to follow an efficient writing process. Even if
you prefer the stream of consciousness style for writing your rough draft, you
still need to have an orderly system that allows you to revise and hone.
For essay writing, we recommend this six-step writing process:
1 Brainstorming
It always helps to collect your thoughts before you begin writing
by brainstorming. Based on your prompt or thesis, try to generate as many
ideas as possible to include in your essay. Think of as many as time allows,
knowing that you’ll be able to set aside the ideas that don’t work later.
2 Preparing
The preparation phase consists of both outlining your essay and collecting
resources for evidence. Take a look at the results of your brainstorming
session. First, isolate the ideas that are essential to support your thesis and
then organize them in a logical and progressive order. In this stage you’ll
incorporate your essay structure, which we explain below.
If you want empirical evidence or complementary citations, track them down
now. The way you write citations depends on the style guide you’re using. The
three most common style guides for academics are MLA, APA, and Chicago,
and each has its own particular rules and requirements for citing just
about any kind of source, including newspaper articles, websites, speeches,
and YouTube videos.
3 Drafting
This is the main stage of essay writing where you roll up your sleeves and
actually write your first draft. Remember that everything doesn’t have to be
perfect; this is your first draft, not your final draft, so give yourself the freedom
to make errors. If you’re focusing on getting every single word right, you’ll
miss the big picture.
4 Revising
The revisions stage involves your second draft, your third draft, or even your
twelfth draft if necessary. Address all the nuances and subtleties you glossed
over in the first draft.
Pay attention to both word choice and clarity, as well as sophisticated writing
techniques like avoiding the passive voice. If you’re not confident in your
writing skills yet, the Grammarly Editor ensures your writing is readable, clear,
and concise by offering sentence structure and word choice suggestions, plus
clarity revisions as you write. Grammarly helps catch common mistakes with
sentence structure—like run-on sentences, sentence fragments, passive
voice, and more.
5 Proofreading
When all the heavy-duty revisions are finished, it’s time for the final polish. Go
through your essay and correct misspellings, formatting issues, or
grammatical errors. This is also where you can turn to Grammarly’s AI-
powered writing assistant, which helps catch these common mistakes for you.
Or copy and paste your writing to check your grammar and get instant
feedback on grammar, spelling, punctuation, and other mistakes you might
have missed.
Essay structure
Essay structure almost always follows a simple beginning-middle-end format,
or in this case, an introduction-body-conclusion format. However, it’s what’s
contained within those sections that makes all the difference.
Introduction
Essays follow the same guidelines for introductions as any other piece of
writing, with an extra emphasis on presenting the thesis prominently, ideally in
the topic sentence. By the end of your introduction paragraph, your reader
should know without a doubt what your essay is about. From there, follow the
conventional best practices on how to write an introduction.
Body paragraphs
The majority of your essay is body paragraphs, all of which support your
thesis and present evidence.
Pay close attention to how you organize your body paragraphs. Some
arguments benefit from a logical progression, where one point leads to a
second, and that second point leads to a third. Remember that the reader
doesn’t understand the topic like you do (that’s why you’re writing the essay),
so structure your paragraphs in the way that’s best for their comprehension.
What if you’re writing an argumentative essay where you compare and
contrast two or more points of view? Do you present your argument first and
then share opposing points of view, or do you open with your opposition’s
argument and then refute it?
Serious writers can get pretty technical about how to organize an
argumentative essay. There are three approaches in particular used
often: Aristotlian (classical), Rogerian, and Toulmin. However, these can get
exceedingly complicated, so for a simple essay, a basic structure will do just
fine:
1. Your point
2. Counterpoint
3. Evidence supporting your point and/or disproving counterpoint
Conclusion
Essay conclusions wrap up or summarize your thesis in a way that’s easy for
the reader to digest. If you get the chance, you can add a new perspective or
context for understanding your thesis, but in general the conclusion
should not present any new evidence or supporting data. Rather, it’s more of
a recap. For more specific tips, read about how to write a conclusion for an
essay here.
Five-paragraph essay
For quick and simple essays, you don’t need to get too technical with your
essay structure. The five-paragraph essay structure works well in a pinch.
This contains:
One introduction paragraph
Three body paragraphs
One conclusion paragraph
While this essay structure might not be flexible enough for more advanced
topics, it comes in handy when speed is a factor, like during timed tests.
Essay writing tips
Master the five fundamentals
Especially for school essays, your reader will scrutinize how well you handle
the fundamentals. Knowing about essay structure and the writing process is
one thing, but can you demonstrate an understanding of language style? Can
you develop your thesis logically and coherently? Are your references and
citations trustworthy?
When you’re ready for the next step of essay writing, take a look at the five
concepts you must master to write better essays. The tips there pick up where
this guide leaves off.
Seek out another pair of eyes
This tip is not just for essays; it’s always advisable to have someone else read
over your writing before finalizing it. All too often we miss the forest for the
trees, and thinking long and hard on the same topic can give you tunnel
vision. The solution is to get a fresh take from someone who’s seeing it for the
first time.
Typically you can swap with a friend and edit each others’ works. If that’s not
an option, however, you can also use a writing center or join a writing group
online. At the very least, you should sleep on it and take another look when
you’re refreshed.
Remember: Grammar and form are essential
It’s not always about what you say, but how you say it. You could have the
most obvious, objectively agreeable thesis in the world, but if your writing is
incoherent, confusing, and full of mistakes, it’s tough to engage with your
reader.
For when your writing needs to make the right impact, Grammarly Premium
offers full-sentence rewrites for confusing sentences—from splitting long
sentences, cutting extra words, or rearranging key phrases—in addition to
catching common grammar mistakes. It also gives you readability-focused
formatting suggestions, so you know your writing is clear. It also helps those
who are looking to improve their writing skill level in English, with suggestions
for commonly misused words and phrases.
Honing your writing with these elements in mind is key to relaying your point
to your reader—and asserting your thesis as effectively as possible.
