How to Structure an Essay? Ultimate Guide

If you are a student who has an essay to write for school, college, or university; you may be worried about how to structure it.

You should know that a solid essay structure will help you in writing eye-catching essays and covering all aspects of your topic.

Now, a lot of you may want to know about the essay structure. So, I am going to share an ultimate guide for having a solid essay structure for your assignments.

Ultimate Guide to Essay’s Structure

There is one solid structure that is consistent for every type of topic and essay you have to write in your life.

This essay structure is:

1. Introduction
2. Body
3. Conclusion

These three are the essential parts of writing an essay.

Introduction

The introduction of an essay includes setting the scene, telling the readers what is important, and what you are going to discuss in the essay.

Some topics demand an introduction to be brief, and some demand introduction to be broad and informative.

You should focus on these elements in writing an introduction:

• The first statement engages readers.
• A brief background and context of the topic.
• Outline the issues, important topics, theory, evidence, or anything you are going to discuss in the body.
• A final statement which tells readers what will be your main focus in the essay. It is also called a thesis statement.

This thesis statement is the most crucial part of your essay. It is a kind of summary of the topic you are going to discuss.

If you are unable to write a strong thesis statement in the beginning, you can write it after writing your whole essay. Read your whole essay, decide on a thesis statement, and then write it in your introduction.

Body

The body is the core part of your essay as it contains all the information, definition, evidence, and examples you want to discuss in your topic.

The body contains different paragraphs which support your thesis statement. These paragraphs will tell your readers about your thesis statement, and why you are giving it.

There are different tips that you should remember while writing body:

• Your one paragraph should cover only one aspect.
• The background of the study should be at the beginning of the body. You have discussed the general background in the introduction, so more background will be in the body.
• All paragraphs should be interlinked with each other. For it, you can use transition words, phrases, and sentences.
• Your all paragraphs should support your thesis statement. Before writing any paragraph, you should ask yourself whether this information is related to your thesis statement or not. If not, exclude that information.
• Your body should start with the simple issues to the complex ones. You can discuss a broad topic at the beginning of the body before narrowing it down.

If you will remember these points, you will be able to write a strong body.

Conclusion

You should never write any new information in your conclusion. You should keep your conclusion brief (maybe one small paragraph) as it is ending your essay.

There are three main reminders for your readers in your conclusion:

• What was your topic?
• What was your answer to the issue?
• How do you solve the issue?

So, you just have to tie the topic and points in your conclusion.

These are three main parts of every type of essay. But, there can be a bit of difference in different types of essays. If you know these essay structure differences for every type of essay, you can write essays easily. So, let’s explore different essay structures.

Different Types of Essay Structures

The essay structures will differ in the body part as things will add up in it.

● Chronological Essays

A chronological approach is a type of essay that discusses a series of events. You can write these types of topics in this essay:

• A book or article
• A current or historical event
• Procedure or process

In the introduction, you have to give a summary of the events you are going to discuss.

In the body, in each paragraph, discuss one event’s background and the conclusion of it. You can write two to three paragraphs for one event too.

In conclusion, you will write about the importance of an event or topic.

● Compare/Contrast Essays

You can write the body of these essays in two different ways:

1. One paragraph discusses the comparison of the topic, the other one discusses the contrast of it, and the third paragraph tells how much these topics are similar or different. In each paragraph, you should only discuss one aspect of the topic, and then tell the contrast of it in the other paragraph.
2. You can go for only contrast or only-comparison routes. Discuss all similarities in different paragraphs before, and then go for discussing contrasts later on.

Do remember that your one paragraph should focus on one topic only.

The introduction and conclusion rules will remain the same in this type of essay.

Wrap Up

To conclude this whole conversation, you should remember the three main parts of essay structure, and what points every part of your essay should cover.

I hope this article will help you in crafting a strong article for academic purposes.