If you’re also looking for some tips or ways that can help you to write a good academic essay, then this guide will be helpful for you. There are many tips that you have to follow, but here, we are going to list out the five best tips that can help students to write a perfect essay.
So, let’s get started. Here are the five best tips that can help students to write engaging and perfect essays for their academic assignments.
Answer the Prompt/Question in Your Essay
The first tip that you have to follow while writing an essay is you need to understand the title. Some essays, such as academic papers, are written in response to an essay prompt. You need to understand the question that the professor assigned to you.
For this, you have to do in-depth research on your topic. Also, you can also make your essay more engaging by adding some extra relevant information. Like if the teacher assigns you to write an essay on & “Discuss climate change?” topic, then you can also add some additional information/questions in the essay, like:
- Types of climate change.
- Factors that affect the climate.
- Problems caused due to climate change.
- Countries that are affected the most due to climate change, etc.
To find the answer, you have to do some deep research and create a proper outline. It will be easy for you to write a perfect one that stands out. You need to create questions and provide answers to them in your essay to make it engaging and perfect.
Structure Your Essay in a Proper Format
Structuring the essay in a proper format is very beneficial because it helps to make your essay readable. Using long walls of text instead of the proper format in an essay looks un- comprehendible.
You need to structure your essay in such format:
Introduction Section: This is where you introduce the topic of your essay and quickly outline the points you’ll make in the following paragraphs.
This is also the place where you will state your main idea for the essay. It is the most significant portion of your essay.
An easy way to write your introduction is to consider all of the ideas and material you want to include in the body section and then select some solid points that you believe will engage the audience.
(Pro Tip: Always write the body of the essay first, and at last, write the introduction. It will be helpful for you to reflect the whole point of the essay to the reader clearly.)
Body Section: The body is also the main section of your essay, where you support the main idea with facts and proof. Each body paragraph should explore one supporting argument by bringing up relevant facts, information, or data.
If you’re unsure about whether to add a certain point or detail in your body paragraphs, then you should refer back to your statement. Should the detail is relevant to your topic, it should be included in your essay. If it doesn’t, remove it. Because your body section is the core of your basic essay format, everything else in the essay should be related to it in some manner.
You can also write your whole body section in parts like topic 1, topic 2, topic 3, and so on.
Conclusion Section: It is the last part of the essay in which you summarize the whole text. In the conclusion section of your essay, you review the points you presented and bring your argument to a logical conclusion.
Because your reader is already familiar with your whole essay. Your conclusion summary may be more straightforward and decisive than the one in your introduction section.
The above image is a good example of how you can structure your essay in a proper format.
Make Your Essay Readable
The next tip that you can follow to write an engaging essay is to make sure that your essay text is readable. The readability of the text matters the most when it comes to writing. It is the ease with which a reader can read and understand the written text.
There are many factors that affect readability:
- Using complicated words in the text.
- Using lengthy sentences that contain more than 20 words.
- Using walls of text (lengthy paragraphs) that are more than 3 or 4 lines.
They can make your content readability harder and readers might face difficulty in understanding.
If you want to make your content readable, you need to make sure that there are no complicated words used. If they’re present, replace them with easy synonyms (just like shown in the above image).
Along with this, if you have used lengthy sentences, then try to break them into two or more pieces. If breaking the sentence disturbs the context, then remove unnecessary words or use punctuation marks like commas, semi-colons, colons, etc.
After that, make sure that there are no lengthy paragraphs present in your essay. If it is, then make sure that each paragraph of your essay should not exceed 3 or 4 lines.
After reviewing the above image, you can easily demonstrate that, which one is looking good and can easily readable. So, this is how you can make your essay more readable and engage your readers.
Cite the Sources and Evidence
The second piece of advice is to constantly double-check your citations to ensure that they are correct and full. Some professors demand you to follow a certain citation style (for example, APA), while others may allow you to use your own. Whatever style you choose, you must adhere to its rules appropriately and consistently. To verify your citations, utilize Recite, the University of Melbourne style guide.
There are many types of citing sources, but here are some of them:
- APA (American Psychological Association)
- MLA (Modern Language Association)
- Chicago or Turabian
- IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)
- ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
And many more. But the most common are the first three (APA, Chicago/Turabian, and MLA).
All these styles are used in the different types of writing. APA style is mostly used in blogging, education, and in other writing like Psychology and Sciences.
The MLA style is used in specific types of academic write-ups, such as essays, research papers, and other humanities disciplines.
The Chicago/Turabian style is also a very common and useful citation format that is used in business, history, and fine arts.
This is how you can cite your sources in any format, but the good one is APA style. Citing the source is beneficial because when readers will see that the text is cited, then they will understand that the specific information belongs to another author and the reference is given properly.
Look for Plagiarism in Your Essay
The next tip for writing an engaging and unique essay is to look for plagiarism in it. Checking plagiarism is the last phase that comes after writing.
We all know about plagiarism and its causes. It is also known as “Stealing.” Because when you copy someone else text without its permission, it comes in the stealing.
If the institute detects plagiarism in your essay, then it might cause some issues, like they can fail you or revoke your degree.
So, if you want to make your essay engaging and unique, then you need to make sure that there is no plagiarism in your content. Incidentally, the allowed percentage of plagiarism for an academic student is 15%. But you need to make sure that there is no plagiarism present in your essay.
Now, if we talk about how you can check plagiarism in your essay, then there is only one method that can help you, which is online plagiarism-checking tools.
Here is how plagiarism checkers usually show results:
There are hundreds of plagiarism checkers available on the internet that help students, writers, freelancers, and bloggers to look for copied content in their write-ups.
So, before you submit your essay to your professor, you need to check plagiarism first and see whether it is present or not.
Conclusion
Here we are with the five best tips that can help students in writing a perfect essay. Let’s recap them real quick.
The tips that you have to follow are you need to make sure that you totally understand the essay title and are also ready to answer each question. Along with this, try to add some extra questions that are relevant to your topic. This will help you in making your essay engaging.
After that, you need to make sure that you follow a good structure for writing an essay. We have discussed above how you can structure your essay in a proper format.
You can also make your essay engaging by making it readable for your professors. If you don’t know how you can make your essay readable, then don’t worry; we have discussed it above in detail.
Besides that, don’t forget to cite the sources, information, or evidence that you have taken from an online source. Along with this, don’t forget to check for plagiarism before submitting your essay.
Best wishes for your exams.