Essays
Basic structure of essays
Written assignments that are based on an essay format use the following structure:
The introduction, body, and conclusion form the text of your essay. Together they comprise the most important aspects of your assignment.
Title page
The title page is an essential part of your essay. While the specific details of title pages might vary according to the requirements of particular subjects the following information is fairly standard.
Your title page should include:
- Title of assignment (i.e. the essay question or topic)
- Your name
- Name of the subject
- Name of your lecturer or tutor
- Name of the department (and in some cases, the university)
- Due date (i.e. the date on which the essay is due).
A title page does more than provide a space for the name of the writer of the essay. It is the part of your essay that will create the first (and often lasting) impression about you as a writer.
Introduction
The introduction to your essay is probably the most important part of your text. It gives your reader an indication of what to expect in terms of quality, substance and interest.
Challenges
Many students find that writing an introduction is often the most difficult part of the essay because of:
- The importance of the introduction to the essay's structure
- The difficulty of 'getting started', a phenomenon experienced by most writers.
The introduction two-step
Your introduction will probably go through numerous rewrites. For convenience this can be considered as a two-stage process, the introduction two-step:
- A 'draft introduction' (in use while you are working through the various drafts of your essay)
- A 'polished introduction' (written once the body of your essay and its conclusion has been completed).
This will enable you to:
- Tailor your 'final introduction' to the actual direction that your essay has taken
- Make minor adjustments to the text of the body and conclusion of your essay.
Features
Both introductions will have the same basic features, though the 'polished introduction' should exhibit these in a much more clearly and effectively than the 'draft introduction'.
There are a number of features that should form part of any good introduction:
- A strong opening sentence that
- Provokes your reader's interest
- Captures your reader's attention
- Sets the stage for you to get quickly to the point of your essay
Sometimes this can be achieved by using a provocative quotation or a relevant anecdote. At other times an unexpected or provocative claim could be put forward to focus your reader's attention - Appropriate explanatory information where you discuss briefly
- Background context of your essay in which you note the significance of your topic
- Your key terms or concepts (this might also involve an outline of your conceptual framework)
- The limits of your discussion where you specify the intellectual boundaries of your essay
- A statement of the aims of the essay in which you specify as succinctly as possible
- The problems or issues your essay discusses
- The point of your essay (this should not be a restatement of the essay question or topic)
While your statement of aims or purposes should certainly be relevant to the topic as set they should nevertheless arise from, and be clearly linked to, the content of your essay
- An overview of the essay discussion
Provide a brief outline of the key points to be covered by your discussion. This gives your reader a preview of where you are going to take them. This also enables you to show the reader that your essay is structured logically and that it has a thematic unity
Note that some aspects or even all of the explanatory information (noted earlier) might be included as part of your overview of the essay discussion
Essay body
The essay body contains your discussion in which you present the main points of your argument. Like the introduction and conclusion, the essay body is divided into paragraphs. Paragraphs enable you to organise your ideas and key points. They also help you to develop your points so that they are linked in such a way as to ensure logical and thematic continuity.
Using paragraphs
Each paragraph should develop one major point, or a series of closely related minor points that together support a major point. Each point that you develop should be directly relevant to your topic as set by your lecturer. Each one should contribute to your task of answering the question.
The first sentence of a paragraph, the topic sentence, should state the point to be developed in the paragraph. The rest of the sentences, the supporting sentences, provide the relevant information and evidence to support the main point. The supporting sentences:
- Explain the point being covered
- Provide the details needed to understand your point
- Include the examples, illustrations or quotations needed to substantiate your point. Make sure that your example, illustration of quote is directly relevant to the point being made.
Paragraph size
Check that there is a reasonable balance between each paragraph in terms of length. This does not mean that each and every paragraph must be exactly the same length. Rather, your aim should be to ensure that the amount of discussion devoted to each point is in proportion to that point's importance for the essay as a whole. Do not use one-sentence paragraphs.
Review your writing
- After you have written a draft of your essay it will be necessary to review what you have achieved. An effective method is to read through each paragraph in the order that they appear in your draft. Write a one sentence (only one sentence) summary of each paragraph:
Compare each summary with what you intended (from your essay plan) to say. If there is a discrepancy then a rewrite of the paragraph might be needed. - Read each summary sentence, one after the other:
If there is no logical connection or continuity between each summary sentence then a rewrite or reordering of the paragraphs might be needed. This might also be needed if there is no thematic continuity between them.
Conclusion
The conclusion ties together the main threads of your argument. It should not be used for introducing new information. The point of a conclusion is to provide a sense of closure for your essay.
However, depending on the topic and/or subject area, you can use the conclusion to reflect on future developments in the field or the ramifications that your findings might have for future research in the area.
While there should be a reasonable consistency, logically and thematically, between the conclusion and the introduction, there will probably be some differences between them. If the conclusion does not appear to answer the question then it will be necessary to retrace your thought process as it has developed through the body of the essay to the conclusion. If the conclusion provides a summary answer to the question as set then you can rewrite the introduction accordingly.
In essence, the conclusion sums up your main ideas. It reasserts the aims of your essay. Fundamentally, it should leave the reader in no doubt that you have demonstrated what you set out to do.
Bibliography
A bibliography is the list of all the sources that you have consulted in the preparation of your essay. It appears at the end of your essay.
There are a number of different types of bibliography:
- Works cited (or references or list of references): this is a list of all the sources that you have referred to anywhere in your essay. Many scholarly journals (i.e. periodicals) use the term 'works cited' rather than 'bibliography'
- Select bibliography: this is a list of all the works cited in your essay plus others that are broadly relevant to your essay's subject area
- Annotated bibliography: this is a reference work in which each item is followed by a brief note summarising the content and usefulness of the work.
In most circumstances at university, the terms 'works cited' (or 'references' or 'list of references') and 'bibliography' are often used interchangeably. This will probably not cause too much confusion. However, you should remember that a bibliography includes more references than something entitled 'references' or 'list of references'.
Each item in your bibliography is arranged alphabetically by the surname of each author.
The conventions for listing works in bibliographies will vary according to the referencing system adopted or recommended by your lecturer. Similarly, some of the conventions for a bibliography will differ from those used in footnotes and endnotes.
See also the list of references used in this website that is provided in the resources section.