The Importance of Following Essay Structures

The essay structure is one of the first things we have to learn in writing class. Each type of essay naturally has a different type of essay structure. An essay after all is a broad term which can include many written materials that are not stories or poems. Let’s try to differentiate essays based on their purpose and then figure out the proper essay structure to use.

(1) Informative Essay. The purpose of this kind of essay is to inform and generally it follows the standard “introduction, body and conclusion” format. News features and brochures are typically written this way. The introduction should of course include the essay topic and the thesis statement of the whole material. The introduction must also be attention grabbing. The body is where you develop your points and it would be good to repeat some of your most important points in the conclusion. The conclusion must also effectively and smoothly end your discourse. You don’t want to leave your readers hanging.

Although some might not include news in this type of essay, let’s get to it now just to show how it is different. Classic news stories follow the inverted triangle structure. That means the first sentence should include most of the relevant information. The top most part is the heaviest both in terms of content and relevance. After the first paragraph move on to the less important details. This is done for two reasons. First, people are busy and might not have the time to read the whole material. Thus the topmost part must include most of what they need to learn. Second this structure makes it easier for journalists to cut or crop materials.

(2) Persuasive essay. The aim of this one is to persuade the reader to agree with your view of a particular issue. Although it has the same essay structure as the informative essay, this one includes the author’s opinions or views.

(3) Narratives. Narratives are relatively new but they are becoming more and more common. Partly because it’s new, it doesn’t have a fixed structure. Generally people write their narratives following the order in which the events happen. You don’t have to follow this though. The best thing I guess about narrative essays is that you can be more creative with it. Whatever works works, just as long as you don’t give your reader a headache.

Writing an essay outline of all the stuff you want to include is very helpful. You must have an essay plan . The points you discuss must be arranged in a logical fashion so as not to confuse your readers.

Another important thing that most students fail to appreciate is the importance of writing a good paragraph. Each paragraph must have one main idea and this main idea must be thoroughly explained. This main idea may be supported by examples or statistics to make it even more clear. Remember that the visual separation of each paragraph is not just for the heck of it. That is done to help us distinguish one point from another with greater ease. For more ideas, access essay samples online.

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