Learn the Basic Essay Format Through Some Easy Steps
- ManagementPaper
- Apr 07, 2021
Knowing how to write an essay is a very important part of a student’s academic career. An essay format requires a basic structure to be followed. Also there are various formatting styles that have to be followed in order to make an academic paper complete. The various formatting styles to format an essay are APA essay format, MLA essay format and the Harvard essay format. There are many styles but these are the most common ones.
What Is an Essay Format?
An essay format is the way in which you must write the essay. It involves mainly two things: it provides an organized structure to the essay and the entire essay is being formatted in a particular style that is already in use. The essay format can be explained to you in depth through an efficient paper helper from the team of the Management Paper.
The Various Parts of An Essay Format That Are to Be Included in The Essay
A general consists of three prominent parts- introduction, body and conclusion. This format helps you in efficiently organising the essay and writing it with ease.
1. Introduction
In the introduction of an essay, the reader is being guided into the essay by introducing the essay topics to them. It is always mandatory to initiate the introduction with a hook, that is, a bold statement, a quote, an analogy or a rhetorical question. This is where you will make the readers give their full attention towards your writing. After making the readers attracted to your writing, provide them with some of the background information about the topic of the essay and mention any significant happening relevant to your topic. The main claim of the essay must be transparent to the readers through the general ideas and then slowly make your claim and arguments more specific to establish a strong thesis statement.
2. Thesis Statement
The main argument or claim of the essay is being stated by the thesis statement. Limits are being set on the essay topic and also indicated towards the essay’s organisation. For the entire essay, the thesis statement can be considered as a roadmap that shows the readers how you will support the ideas with which important points and your claim towards them.
3. Body
The main ideas presented in the thesis are completely supported in the essay body. Each of points are being developed into one or more paragraphs and supported by authenticated evidence. The evidential support can be taken from experiences and research, depending entirely on your assignment. Your own analysis and interpretation towards the argument of the topic must be linked and tied back to the claim of your thesis statement. This must be done for every paragraph to prove the claim in a proper manner. The drawn conclusion must always be in favour of the thesis.
4. Transitions
Transitions are used to join two consecutive paragraphs smoothly and connect them to the thesis statement. They help maintain the flow in the essay and can be used within the paragraphs or at the end of the paragraphs. The topic sentence of your academic piece serves as one of the transitions. Apart from those phrases as ‘in addition to’, ‘next’ and ‘first of all’ can be used.
5. Conclusion
All the important points in the essay have to be summed up here and mentioned in an organised manner. The outcome or the analysis of your essay has to state how your point links to the thesis statement must also be mentioned clearly to the reader. No new data has to be given at this point. You may also include the limitation and the future scope of your essay topic here.
6. Citations
In this part, you have to mention the sources from which you have taken various pieces of evidence to support your argument.
Parts of A Paragraph to Be Included in Your Essay Format
- Topic sentence
The main idea mentioned in each of the paragraph is summed up as the topic sentence. This portrays how the idea is related to your thesis statement. It is being placed at the top, mostly in bold font as the heading of the paragraph.
- Details supporting your claim
Every point you mention and every claim you make must be validated from authentic sources of information. It may be interviews, surveys, books, journals, websites or articles.
- Concluding sentence
Every paragraph should be concluded with a ‘final statement’ that sums up all the ideas mentioned in particular paragraphs and does the job of a transition to the next paragraph.
The Structure of An Essay Format
Be it any types of essays– argumentative essay, critical essay or descriptive essay, a structure is a necessary one for every kind.
- Title page
- Abstract or the executive summary- this must have at least 3 paragraphs with a total of 100 words in each paragraph
- First paragraph: the things to be included in the first paragraph are the research questions, the thesis statement and few lines stating the importance of the essay
- Second paragraph: state the key sources of the essay, the future scope of the research or how the research can be benefiting to the students in their future and the limitations of this research
- State the conclusion which has already been reached by you in the essay after analysing the essay topic properly.
- Table of contents (along with the page numbers)
– Research questions
– The thesis statement
– Introduction
– The arguments related to the topic
– The headings and the sb-headings
– Conclusion
– Appendix
– References (state the works cited)
– State the research question
- Essay body
- Essay conclusion
- References or Bibliography
APA Style Formatting
The general format remains to be the same in case of APA essay format. Just that there are a few guidelines that you need to follow. They are:
- This style has only the header and no footer. In the top left corner of the margin, the title of the essay will have to be mentioned. In the first page of your essay, before the title you have to write ‘Running head’ to make all the characters of the title in the upper case. You just have to write this on the first page, that is the title page only and mark ‘different first page’ in the header and footer dialog box. In the top right corner of the page, you must mention the page number.
- The first heading or the ‘Heading 1s’ have to be written in bold and middle aligned with a font size of 14 and font style of Times New Roman.
- The second set of sub-headings or the ‘Heading 2s’ have to be written in bold and italics with justified alignment and font size of 13 with the style of Times New Roman.
- Every paragraph must be indented and before each of the paragraphs you must press tab once to place some gap.
- The reference list must be in the hanging style that can be done by clicking onto ‘ctrl+T’.
- The table of contents will have no mention of the executive summary or the abstract.
Harvard Style Formatting
In this style, the 5 paragraph essay format remains the same. The changes are:
- The ‘table of contents’ is middle aligned and contains no mention of the abstract or the executive summary.
- This style consists of both the header and the footer. In the header, the title of your essay is placed from the second page and you have to mark the ‘different first only’ option in the header and footer dialog box. In the footer section, you have to mention the page number in the bottom right corner.
- The heading 1 format is- size: 14, style- Times New Roman, justified alignment and bold fonts.
- The heading 2 format is: size -13, style- Times New Roman, justified alignment and bold
- The normal font for writing is: size- 12, Times New Roman and justified alignment
There are many more formatting styles and a lot more to know about to know about essay formats. You can get varied ideas through the experienced team of the ManagementPaper. They prioritise quality and meet strict deadlines after meeting each and every requirement.
