Writing Tips

Writing Essays

There are many types of essays. In order to effectively write an essay, it is important to know the exact, specific kind of essay you are supposed to write. The general types of essays are expository, persuasive, informal, explanatory, descriptive, comparison, classification, research, literary, and evaluation essay. Knowing the type of essay you are tasked to write will go a long way towards helping to organize and express your data, thoughts, and findings.

The task of writing essays is one that daunts many students and even professionals. Essays tend to become associated with tough research, long writing, and arduous editing and proofreading. The key to overcoming these blocks to effective essay writing is four-fold: think about the idea, do research using interesting sources and materials, organize all information and data in writing, and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment after having written the essay.

All essays begin with the thesis statement, also known as the topic sentence. This can be considered the most important sentence in the entire essay. The thesis statement expresses the entire gist of the essay and, depending on the type of the essay in question, expresses the author's stand on an issue. Needless to say, the thesis statement must be given considerable thought.

The sentences and paragraphs following the thesis statement must stick to the idea originally set forth by it. If the thesis statement expresses a view or stand, the essay must support it. These development paragraphs must be clear and informative; the bulk of the findings and data should be expressed here. Writers should be careful to separate paragraphs according to topic; if a paragraph presents a different set of findings or presents an idea that is considerably different from that of the preceding paragraph, it is necessary to start a new paragraph. Tenses are also important within a paragraph; as a general rule, a single paragraph must use the same tense all throughout. Practice and experience will guide a writer in choosing the tenses for sentences.

When all the findings have been presented and organized into meaningful paragraphs, the essay must then present the conclusion. Whereas the thesis statement makes an initial presentation, the conclusion summarizes the the development paragraphs into a single paragraph of a few sentences. The conclusion further reinforces the idea of the thesis statement and brings to a close the essay.

Doing the Research
Research is the primary method of gathering data for an essay, term paper, thesis, or dissertation. This constitutes a bulk of the work involved in writing a paper, and more often than not is the part in the paper-writing process that can make or break it; many people are turned off by the idea of searching for information, poring over books and publications, or surfing websites. A good rule of thumb would be to find interesting sources of information.

Traditionally, before the popularity of the World Wide Web, books, magazines, and other publications were the main source of information. Even in today's Internet age, the library should remain the main source of information for a majority of topics. Brick-and-mortar libraries in major universities and colleges also usually have academic publications that cannot be found anywhere else.

When gathering information and data from books and printed material, simply reading them cover to cover retains its effectiveness but can be very time-consuming. There are five sequential techniques that are meant to simplify the process of reading books for their information. These steps are called SQ3R, which stands for Survey, Query, Read, Recall, and Review. Before starting to read the book, you must scan the various sections in it: table of contents, introductions, chapter introductions, chapter summaries, etc. This is the Survey phase. During the Survey phase, take note of any special questions which came to mind as you survey; this is the Question phase. After formalizing the list of questions, you then begin reading, in the Read phase. Hopefully the questions you have listed will be answered one by one. After reading, the Recall phase is necessary for revisiting the pertinent parts of the book; these are the relevant parts to your research topic. Finally, the Review phase involves going back over the important sections of the book to find anything that might have been left out.

For web-based research, additional skills are required. If you have absolutely no idea where to begin looking for information, any one of the many search engines should be your first destination. Search engines accept any number of keywords and return a list of websites that are somehow related to your search terms. The selection of keywords is vitally important; search engines may or may not return accurate results depending on the actual keywords you use, so it's tricky. Just stick to the keywords that are most relevant to your topic, and you'll find results. Again, the SQ3R technique applies.