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Writing outstanding essays is a skill that can have a big impact on your academic progress and personal improvement. Mastering the art of essay writing enables you to engage readers, provide your distinct point of view, and leave a lasting impact. In this article, we will dive into fundamental ideas and tips for writing exceptional essays. This will help you unleash your entire writing ability and craft an outstanding essay by grasping factors such as research, organization, structure, and creativity.
Nine useful tips for exceptional essay writing
Below are some useful tips that can help you in producing great essays:
- Do your research
First, you need to spend time and effort on research for the topic on which you are going to draft an essay. Doing research will allow you to get a proper understanding of the topic.
The more you know about what you are going to write, the easier it will become for you to develop convincing arguments and the direction of the essay.
Moreover, doing proper research will also introduce you to different methods, approaches, and perspectives that others have about that particular topic.
However, while researching it is important to only look for credible sources and authors. Not just this, it is essential to make sure that the sources you are going to use are not too old, as it can lead to incorrect information.
Tip: You can note down all the sources that you are going to use along with references in a notepad so that you do not have to again look for them while drafting an essay.
- Create an outline
Once you have completed the research work, it is time to create an outline of the points you will discuss in the essay. Creating an outline involves writing quick notes and phrases of every argument you will make in the essay.
An outline functions as a roadmap for you to follow as you work through supporting paragraphs. To create a useful outline that will ease the overall process of drafting an essay, you will need the consider the following things:
- Organize the material you have researched.
- Divide into categories.
- Consider the order of information.
For better understanding, you can refer to this article on six factors to consider while writing an essay.
- Focus on the introduction.
The introduction is an opening paragraph that will allow the readers to decide whether they should continue reading the essay or not.
The introduction will set the tone for the rest of your essay while also allowing you to grab the reader’s attention. However, your essay’s introduction will only set the tone and grab the attention, if it is concise, point-to-point, and gives the readers a glimpse of information that they are going to get after reading the essay.
The introduction should not contain all the information since this will only add to the length of your essay and ruin its main purpose.
- Divide the essay into different sections
You should not just write a bunch of paragraphs into the essay. Instead, you should break it into small and readable sections. This will not only make the formatting of the essay look good but also makes it easy for the reader to understand your arguments better.
You can also consider using transitions between the different portions to guide the reader better. To have a better idea of how dividing essays can help in producing a more formatted essay, take a look at articles written primarily for the web versus articles written for print media. Generally, articles of the former type use short paragraphs for better readability.
- Keep writing simple and easy to understand
Apart from dividing the essay into several portions, try to utilize simple and easy-to-understand words/phrases. This will help readers with average knowledge to easily understand what you are trying to say.
Most of the time, students get successful in keeping their writing simple. But sometimes while authoring an essay on a complex topic, students struggle in maintaining the readability of the essay. It becomes hard for them to explain their perspective in easy and simple language.
If this is the case with you, then simply paraphrase online your essay with AI-powered paraphrasing tools. These tools work by first analyzing the text to find complicated words/phrases, and then replacing them with simple synonyms without affecting the original meaning.
You can also do it manually by utilizing a dictionary and thesaurus (a tool that provides synonyms) but that can be time-taking, especially when the essay word count is in thousands.
By keeping the overall writing simple throughout the essay, students can deliver their perspective in a simpler & effortless way, no matter how complicated, scientific, or technical the topic is.
- Add stats to support arguments.
Adding stats is considered one of the best practices to write exceptional essays. As it helps to strengthen your points, and makes your essay more supportive and digestible, allowing the reader to think that you have a strong grip on that topic.
Using statistics and sometimes graphs also can provide concentrated evidence for your claims, which will further help you convince the readers.
For instance, we found a high-quality essay by a student on the topic of “Covid-19 Effect on African Americans” on an online website. In this essay, the student has included different statistics to look more credible.
However, it is crucial to add relevant and accurate stats, otherwise, instead of adding credibility to your essay, it can result in a damaged reputation and writing integrity.
- Cite sources
If you remember that in the first point (Do your research) of this article, we added a “Tip” which mentioned that you must note down all the sources that you are going to use?
So, we hope you have noted them, and now it is time to cite them by giving credit to the original author. Doing so will allow the readers to verify the information you have used in the essay.
Different citation styles can be used while drafting an essay. The citation styles include APA, MLA, and Chicago. Since essay writing is related to education, you need to go with the APA citation style. The other styles are used by humanities, and business organizations, respectively.
- Take care of grammar and spelling errors
A good essay contains no grammar, spelling, or punctuation errors. Error-free essay not only shows your writing skills but also gives an idea to the reader that you have written it with proper concentration.
On the other hand, having basic errors in the essay will not confuse the readers, but also makes the overall quality of your essay less effective.
Therefore, it is essential to always proofread your essay once before the final submission. Proofreading will allow you to detect and resolve any kind of errors that you have made during writing.
- Close the essay with a clear perspective.
Finally, it is important to conclude your essay with a concise and impactful conclusion. This will have a lasting impact on your readers. Your essay’s conclusion should summarize the main points you have discussed and present your perspective on the subject. To achieve this, you can utilize an online text summarizer that specializes in condensing content without altering the original meaning. By utilizing the tool, you can ensure that your conclusion captures the essence of your essay while maintaining the integrity of your arguments. Remember, a strong conclusion not only recaps the main points but also provides your unique viewpoint. It is an opportunity to leave a final impression on your readers and emphasize the significance of the topic.
Final words
Essay writing is a difficult skill to master, but still, every student must deal with it at least once in their academic career. However, with the right tips and practice, students can become experts in essay writing, which will further help them to write exceptional essays and stand out tall in their class.