An essay is, in general, a composition that presents the writer’s opinion, but the precise definition is sometimes vague, encompassing those of an essay, a report, a book, an article, pamphlet, and even a short story. In recent years, essays have increasingly been considered as “formal” and “professional.” Still, some authors tend to perceive an essay only as a form of personal expression and often ignore the purpose or the audience when writing it. It can be confusing for a first-time writer to understand the difference between an essay and a novel, how the two differ and if one has a clear literary genre. For those interested in writing literary works, there are five essential elements that every essay must have.

Essays should aim to persuade its readers. Every essay strives to persuade its audience with its arguments. However, the essay should not be too insistent on its own opinion. The essay should rather back up its opinions with citations, comparisons, examples, proof, and other techniques that will convince its readers that what it has to say is reasonable and well-grounded.

Each paragraph in an essay must serve a purpose. The essay should begin with a summary of the points covered in the previous paragraph, go on to describe the topic of the following paragraph, offer another summary of the points discussed in the previous paragraph, explain the main point of the next paragraph, offer an argument or conclusion regarding the main point of the next paragraph, summarize and conclusion the main argument of the conclusion paragraph of each paragraph, and so on. The order of paragraphs doesn’t have to follow this pattern, it may be less formal than this. As long as the sequence of paragraphs serves the purpose of making the essay a logical progression from one paragraph to the next, it will be accepted by academic essays.

The title page is the final part of the essay, and should be written in a standard format. One may prefer to use the article title template to get the title page looking right. The essay outline should be written in a high-quality academic writing font that is easy to read on a computer screen. It may be necessary to customize the font some if the essay length is short.

In an essay format, numbered paragraphs refer to numbered sections of the essay, and the essay body refers to the body of the work. When writing the first few paragraphs, try to think of yourself as presenting the argument as if it is your thesis statement. You can do this by using the paragraph brackets, if needed, to indicate which paragraph is meant to contain that particular point.

The conclusion of each paragraph will summarize the overall thesis or argument of each paragraph. The thesis statement in the essay outline should be the central focus of your writing. This can be done by using the paragraph delimiter, an opening curly bracket, to delimit the main body paragraphs from the rest of your writing. Other tips include using commas to delimit long sentences, and parenthesis to indicate specific sections of your essay outline.