Essay writing: Types & Tips

The essay is a written composition that belongs to the writing basics. In this article, you will learn what exactly is important in an essay and what types there are. In addition, we have tips for writing essays for you.

Writing an essay is especially important in classes. However, you may also have to write an essay in other subject areas to study different types of texts.

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What an essay is

An essay is a text that you write on a given topic. Regardless of the topic, all essays consist of an introduction, body, and conclusion.

The structure and writing style of your essay is determined by the type of essay. Thus, you may have to deal with scientific or literary issues.

Essay writing often serves as a kind of exercise in creative writing or as a training of your thinking skills.

Preparation for the essay

You must read the assignment carefully at the beginning. This will help you to find out what kind of essay you are supposed to write and what information about the content is already available. Then you need to prepare your essay.

Plan the structure of your text - for example, by creating a writing plan. Alternatively, you can create a mind map. Summarize the most important information in bullet points.

It can also help to mark important passages in the text. Once you have understood the assignment and made enough notes, you can start writing your essay.

Writing an essay: Types of essays

Essays can be divided into different types. Depending on the type of essay, the structure of your text will differ. In this chapter, we will introduce you to nine types.

Discussion

There are different types of discussion, such as textual, linear, and dialectical.

As the name suggests, text-based discussion refers to a specific text. This can be, for example, a newspaper article or a factual text. The discussion consists of an introduction, the main part, and a conclusion.

Summary

The table of contents gives an informative overview of a topic without the reader having to have dealt with it himself. In doing so, the summary reduces a topic to its essentials - for this reason, it is a popular writing exercise in school.

Below you will find a short fact sheet on the summary:

● Tense: Present tense

● Structure: introduction, main part, conclusion

● Quotations: indirect speech

● Language: factual with precise formulations

● Narrative perspective: a personal narrator

● Learn more about the summary here.

Review

The review involves a critical examination of a particular subject. It is also known as a discussion or review. A review shares an opinion and is therefore always subjective.

Not only can a theater review be a review, but also a commentary on a website. It consists of an introduction, main body, and conclusion - although the structure may differ, as the review is also a creative text type.

Essay writing: Letter

While letters are becoming less and less important in the digital age, you may still need to write a letter for class.

Generally, there is a distinction between a formal letter and a personal letter. Formal (or factual) letters can be business letters, for example.

In addition to the sender and recipient, a letter also contains an introduction, body, and conclusion. The farewell is also part of a letter. The writing style depends on the type of letter - formal letters have a neutral and polite expression.

Essay

The essay is probably one of the most popular types of essays. You write it not only in school but definitely in college as well. Compared to other forms of literature, the essay is relatively short - usually no longer than 5 to 15 pages.

It means that you write about a topic compactly and subjectively. In the introduction, you deal with a question about the topic. In the main body, on the other hand, you clarify your view of the topic using logical argumentation.

What is special about this form of text is that you can also include your evaluations. The final part of your essay is a résumé. There are two types of essays: the literary essay and the explanatory essay.

Essay writing: Short Story

The literary genre of the short story belongs to the genre of epic - narrative literature. More precisely, the short story belongs to the prose texts. Although it often differs in its design, there are also general categories by which you can recognize a short story.

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Thus, it has a comparatively short length of about 1,500 words. Other epic genres sometimes have as many as 70,000 words - for example, the novel. With the short story, there is also often no introduction that explains essential W-questions. The writer also often presents the plot in a condensed manner.

To interpret a short story, you begin with an introduction that, among other things, precisely summarizes the plot. The main part then contains the actual analysis. The conclusion includes, for example, the author's statement.

Report

The main purpose of the report is to convey information. For this reason, it is always factual and objective - your opinion is not required in this type of text.

You can divide the report into different types:

● Police report

● Travel report

● accident report

● Internship report

● Newspaper report

● For the structure, you can follow the principle of the inverted pyramid. First of all, you list the most important information, then you briefly summarize the entire report. Finally, you can give more detailed information.

The following W-questions must not be missing in your report:

● Who? (Who was there?)

● What? (What happened?)

● When? (Time and date of the event)

● Why? (What were the causes?)

● How? (How did the event occur?)

● Where? (Where did the event happen?)

● What are the consequences? (What are the consequences of the event?)

Item description

Besides the description of the picture and the person, there is also the description of the object. Its purpose is to inform the reader about the characteristics and properties of an object.

In simple terms, you are informing about the appearance of a thing. The goal is to describe the object as accurately as possible so that the reader can get a clear picture of the object.

Below you will find some guidelines on how to write a description of an object:

● Objectivity: Since you are describing facts, you should leave your own opinion out of it.

● Tense: Write in the present tense.

● Sequence: Pay attention to a logical structure. To do this, start with general features and later go into details and specifics.

● Detail: Your text should be as detailed as possible.

● Style: Your sentences should be short and very informative.

● Characterization

● If you want to write a characterization, you must be able to name the most important features and characteristics of a character. This includes both character traits and external features.

So, the description of that should make the character tangible for the readers. The introduction should include the theme of the work, the author, and the title.

In the body of the essay, you will first describe the external characteristics, then the internal ones. The conclusion serves to summarize your observations and to make your own opinion clear.

Writing an essay: Structure

All essays consist of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. In this chapter, we will give you a rough overview of how to structure the body. However, the details will depend on the assignment.

Introduction

Your introduction makes up about five to ten percent of your text and should introduce the reader to the topic. In addition, the introduction provides the most important information that readers need to understand your essay.

Ideally, your introduction should make the reader curious about the topic and arouse interest. But be careful: You need to find the right amount of information so that the reader does not have too much prior knowledge.

Specifically, you can state the rough structure of your essay in the introduction so that a common thread becomes apparent. If you are writing a scientific paper, you can also explain the methods you used. Tip: Delimit your topic in the introduction.

Many topics are very complex and can therefore not be covered completely in one essay. Therefore, you can also indicate in your introduction what will be left out. This way you will not raise false expectations.

You should include the following important information in the introduction of your text:

● Title

● Author

● Content

● Date and place of publication

Main part

The main body is the core of your essay - it makes up about 80 percent of your text.

Accordingly, it should be of a certain length. The concrete structure depends on the assignment.

For example, you may have to interpret actions or discuss issues. You should develop a suitable structure for the main part at the beginning.

This involves a detailed examination of the given text or topic. The main part should follow a red thread. This means that the points you make should be logical and comprehensible.

If you choose a chronological structure, you can deal with all the important points in the order of the given text. If you want to organize your essay thematically, you can cover the related aspects in one paragraph - no matter where they appear in the original text.

Conclusion

In the conclusion, you summarize the findings of your text. However, it should not be limited to this. The end of your essay should be similar in length to the introduction, i.e. about ten percent.

In the conclusion, you show that the statements in your text are coherent and interconnected. At best, you should not simply go through your arguments one after the other, but show the points of connection.

In addition, you can also include your insights in the concluding part, provided that the assignment allows for this. Show a reference to the present or the future. Tip: End your essay with a particularly expressive or memorable concluding sentence.

Essay Writing Tips

To ensure that your essay is a success, we have summarized five essay writing tips for you in this chapter.

Writing an essay: Pay attention to the tense

Depending on the type of essay, the tense can also be different. For example, a retelling is in the present tense, whereas you write the report in the past tense since you are explaining a completed action.

You mustn't jump back and forth between different tenses during your essay. Most of the time, the writer himself or herself does not notice this. So check your completed essay for the correct tense before handing it in.

Avoid repetition

In your essay, you should strongly avoid repetition so that the text is as varied as possible. However, you can use repetition as a rhetorical device to achieve certain effects.

To avoid it, you can use synonyms, for example. The use of abbreviations and summaries is also recommended. To find unnecessary repetitions in your essay, you can read the text aloud to yourself.

Support your statements with examples

To ensure the logic of your essay, you should pay attention to your argumentation. For your argument to be valid, you should be able to support your statements with examples or quotations.

Arguments alone are not always convincing. The goal is to prove your arguments.

Start paragraphs with a new train of thought

For your essay to read smoothly, you should pay attention to paragraphs. Although there is no rule of thumb for how many paragraphs you should make in a text, the context is important.

Therefore, start a new paragraph when you have finished a thought. A new paragraph is also a good way to make a change of perspective clear.

Avoid trite phrases

To avoid trite phrases or platitudes, you should first know what platitudes are. These are phrases or words that have little meaning.

In common parlance, they include, for example:

"See you around"

"Old Swede"

"I'm laughing my ass off"

In your essay, on the other hand, you should avoid words like "Finally." Everyone has read these words dozens of times - so they are not very creative and boring.