'How?' A reader will also want to know whether the claims of the thesis are true in all cases. If it does, the essay will lack balance and may read as mere summary or description. But be forewarned: it shouldn't take up much more than a third (often much less) of your finished essay. Since you're essentially reporting what you've observed, this is the part you might have most to say about when you first start writing. This 'what' or 'demonstration' section comes early in the essay, often directly after the introduction. 'What?' The first question to anticipate from a reader is 'what': What evidence shows that the phenomenon described by your thesis is true? To answer the question you must examine your evidence, thus demonstrating the truth of your claim.

If they don't, your thesis is most likely simply an observation of fact, not an arguable claim.) It's helpful to think of the different essay sections as answering a series of questions your reader might ask when encountering your thesis. Background material (historical context or biographical information, a summary of relevant theory or criticism, the definition of a key term) often appears at the beginning of the essay, between the introduction and the first analytical section, but might also appear near the beginning of the specific section to which it's relevant.

Counterargument, for example, may appear within a paragraph, as a free-standing section, as part of the beginning, or before the ending. Introductions and conclusions have fixed places, but other parts don't. Even short essays perform several different operations: introducing the argument, analyzing data, raising counterarguments, concluding. Although there are guidelines for constructing certain classic essay types (e.g., comparative analysis), there are no set formula.Īnswering Questions: The Parts of an EssayĪ typical essay contains many different kinds of information, often located in specialized parts or sections. Thus your essay's structure is necessarily unique to the main claim you're making. It dictates the information readers need to know and the order in which they need to receive it. The focus of such an essay predicts its structure.

Successfully structuring an essay means attending to a reader's logic. Because essays are essentially linear-they offer one idea at a time-they must present their ideas in the order that makes most sense to a reader. Writing an academic essay means fashioning a coherent set of ideas into an argument.

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