As a student, you have to write an essay or a research paper at one time in your school life. Essays play a big part in determining the grade you get. They have guidelines, though, and it’s important to know them before starting work on your essay. There are some universally accepted essential sections required on your essay, especially if it’s 6,000 words or more long. They include:
1) A title page
This should be the first page attached to your work. It should be filled in correctly in case a departmental cover sheet is offered. If not, provide the essay title in caps at the top of the page, your name and student number, the course, the examiner’s name, and the date you hand in the essay.
2) A front section.
This one should contain the table of contents, a list of illustrations/tables, and an abstract.
3) An introduction
The introduction should restate the essay question using a hypothesis and provide a clear outline of the essay. This is where you give the reader your point of view on the essay question and how you will support your view. You inform the reader what your discussion will be about, what you will not discuss, and why. The introduction topic should convince the reader to read the rest of your essay.
4) A body
Follow the outline you provided in the front section. Provide evidence that substantiates your thesis on the body. Provide a different idea related to the topic for each paragraph. Paragraphs must be well constructed and start with a topic sentence. A topic sentence gives the main idea of a paragraph and summarizes it. The paragraphs should relate and provide a smooth flow to your essay. They should be clear, concise, and contribute to the main argument.
5) A conclusion
Your conclusion should be a summary of the main points in your essay. It should clearly show how these points relate to the topic question. Do not introduce any new material in the conclusion section.
6) Appendix
The appendix contains any information that may be of help to the reader and is optional. This information, however, is not part of the overall word count.
7) A bibliography/ reference list
This appears at the end of the essay. It contains a list of sources you used when writing your paper. State the title of the source, the author, year of publication, publisher, place of publication, and pages depending on the citation format your examiner asks you to use. Different citation formats include APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, Harvard, etc.