How to Write an Essay: Step by Step Guide With Examples

An essay is a brief piece of writing that explains, analyzes, and interprets a topic; it’s also a summary of a particular subject in which the author expresses an opinion.

The essay is a very useful, practical and simple learning and expression tool and it has rules, specifications or details regarding its format and content you must know to be able to do it correctly. Some of the most frequent questions about the essay are:

Does the essay need a title?
How many paragraphs does an essay have?
Does it have headings and a conclusion?
Does the essay have a full stop?
Are the introduction, body and conclusion on separate pages?
How do you make the cover of an essay?

Here, we will address these frequent questions that come up when you need to write an essay.

What is an essay

An essay is a short piece of writing that explains, analyzes, and interprets a topic. It becomes an explanatory and analytical summary of a specific topic, where the author not only explains the subject but also, based on solid information, expresses an opinion on it.

The difference between an essay and informational text, like what you might find in an encyclopedia, is that an essay is freer, and its parts are not separated by headings.

The format of an essay and most common doubts

The format of an essay refers to the arrangement or location of its parts. It’s the way the essay is structured that gives it a visually appealing and organized appearance. There are various style guides that dictate essay formatting, such as APA format, which rules are written below:

Font: Arial or Times New Roman, number 12.
Leading: Leading is the vertical space between each line and must be 1.5.

Margins: 2.54 cm lower, upper and right margins.
The text should be justified, (creating a block of text with even edges, like a square). However, this can be difficult with elements like lists.
The headings “Introduction”, “Body” and “Conclusion” are not written in the essay. The essay is written continuously, and you should avoid placing such headings.

The essay does have each of these parts but they are not identified as in a monographic work, but rather they are written one after another. An example of an essay can be seen at the end of this article.

Full stop. The essays does have a full stop, after each paragraph.
Paragraphs: An essay needs to have at least 5 paragraphs, and each paragraph must have a minimum of 3 lines and a maximum of 10 lines.

Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text, Justified text.

Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified, Not Justified,

The parts or structure of an essay

The structural organization of an essay comprises three fundamental parts:

Introduction.
Body.

Conclusion.

Introduction

The introduction, as its name implies, introduces the reader to the essay with following steps:

Expression of a general idea. This initial stage introduces a broad idea of the topic by providing a definition or explanation. For example, an essay on a type of personal pronoun might begin with a definition of pronouns in general. Similarly, an essay about soccer would likely start with a definition of “sport.”

Indication of a less general idea. The discussion narrows down from the general to the specific. For example, after defining “sport,” the text mentions there are many types of sports, then focuses on soccer by providing its definition.
Indication of an update. This section situates the essay in its specific context, both in terms of historical moment and/or geographical location. For example, discussing human rights violations would involve mentioning current occurrences and the geographical areas where they are happening.
An exemplification. This part incorporates examples that showcase the main ideas presented in the essay, here you could write cases in which human rights have been violated.

Presentation of the Problem/Topic/Question: This stage varies depending on the essay type. In expository essays, the most common type assigned to students, the fundamental idea (often the problem or question) is typically placed towards the end. The essay then develops this central idea through explanations, comparisons, and exemplifications.

Body of the essay

The body consists of the points that develop the essay in depth. In the example of the essay about soccer, the body could have the history of soccer, the rules of the game, the most important championships, etc.

Form and organization the body

Each topic should be covered in a separate paragraph.

Each topic, preferably, should be introduced by a connector (Regarding… As regard… With respect to…)
The body must contain more information than the introduction and conclusion because it constitutes the detailed information of the essay.

Conclusion

The conclusion is preferably written in a single paragraph, and it is also preferred that it be the same or similar in size to that of the introduction. It starts with a connector (To finish…. In conclusion… To summarize… In essence… In closing… As we have seen…)

There should be a mention of one or two topics covered in the body.
Here goes the author’s personal opinion, (You, the person doing the essay, your opinion) an essay has, of course, personal opinions in its body, however, in the conclusion these must be emphatic.

To make it clear that the author is giving his or her opinion, he or she can use phrases such as “In my opinion…” “I think…” “I hold that …” “From my perspective … etc.

In the last part, you write what you think about the subject, if it’s a typical expository essay. What the conclusion will contain depends on the type of essay, it can be the answer to the question, or the solution of the problem as the case may be.

References

References go in a separate page that starts with the heading “References”. Add only those that have been cited, not the texts you read to do the essay.

References must be placed in alphabetical order and according to APA standards.

How to write a reference in APA format

Books:

Author(s) Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial. (Year of Publication). Title of Book. Publisher. (Optional: Edition)
Example: Thomas, Ann and Aron Thomas, Jr. (1956). Non-intervention: The law and its import in the Americas. Dallas, Texas: Southern Methodist University Press.

Articles in Journals:

Author(s) Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial. (Year of Publication). Title of Article. Journal Title, Volume(Issue Number), Page Numbers. doi: Digital Object Identifier (if available)

Websites:

Author(s) Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial. (Year of Publication, Month Day). Title of Webpage. Retrieved from Website URL

Example: Smith, A. B. (2024, May 2). The Importance of APA Style. Retrieved from https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_electronic_sources.html
If it has no author: How to Write an Essay: Step by Step Guide With Examples,” transtle.com, accessed May 7, 2024

Example of an essay

University (Name of the university, or college, school, as the case may be)

Administration and Accounting Area (The subject can go here)

The administrative process

A process can be defined as a set of successive steps, phases or actions of a natural or artificial phenomenon. In the context of the study and practice of management, there are different approaches that have contributed to this discipline with a large number of theories, ideas or concepts from different points of view.

Administration has been studied through experience, decision-making, human relations, it has been studied as a social system, also with a quantitative approach and through the tasks performed by the professionals in the field.

Today, the concept of the administrative process is a fundamental part of management theory. Each one of the functions must be understood and carried out correctly by the management professional, and they have factors, principles, or aspects that, if not taken into account, the administrative process could not fulfill its objectives. (Introduction)

Having said that, the process begins with its first phase, which is planning. Organizations seek to achieve a goal in the future, and there are questions such as: What actions should be taken? How to reach that goal? When? Where? Why? Planning is thinking before acting, it is a decision-making process that takes into account internal and external factors that can influence the achievement of the objective. External factors are not directly controlled and come from the environment, for example, the economy, government regulations and competition. On the other hand, internal factors are controllable, such as the human and technological factor. (Body)

The body of the essay continues… When all the topics have been explained, you write the conclusion.

To conclude, it highlights that the administrative process is related to each activity of the company and that the planning, organization, direction, and control are all part of the functions carried out there, such as marketing, finance, production, and personnel management and I can think it’s evident that none of its principles or factors can’t be ignored if the organization wants to be successful.

The stages are not isolated actions, but they make up a whole, i consider that the process is very easy to understand and also, it is easy to adapt and apply in all areas of life, because beings Humans have objectives both inside and outside the organization, they use resources and need to give effectiveness and efficiency to their actions to accelerate their achievement and satisfy their needs, so it is important both as business professionals and as individuals to know the functions of management that constitute the basic and important process explained in this essay. (Conclusion)