Overview of Essay Writing

A general guide to one of the most common assessment tasks.

I'll admit, when I read that an assessment task is an essay, I'm excited. As a friend recently told me when she read over one of my assignments, "Your essays haven't changed a bit since uni." And that's true, I've found a structure that works for me and I've used that to rinse and repeat this assessment for years.

Thinking about essays simply, they're an extended response to a question. They allow you to take a position on a given topic, demonstrate your knowledge and ability to think critically and communicate these ideas and argument effectively with your reader. They're often assessed on your ability to discuss your ideas and content, how well these ideas are expressed and presented, how you've incorporated literature to support your discussion and how you've referenced that literature.

Essays should typically be structured like this:

10% of the word count towards your introduction

80% of the word count towards your body paragraphs

10% of the word count towards your conclusion

To the best of my knowledge there is no consensus about the size of your paragraphs. Often it is suggested that body paragraphs should be between 100-200 words but I feel that the true measure of paragraphs should be the idea that is expressed rather than stipulating a word count.

For me, the size of the assessments often dictate paragraphing: 1000 word assessment, Introduction + Conclusion of 100 words each and body paragraphs probably around 150 words; 2000 word assessment, Introduction + Conclusion of 200 words each and paragraphs probably around 250 words.

Whilst no hard and fast rule exists, what I will say is when you look at the overall essay all the body paragraphs should be a similar length rather than certain paragraphs being noticeably longer or shorter than others.

A key component to writing a cohesive essay is considering how the expressed ideas progress logically and sequentially to develop your overall idea or argument. Much of your planning should be directed towards ensuring that you present your argument clearly and convincingly ie which idea and paragraph should I introduce first, how does my argument progress depending upon how I've chosen to structure this essay and could I change this structure to strengthen my overall essay.