Guide to Format For Essay Writing

While learning how to write an essay, many of us may face issues regarding what to include and what not. Most of us may not even know the difference between formatting and giving structure to the essay outline. On a similar note, it also creates confusion in the minds of readers and writers.

Writing an essay is not as simple as it sounds. There are many aspects to it, and you must give a proper format to your essay so that it’s easily readable. Mind you, writing everything in a paragraph will not gain much attention from the audience. Thus, it will not look appealing to read through the entire information.

This article will help you understand how to format an essay. For better understanding, you may go through the points considered in the passage below.

What is an Essay Format?

Whether you are writing an essay for informative purposes, or a fully described version, it’s essential to design its structure. Let’s say you are beginning to write an essay without laying stress on its format and structure. Such essays will not be considered valuable even if plenty of reliable data is available.

Likewise, there are different formats for writing an essay. While some have very strict requirements, others can be a little more lenient. Here, you can go through the most general format of essay writing that’s popularly used internationally and is called the IB format.

Here it goes –

1. Title Page
2. Abstract or Introduction:
   Should not be more than 300 words
   Must be divided into paragraphs
   Always mention – key resources and research on the topic
3. Table of Content
   Research question
   Thesis
   Introduction
   Research Discussion
   Sub-headings
   Conclusion
   Appendix
   Bibliography
4. Introduction: include the research question
5. Body/Structure of the essay
6. Conclusion
7. Bibliography

The above-mentioned format is for extended essay writing that can have several pages. If you are basically writing an essay in research format, then it may possibly be following the guidelines of MLA format. However, most of the essay formats follow the APA guidelines for writing an essay. Likely, it’s necessary that you keep track of your research paper and then outline the guidelines easily.

Note: Generally, the popular formats of essays can be auto-set to – MLA, APA, Chicago, or others. But, it’s certain that writing a proper essay in structure can have various requirements.

Popular Styles of Essay Formatting

Firstly, you need to know that there are various ways to style a different format essay. As you may already know, the most popular essay format form is MLA. It is also termed the “Modern Language Association” and is mainly applied in humanities and social sciences.

If you ask students, they’ll say it’s the most basic, yet it stands out among the other formats for its specific elements. It includes – a header, in-text citations, and a bibliography page. In general terms, MLA is the highly published format for essay writing. Likely, most people stick to it as it’s highly required by high-school and college teachers.

APA Style of Essay Format

The full form of APA is American Psychological Association. This association implies the most common rules, structure, and formatting of essay writings. Similarly, you can write papers and essays in this format for subjects that include – psychology, education, nursing, and social sciences.

Most importantly, there are certain points that you need to cover while writing an essay in APA format. Also, the latest APA format version is available in the seventh edition.

Here’s how the APA format will help in writing any type of essay –

1. Header:

While writing in an APA paper format, you’ll know there are headers on each page. You can also mention the phone number in the page’s corner. Likely, it needs to be kept short, and you cannot add more than 50 characters.

2. Details on the First Page:

While writing an essay in APA format, it’s necessary that you create a title page. Here, you will be adding up the following elements –

• Title (in bold words)
• Author’s Name
• Affiliation to the Institution
• Subject/topic name
• Supervisor’s Name
• Deadline of submission

Further to that, you will be mentioning the rest of the body and structure of your essay writing. Additionally, you may also require to add a few more aspects of the APA format.

3. References or Bibliography:

Here, you will use the same format of mentioning all the references, as it was clear on the works cited page. There can be a lot more that you need to learn while writing the reference portion of your essay writing.

4. Extra requirements to cover up:

• Make sure the title lies at the center of the page.
• Do not keep the title of the essay too long.
• You can or cannot double-space the essay format.
• Mention the page number at every corner on the top right hand.
• Always remember to mention the complete list of sources in your essay.

Conclusion

The first and foremost important step of writing an essay in format is to have the utmost knowledge of the essay topic. Henceforth, you can also take examples from templates and other outline sources. However, the best way is to walk up to your teacher/professor and ask them whatever question you have regarding the topic. Likely, it will help in knowing the actual format of the essay expected of you on the topic.