How to Write an Informative Essay
Whether you are a student in high school or college, there is a 100% chance that you will have to write some informative essay during your educational years. Your teacher may either assign you a topic or allow you to choose one for yourself. Depending on the length and requirements for the paper, your topic options will narrow down. A lot of the times, students will end up receiving a subject that they are utterly clueless about and thus have no starting point to build off. Do not worry: Reliable essay writing service is here to teach our students everything they need to know about crafting an informative essay!
What Is An Informative Essay?
The informative essay definition is to educate your audience on a particular topic, to elaborate on a term, or analyze data. Not to be confused with other forms of assignments. They are intended to teach your readers new information. Presenting opinions is not the purpose of this style of assignment. Generally speaking, this type of essay will compare controversial viewpoints about a particular topic.
An example of this would be a paper regarding the amount of pollution produced by humans every year – and its impact on the ice caps.
Bottom line: No matter the field chosen as a topic or the level of knowledge required, an informative essay should present in-depth knowledge and basic facts regarding the chosen topic at hand.
This Type of Essay is similar to an Expository Essay
This essay family contains the:
- Cause-and-Effect Essay
- Process Essay
- Descriptive Essay
- Compare-and-Contrast Essay
- Problem/Solution Essay
Informative Essay Topics
If the topic is not assigned, you will need to choose your informative essay topic. You might probably be stuck in this step if you have a wide range to choose from. Take your time and keep these pieces of advice in mind to select the most appropriate topic.
- Make sure that your topic is not too broad and not too narrow. You need to have enough information about your subject to write about, but not so much to make your essay a novel.
- The topic should be attractive and exciting to your audience. Think ahead about who might be reading your paper. Of course, if it was assigned to your class, the teacher will be your primary audience.
- The best option is to choose the topic that interests you. It will make the writing process much more pleasant and will let you express your enthusiasm fully.
Sometimes, teachers and professors will require presentations or speeches to come along with the written essay. This is why it is smart to pick a topic that is interesting enough to a broad audience (something people can relate to) and can be explained clearly through speech. Here are some examples!
- The origin of language
- The source of the universe
- How to maximize financial efficiency
- Why do people procrastinate
- What causes addiction
- Evolution of human rights
- Legalization of Marijuana
- Nanotechnology
- Why do we dream?
- How do 3D-glasses work?
How to Write an Informative Essay
Before you sit down in front of your computer screen and start typing away, there are some necessary steps to make and items to prepare beforehand. Having a set plan allows you to organize information effectively,, and this dramatically speeds up the entire essay writing process.
- Brainstorm Ideas: Before writing an informative essay, choose a topic accordingly. Selecting a field of study, you feel strongly about is a good idea. Regardless of the chosen topic, brainstorming is the way forward for the top result when learning how to start an informative essay successfully. As it will allow you to create a general outline of your informative essay and help organize your thoughts accordingly.
- Choosing a Topic: After narrowing down your options, it has finally come time to choose the most appropriate topic. Remember, the selected subject at hand should not be TOO BROAD nor TOO NARROW.
- Crank Out Some Informative Research: Gather information and use various sources including primary and secondary ones! Primary sources are physical pieces of evidence relating to the topic at hand. Secondary sources are articles and papers written based on that topic.
Primary sources: If you are talking about the Evolution Of Human Rights, a primary source could be a speech written by Martin Luther King Jr!
Secondary sources: If the topic is about addiction, a secondary source would be Bruce K. Alexander’s Rat Park Study!
- Use a variety of sources, and validate their reliability: Using sites like Wikipedia is generally frowned upon, however checking out the links used at the bottom of every wiki page is an effective way to get sources quickly! Do not only use one type of source (example: Website Articles). Provide different kinds of sources to make your informative essay well-rounded!
Informative Essay Outline
As a writer, you may be wondering: “If I hire someone to write my essay for me, will they know how to structure my informative essay?” This is an excellent question to ask and an idea to consider if you have decided upon this path. If the writer presents you with something similar to what is shown here, then you are in good hands!
The informative essay outline is written in the standard essay style. Usually speaking, it will consist of:
- An introduction + thesis statement
It serves to present the main argument in an exciting and interesting manner - 3 Body Paragraphs
Body paragraphs will be mainly used to support the thesis created in the intro. - The Conclusion
It will wrap up the information and present its significance in the real world!
Introduction
The intro should start with an a hook that grabs the reader’s attention.
Examples:
rhetorical question, joke, anecdote, own story, give the audience compliment, shocking statistics.
Afterward, your informative essay introduction should reveal any background context that will be necessary for the reader to understand while reading through the essay. This is an essential part of your informative essay outline. These sentences should pay the way for an excellent thesis statement.
Thesis Statement
The last sentence of the introduction should be a well-formed and coherent thesis statement. An informative essay thesis statement summarizes the main points to your readers:
- By elaborating the purpose of the paper, without expressing any opinions or views on the subject;
- The argument should be easily readable, precise, and accessible to your audience;
- As well as appealing to make your readers want to learn more about the subject by reading on.
It is always worth referring to informative essay examples to see exactly how a thesis statement for this style of writing should be written.
Body Paragraphs
The purpose of this section in the informative paper outline is to defend the thesis statement, so the content in these paragraphs must be tip-top.
First of all, each body paragraph must start with a topic sentence. Create a smooth transition from your intro by creating a topic sentence that links the thesis to your first main point. (A smooth transition should also be created for the second and third body paragraph!)
With each body paragraph, there must be a target point and a supporting detail. A target point is the part of the thesis that you are aiming to prove. The supporting detail is the outside validation that enriches your statement.
After introducing your topic sentence, it is time to follow the CCE format to craft an essential part of the essay.
First, you need to make a claim. This is your main argument of the body paragraph. Since the quality of the essay is dependent on how well the thesis is defended, make sure that your 3 claims are reliable.
After defining your claim, you must introduce the evidence. This is your physical proof that validates your claim.
Usually, in informative writing, this will be a quote from some document such as journals, articles, bibliographies, etc. Without this, your informative essay will hold no value. It would be the same as accepting opinion as fact.
To conclude the CCE process, the writer must present an explanation of his claim. In other words, they need to display how this claim proves their thesis statement as fact.
This is necessary and should be explained coherently. If eager to gain extra validation points, the writer can go into more depth about how the evidence backs up the claim. However, if this can be inferred without the need of extra information, then that would be ideal.
To conclude a body paragraph, a sentence should be created that gives a general synopsis of the argument presented. The primary purpose of this sentence is to display assertiveness; in other words, display that your opinion is the right one. This gives your entire essay more strength and makes your argument/thesis look sharp!
Conclusion
After portraying your three main arguments, it is time to wrap up your essay by learning how to conclude an informative essay efficiently.
The informative essay conclusion restates the thesis statement and offers final thoughts and insights on the topic. Explain it in different words and provide room for a smooth transition.
This “room” is necessary because you will now need to restate the impact of each one of your arguments briefly. If done correctly, the restatement and then the brief argument relay should mix well with each other!
To effectively finish the essay, one must come up with an overall concluding statement. This statement should serve as an explanation for the significance of your argument. In other words, explain why the informative writing you just crafted has value and where this information can be applied. This gives the work “real-world” value!
Post-Writing To Do List
- Vocabulary: After rereading the draft, make sure that you are satisfied with the language you have used. If the words were not crafty enough or phrases could have been stated more smoothly, then edit accordingly.
- Grammar: Nothing aggravates teachers more than having to pause their reading to fix grammar mistakes. It shows carelessness and a lack of proper editing. Use websites like GrammarCheck to make sure that there are no issues with punctuation, spelling, etc.
- Coherency: From a writer’s perspective, this is the most critical textbox to have checked. They are using language that can be easily understood as well as proper transitional skills is an excellent way to keep your paper moving smoothly.
- Peer Editing: Having a second pair of eyes to read through your paper is a surefire way of validating your work. If the essay sounds fluent and makes sense to another brain, then you are increasing the odds of it looking great to the teacher.
- The final touch: As you have edited your final draft, your next step will be transforming it into a full-fledged essay. Give your final draft one more read-through. Read it aloud and fix small mistakes your eye might not catch.
Informative Essay Examples
Now you can find our best informative essay examples by referring to the attachments below.
