Writing an EssayAn essay is a formal written expression of your ideas. An essay can help you persuade your audience, inform your audience, or express your feelings to your audience. The method you use to express your ideas depends on your overall purpose in writing the paper.Expressing your ideas is nothing new, but you might be more comfortable expressing your ideas in informal conversation rather than in formal, academic essays. In conversation, you might try to persuade your friends to join you on a weekend trip to the mountains; you might try to convince your son to break away from the friends who are constantly in trouble. All of these more informal tasks contain many of the elements that are found in an essay. First of all, you will have an overall point to make. All of us have been exasperated by friends or acquaintances who ramble forever without direction. Making a point is one of the elements of good conversational techniques, and it is also an essential component of good essay writing as well. In an essay, you will make your point in a sentence called the thesis statement. The thesis encapsulates in one sentence the overall point you are making in your paper. It is not a statement of fact; it is a statement of opinion that you will prove with facts, evidence, and examples. The thesis statement answers the reader's question "What central idea does the writer want to communicate to me in this essay?" In good conversation, the person who is speaking also provides a structure and context for the information he or she is delivering. Each conversation will have a beginning, middle, and an end, however informal those elements may be. In an essay, those elements are evident in the introduction of the essay, the body of the essay, and the conclusion of the essay. The length of your essays will vary depending on the nature of your assignment and your subject matter, but the basic structure of your essay will not vary, even if you are writing a research paper.
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