Essay Tips

Welcome to Essay Reply, an all-in-one place for those who search for effective essay writing tips and detailed guides. The project aims to cover as many aspects as possible. For convenience and better navigation, we divided all questions into logical sections described below. We wrote each article in such a way that, after reading it, you should be able to come up with a good result.

There are many different ways you can approach the essay writing process. We want to cover them all. Here, you will find useful tips on how to compose your thesis statement, adjust your word count, format your works cited page, write body paragraphs, and what transition words to use. Before you start writing, let’s look at three main sections of Essay Reply.

Note: Now, the website’s status is “Work in progress,” which means we’re still adding new writing guides and tweaking the design. Hence, some sections described here might be missing or lacking questions and answers. So, make sure to visit us from time to time to check out new articles.

Standard Essay Guidelines

This section is called “General” and contains various writing tips on the basic structure of an essay, title page formatting, thesis statement development, outline building, and introducing supporting ideas. You will find out how to write an introductory paragraph, arrange main points, support your topic sentence, prepare before writing, go about the topic, and wrap everything up in a conclusion paragraph.

This group of questions will help you with basic essay writing skills and make sure you develop a solid understanding of every fundamental element involved in the process of essay writing:

• Definition – What’s are essays? Why do I have to write them?
• Essay topic – How to choose one? Does it matter a lot?
• Format – Are there any standards? Why do I have to follow them?
• Outline – Is there any particular order of elements?
• Writing techniques – What styles are there? Which one should I use?
• Title – Do I have to have a title or subheadings?
• Cover page – Do all essays require one?
• Introduction – How to start an essay?
• Hook – How to catch the reader’s attention? Do I have to?
• Thesis statement – What’s that? Is it important?
• Body paragraphs – How many should I have?
• Sentence format – How to create a “flow” of an essay? Any special words to use?
• Conclusion – How do I include it? Any rules to follow?
• Proofreading – What to look for when checking my paper?

See how many questions arise when you start wondering, “How to write an essay?” But we will do our utmost to make sure that each and every aspect of this immense part of academia is covered.

Quotation Guidelines

Almost every essay requires you to support your argument with evidence. This is where quotation and paraphrasing guides are helpful. You’d usually have to follow a particular citation style when using someone else’s work in yours to make sure the original authors of the used materials are known to the reader and to avoid plagiarism.

Citation styles have different rules of indicating the source information. And very often those rules might not be very clear without an example or more elaborate explanations. So, our “Citation” section will help you with all possible questions regarding this aspect of academic essay writings.

This group of questions will shed light on citing in such styles as:

• APA
• MLA
• Chicago
• Harvard

There are many more styles out there, and we will cover those as well. But, these four are the most commonly used only, so they are the first in the queue.

You will know how to cite various types of sources, such as:

• Books
• Articles
• Journals
• Youtube Videos
• Websites
• Poems
• Newspapers
• Films
• Music

You’ll also get a better idea about quote types and how a “works cited page” must look.

Guides on Essay Types

There are more than 50 essay types out there, but you won’t have to write all of them because assignments generally vary based on your major. Nevertheless, we decided to cover each and every one of them to make sure every visitor finds the answer they are looking for.

You’ll learn about common essay types like:

• Argumentative
• Persuasive
• Narrative
• Compare and contrast
• Cause and effect
• Descriptive
• Analytical

But, we also offer tips on more “exotic” papers such as:

• Diagnostic
• Memoir
• Thematic
• Photo
• Rhetorical
• Profile

Besides those three main categories of questions, you’ll also find other, related to essay length, purpose, and topics, as well as high school and college essay guidelines. The latter will also cover various application papers and their features.

We are also planning on adding a section dedicated to advanced English grammar rules and exceptions, which are plenty.

The sources we use

When creating all these guidelines for writing an essay, we use only credible sources. Those include articles written by verified specialists with relevant experience in education and official guides of education institutions like:

• California State University
• The University of New South Wales
• Harvard University
• Santiago Canyon College
• Bow Valley College
• Purdue University
• Utah Valley University
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Lane Community College
• The University of Maryland
• Columbia College

The list is far from being exhaustive, but we strive to become a centralized hub for students of all academic levels.

By the way, each article has a “Was it helpful?” question at the end. By giving your feedback, you can help us improve our website and deliver better content.

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