Easy Tips For Formatting An Essay Properly
In the world of English Literature, there are a few basic things that are taught to every student before he or she starts exploring the more complex world of letters and alphabets. Essay writing forms a basic component of grammar, and composite writing constitutes being able to write educational, informative essays. In fact, essay writing is one of the main criteria for clearing the entrances to all higher education institutes. Thus, being able to write a proper and coherent essay is necessary for every student. Here are some tips to help you format your essay properly.
The basics:
- Generally, when writing an essay, make sure to use a readable font. Everyone understands your desire to make it look attractive by using flowery and cursive fonts, but it will not help you if the examiner cannot read it. Therefore, go for simple fonts like Times New Roman or Arial.
- Use spacing in your essay. The default setting in most writing software is 1.5, but you should set it to 2.0.
- Always put your essay in the ‘justify’ alignment to make it look cleaner and evenly spaced out.
- Leave a margin of an inch on all sides of the paper.
- Put a header and footer at the top and bottom of the page respectively.
- Put the headings and sub-heads in bold or italics to make them stand out.
- Indentation is not usually a condition for essays, but check to make sure that your examiner does not require you to do it.
Other tips:
- The impulse to shell out an essay that might sit with the likes of Hemingway and Maupassant might be very strong, but understand that your essay will not be of any interest to a reader if it is not legible, and if they have to fetch a dictionary at every sentence.
- Make sure to use simple, but effective language in your essay. Less is more, is what they say, and you should make sure to follow it.
- Pay attention to your introduction. Do not make it too long, and beat around the bush. Keep it crisp, simple, and to the point. An introduction filled with long and unnecessary facts will only bore the reader.
- Be sure to sum up all your facts and findings in your conclusion. It should provide the reader with some sort of closure and an in depth knowledge of what you were saying. Thus, close your conclusion effectively.