informative Essay

Informative Essays

The purpose of an informative essay, sometimes called an expository essay, is to educate on a certain topic. It is not for giving an opinion or convincing someone to do something or change his beliefs. In addition to being informative, it needs to be interesting.
An informational essay or paper is an essay/paper that you describe something to the reader without using your opinion and saying it in a formal manner. This is not an email to a friend. As an example, if I were writing a paper on tennis shoes, I wouldn’t say whether or not I liked or preferred tennis shoes, but rather their multi-purposes and uses, perhaps what they do and what they generally look like, and maybe even some common brands.

Structure of an Informative Essay 

The basic structure of an informative essay is very simple. It needs to have a beginning, middle, and end.

  • The beginning needs to present the topic and grab the attention of the audience. It needs to include the focus sentence for the entire essay.
  • The middle will be the main bulk of the essay and it will contain all the important facts that you are covering. This is where the audience will get their questions answered. Remember to answer these questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how.
  • The end is a conclusion where you will summarize the essay. It should spur the reader or listener to learn more about the topic.

Steps in Creating an Informative Essay 

Most of the work on an informative essay is done before you actually sit down to type. Here are the general steps to take:

  1. After you have chosen the topic, you will need to research and gather all the pertinent details on that subject. You need to ascertain what you already know about the subject and then decide what you would like to know.
  2. You will need to make a list of the important facts and then list the main steps in your paper. Make sure all your facts are accurate. You will need to write a topic sentence for each fact and write a focus sentence (thesis statement) for the entire essay.
  3. Create an outline that will organize your facts in a logical way. Then you will be ready to make your first draft.
  4. Editing is an important step for any writing project. Reading your essay out loud will help you notice places where the writing is awkward or unclear. If possible, have someone else read it and give you their ideas for improvement. Of course, you will need to pay attention for grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and other errors.

A Video Explanation

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Requirements:

Here is a sample.  Please read it and note the MLA formatting.

Please Use:

1. three web sources

2. EasyBib to format your Works Cited Page (make sure you choose MLA format)

3. Use in-text citations.  Here is what the OWL at Purdue says about doing that:

  • If there is no author, use the title that begins the citation, either the article or website title. Be sure it also takes the same formatting, i.e. articles are in quotes and website titles are italicized. Shorten / abbreviate the name of the source but ensure that your reader can easily identify it in your works cited (abbreviate the title starting with the same word in which it is alphabetized).

    Examples:

    Elephants are thought to be one of the smartest mammals (“Smart Elephants”).

    Nineteen men and women were convicted (Salem Witchcraft Trials).

  • You do not need to give paragraph numbers or page numbers based on your Web browser’s print preview function.
  • Unless you must list the Web site name in the signal phrase in order to get the reader to the appropriate entry, do not include URLs in-text. Only provide partial URLs such as when the name of the site includes, for example, a domain name, like CNN.com orForbes.com as opposed to writing out http://www.cnn.com or http://www.forbes.com.

4. be attentive to the 500 word requirement

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