Informative Essay Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

Writing an informative essay or paper but confused about how to write one effectively? It isn’t rocket science. Having adequate knowledge of informative writing and how to structure it properly will do wonders for you.

Hence, before writing an informative essay or paper, ensure that you do well research on the topic on which you will be writing and the ways through which you can write it. The methods include knowledge of writing informative essays and how to format, outline and structure them. If you have this knowledge, you can begin writing your paper without any hassle.

However, if you aren’t aware of what informative writing is or still don’t understand how to write an informative essay or paper, then we have got your back.

Here, we will discuss how to write an informative essay, prepare a format for it, and effectively outline your informative essay. We can also throw in some tips from professionals who can help you make your informative essay even better.

Hence, if you have collected information for your essay’s topic and are still staring at your blank document empty-minded, then read this article. Let’s start with what exactly is an informative essay.

What’s An Informative Essay?

As the name suggests, the definition of an informative essay implies an informative piece that provides information to the audience on a particular topic. Its sole purpose is to inform your readers about a topic.

Hence, you can educate your readers about a particular subject/topic, whether an event, term, natural phenomenon, etc. But you shouldn’t confuse the term informative essay with other forms of assignments since it’s different from those. Here, your purpose will be to teach your audience.

In an informative essay, you shouldn’t point out your opinions since it’s for comparing the controversial viewpoints regarding your essay topic. If you don’t understand how informative essays work, you can take examples from Wikipedia contents. Those don’t contain any authors’ personal opinions, and they only provide proper information on the topic.

Writing an informative essay would be easy for you since you only have to provide in-depth knowledge and the basic facts of the topic in the paper. 

Now that you have adequate knowledge of informative essays let’s get to how you can write. 

How To Write An Informative Essay?

Be prepared before writing an informative essay. Preparation can make stuff a piece of the pie for you. Hence, before you start typing on your keyboard or writing with your pen, try to prepare for writing your informative essay first, 

It’s like baking a cake. First, you have to take out a recipe, in our case, the topic. Then comes collecting the ingredients, which meant setting up a plan to write an essay. And then starts the baking process, that is, writing the essay.

Some ideas that can help you with writing an informative essay that your teacher ought to love include:

Brainstorm Creative Ideas

If the teacher has given you the freedom to choose your topic, then put your mind to use. You can select a topic on which you are good and feel that you can write effectively on it. 

Brainstorm ideas on how you will start the informative essay and what points you will add. You should also consider making a word limit which will make writing easier for you. 

What’s more on the menu is that you can also create an outline of your essay, which will assist you in organizing your thoughts properly. We will discuss the outlines in detail later.

Choose A Topic

Now that you have brainstormed creative ideas and come up with some topics. Start with narrowing down your list until only one is left. The topic you choose mustn’t be too broad or narrow sense informative essays are neither broad nor narrow. Once you’re done, you can get to the next point.

Show Your Research Skills

The most important thing about writing an informative essay is research—good research results in a good essay. Hence, make sure that you are researching correctly for the topic of your informative essay. 

Don’t just paraphrase the content from a single source. Find more about your topic through multiple sources to ensure that you have covered your topic from every aspect. 

Use Trusted Sources

Your research doesn’t end with finding multiple sources. What else you should notice is finding reliable sources for your essay. Often, blogs or articles on the internet can provide wrong information about your required topic. 

Here we can take Wikipedia, for example. In Wikipedia, the content you see can be edited by anyone on the internet; hence, it’s not a good idea to use it as a reference for your informative essay. You can search for information on “Google Scholar” since it provides many trustworthy sources.

Once you are done with proper research and found trustworthy sources for your informative essay, you can prepare the format for it. It can assist you in getting a basic idea of what and how you will be writing in your informative essay. 

How To Prepare An Informative Essay Format?

Formats are crucial when writing an essay, and it applies to all types of essays including informative essays. There are different writing formats for papers, such as MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.

Your teacher may assign a specific format to you for writing your informative essay. Hence, ensure that you follow the particular guidelines available for your given informative essay format. 

If we consider the standard essay formats assigned by the colleges, it will be either APA or MLA. If you get any of the above two formats, you can start with:

•  There should be 1″ margins on each side of your paper.
• The font should be Times, New Roman.
• The size of your font should be 12pt.
• Ensure setting double spacings from the line spacings.

Depending on the format you select, you have to write the basic information like your name, topic name, course name, instructor’s name, and date. If you write in MLA format, you have to write this information on the upper left side of your first page. 

On the other hand, if you write in APA style format, you have to prepare a separate title page and add the information mentioned above on the page centered and with double spacing added after each line. 

Now that we are done with the informative essay formats, let’s get to the outlining procedure.

Informative Essay Outline

Here, we will discuss an informative essay outline and how you can write it effectively. 

All the essays have a similar type of outlining, and similar is the informative essay outline. Usually, the standard style of writing an informative essay outline consists of:

• The introduction along with a thesis statement.
• The body (three or more paragraphs).
• The conclusion.

We will discuss each of the parts and how to write the same separately below one by one:

Introduction

An introduction is a crucial part of any assignment or essay. Hence, you should pay full attention while writing an informative essay introduction. Your informative essay introduction should have a hook, supporting, and thesis statement like any other essay introduction.

Through your introduction, you need to reveal the background context of your essay topic to the readers to understand the topic of your essay. Check here how to write an essay introduction.

How to write it?

Writing an informative essay introduction is an easy task. You have to start with a hook sentence that can attract your readers to continue reading your informative essay. 

It can be a question, quote, fact, common misconception, anecdote, etc. It should be compelling enough that should make the readers want to know more about your topic. 

Once you have written a hook sentence, you should write some supportive sentences with some information. It connects your hook statement to your thesis statement.

When you have written the supporting sentences, you have to know how to write a thesis statement which we will discuss in detail below.

The Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is the last part of your informative essay introduction. Here, you have to summarize the main points of your informative essay for your readers. It is that statement around which your entire essay topic will revolve. It should be short and crisp, making the readers want to know more about the topic. 

How To Write It?

It’s effortless to write a thesis statement if you have done enough research on your essay topic. You have to summarize the main points of the topic.

First, elaborate on your topic’s purpose without giving your personal opinion. Remember that you shouldn’t show your opinions on the topic since it’s an informative essay.

Then, write the statement in a way that it’s precise, readable, and accessible to your readers. It helps in making your essay more readable. 

Also, remember that you should use words and sentences that make it appealing to the readers so that they want to read it more. 

The Body

The body paragraphs are also crucial in an informative essay outline. The primary purpose here is to defend your thesis statement by providing enough content to cover the topic. 

You should start each part of the body with a topic sentence to explain the topic to your readers. You should also add information through statistics, facts, and thesis-supporting evidence.

How To Write It?

The body paragraphs of your essay aim to elaborate your thesis statement in detail. The first thing you can do is add headings to each section present in your body paragraphs. It makes writing an informative essay easy for you since you can cover each aspect or central point of your topic in each head from H1 to H4 or more if required. 

Each paragraph should have a target point and sentences to support it. You have to give evidence and information to prove your thesis statement through these paragraphs.

Once it’s done, you can end the body paragraphs with a concluding sentence to show that what you discussed is right. It adds sharpness to your informative essay body. 

The Conclusion

The conclusion paragraph helps to wrap up your entire essay topic. You have to rephrase your thesis statement and offer your final thoughts on the topic. Hence, you should develop an effective concluding paragraph to show the value of your informative essay topic.

How To Write It?

A conclusion can decide whether your essay was good or not. Hence pay attention to how you write it. You can start by rephrasing your thesis statement by using different words. 

Remember that it should make your thesis statement into something new while rephrasing it. Here you should also summarize the body paragraphs of your essay in short and sum up the whole paper with a closing line.

Tips For Writing An Informative Essay

If you want some professional tips on writing an informative essay, then check out the points below:

• Note down any ideas that you get in a paper so that you don’t forget anything.
• Take the help of online writing tools that can help you to check your grammar issues and plagiarism.
• Proofread the entire essay after 12 or more hours, as you will notice defects more in that case.

Conclusion

Writing informative essays is something that will be provided to students at some time in their academic life. But, students may find it a challenging task. In an informative essay, the students must explain a specific concept elaborately, which they may find tricky.

But it’s not tricky. The correct way of writing an informative academic essay lies in the form of writing it. If you prepare the outlines correctly, apply the format properly, and do in-depth research, then you are halfway there. You only have to pen down the words, and your informative essay will be complete. 

Always remember that the primary purpose of your informative essay is to provide information, not your opinion. Once you understand these points that we have focused on in this article, you will get the hang of it.