How to Write an Academic Essay for School

When writing an academic essay, it can be difficult to get out what you want to say-and impress your teacher all at the same time. While I may not be able to help you generate ideas for your essay, I've written many an essay and learned a few tricks from my experience. There's the regular plain ol' essay, and then there's the academic essay-these tips will help you write a top grade academic essay.

Instructions

1. Pick a topic. Before you can write an academic essay you need to pick a topic. Even if you've been assigned a topic, it's likely that you will need to take a stance on the topic. Find a topic that has good base of literature. In writing the outline for your academic essay, try to stay away from recent topics which won't have a substantial amount of research base. Also try to stay away from anything that might become offensive; topics like religion and race are better avoided.

2. Create an outline. Create three or four strong points supporting your topic. Make sub points for your academic essay under each of the topics. I have found it's easiest to make these outlines in a roman numeral format-but you may choose to use a bulleted list, or something that is easy for you. Don't write the bulleted points in full sentences, but get good supporting ideas down in your outline.

3. Begin writing. Now that you have an outline for your academic essay, you need to fill in the gaps. You should have most of the important facts down, now you just need to link them together and make sure they make sense. When you write the academic essay, ensure that each point has a substantial amount of literary support. Write in a professional manner, but not overly articulate: avoid slang but make your essay easy to understand.

4. Include sources. Nothing looks better than a few big names supporting your cause. Don't be afraid to name drop and include some notable sources supporting your academic position. In your academic essay be sure to cite all sources that you use. Give proper credit to the authors you use, but don't let their words overshadow yours.

5. Edit and revise. Don't consider the academic essay complete until you've edited and revised your essay several times. There's nothing professors dislikes more than a paper with grammatical and spelling errors that might have been easily fixed. These errors detract from the intellectual integrity of the paper, and put you as an academic writer in question-in short, it's a good idea to revise your essay a few times.