What is an Informative Essay?
An informative essay is a piece of writing designed to give useful and practical information about a topic. Here, a writer takes a neutral stand and reports information in an unbiased way.
Informative essays are pieces of academic writing that do not include any arguments or attempts to persuade. In this essay, the writer doesn’t tell you what to believe, but rather just gives you the facts.
As this essay deals with the description of facts, many people get confused between the purpose of informative and descriptive essays.
People often confuse informative essays and descriptive essays, because they have similar purposes. Both essays begin with a description of the topic but there are some significant differences.
Difference Between Informative and Descriptive Essay
Both informative and descriptive essays inform readers, but they do so in different ways.
An informative essay is a factual genre that includes researched-based facts, figures, and statistics. A descriptive essay is an artistic genre that offers writers a chance to express their creativity.
Moreover, an informative essay presents a topic without bias, while a descriptive essay is inherently subjective.
How to Start an Informative Essay?
An informative essay is similar to other types of essays, it is made up of three parts—the introduction, the body paragraphs, and a conclusion. It also follows the same pre-writing and post-writing steps as other essays.
The writing process for an informative essay includes the following steps:
1. Choose the Right Topic
The importance of choosing an appropriate topic for your essay cannot be denied. Only a good topic can make an exceptional essay.
When considering a topic for your informative essay, choose a topic or subject that interests you. If a topic is broad and difficult to cover, it is a bad option.
When brainstorming ideas for your informative essay, be sure to select a topic that interests you. If a topic is too broad and complicated, it is not a good choice.
An effective informational essay is one that can be narrowed down and focused on a specific issue. If you clearly state your topic, it makes your essay easier for the reader to follow.
2. Brainstorm Ideas
When you've chosen a topic, it's time to think about ways to approach and address it. Brainstorm ideas, angles, and approaches you'd like address.
Make a list of all the ideas that pop into your mind. Listing the ideas will help you gather more information. To make your essay engaging, add things that you find interesting.
As a general rule, make sure your source of information is reputable. Always include facts and information that are true, reliable, and not misleading.
3. Create an Outline
Just as in any other formal writing, you need an outline or format for your informative essay. To make the message clear, a writer needs to organize the ideas in a logical way.
A well-devised essay outline is made up of an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Each part contains useful information that gives your essay the right balance of formality and approachability.
The outline is discussed in detail below.
How to Write an Informative Essay?
Here are the steps to writing a successful informative essay:
Introduction
The first step to writing your essay is to write its introduction. The introduction should be written to introduce the topic or subject to its readers.
Here are a few elements that make an introduction paragraph for your informative essay:
A Hook - Add interesting hooks that can help you attract your audience. It can be a rhetorical question, a quotation, or just a fact. Depending on the topic, a hook can be casual or really serious and formal. You can check hook examples to learn more.
A Background - Background information of a selected topic or subject is provided in the introduction to give readers a track to walk on. If the readers do not know what the essay is going to be about they won’t waste their time finding out.
A Thesis Statement - It is the most important component that defines the purpose of the essay to the readers. A thesis statement is a key point and idea on which your entire essay is based.
You can summarize your whole essay to make it your thesis statement. This statement is discussed in various ways in the essay.
Body Paragraphs
The body of an informative essay contains all the information and supporting evidence about the topic. The thesis statement that a writer makes in an introduction is here described and proved.
In multiple paragraphs, the writer explains the chosen topic with factual information. Each paragraph of an essay should start with a topic sentence to make the paragraph clear in understanding.
The body of this essay uses the transitions sentences to maintain a logical flow of information that altogether leads up to the conclusion.
Conclusion
The conclusion of an essay is the last paragraph that gives results or presents the final verdict. A conclusion of an informative essay contains a summary of the main idea and a rephrased thesis statement.
The conclusion is as important as the introduction of the essay and it shouldn’t be longer than the length of the introduction. In the concluding paragraphs, no new ideas are presented.
As the essay is closing, a writer just sums up and wraps up his discussion in a couple of sentences.
Proofreading and Editing
After you have written your conclusion and you know you have finished writing your essay, do not submit it right away. Your essay needs to be revised a few times before you submit it.
Revise and reread your essay to improve it and for the corrections. Check if your text needs corrections in punctuation, vocabulary, grammar, or spelling, and edit your essay.
Proofreading is done to check for mistakes, errors, and flaws in your writings.
Informative Essay Format
The most common argumentative essay outline format is given below.
Informative Essay Example
Students can look at this example of an informative essay for better understanding:
Informative Essay Topics
If you are not assigned a topic for your informative paper then you are free to go as creative as you can to come up with a topic or your interest and choice. But if this thing is making you uncomfortable because you cannot think of any topic then this list provided below can be really helpful for you.
It doesn’t matter if you are looking for essay topics for college essay assignments or for school assignments, these topics work for students of every level.
- Global Warming - Reasons to be concerned about it
- Cybercrime and its punishments
- Domestic violence in the United States
- How to avoid racial discrimination?
- Effects of legalizing gay marriages in the United States
- How to prevent our society from child abuse
- What is caffeine addiction?
- How to eliminate poverty?
- Causes of depression in teenagers
- Prostitution and its effects on our society
- Why is getting a tattoo addiction?
- Reasons for child obesity
- Advantages of cybersecurity
- Importance of censorship on internet content
- Effects of illegal immigrants on the country’s economy
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