Writing a short essay is just the same as writing any other type of essay. The only difference is its length. So, how long is a short essay? A short essay is composed of more or less 500 words or one whole page of text. Since it is only brief, then you have to make sure that your short essay topics are interesting enough so it can grab the attention of your readers. Avoid choosing complicated topics that require a lengthy explanation.
Writing A Short Essay Can Be Challenging
You might think that a short essay is easier to write than a longer essay. But the truth is, it is more difficult to write a short essay. What is a short essay? With a short essay, it seems like you don’t have enough space for creating a strong argument. On the other hand, with a longer essay, you have more than enough space so you can explain all the things that you want to clarify. How long should a short essay be? Regardless, if a short essay is about 500 words only, the key is to include the most relevant information which is essential in making your point.
Some short essay examples include a short essay on music, a short essay about life, a short essay about love, a short essay on leadership, and others. To avoid any difficulties in writing your essay, you must create a short essay outline. This is very helpful especially if you want to organize your thoughts or create a strong argument for your essay.
What Are The Components Of Short Essay Writing?
When writing your short argumentative essay, you might be wondering how many paragraphs in a short essay? The standard short essay must have five paragraphs or more. One introductory paragraph, three paragraphs for the body, and finally, one paragraph for the conclusion. With this short essay format, your work can be easily understood.
Introduction
One of the most essential parts of your essay is the introduction. As much as possible, try to grab the attention of your readers. The first impression does matter. Keep it interesting and intriguing. You have to convince your readers that your essay is worth reading. You could limit your introduction to at least five sentences.
So, what does your introduction consists of?
- Introduce your topic to your audience. Try to express your idea but don’t go into the details yet. Thus, how do you keep your subject interesting? There are a lot of ways of accomplishing this.
- Include a question, some inspirational quotes or simply a vital reality.
- Aside from the main argument, your introduction must also include your thesis statement. This will contain a summary of your essay.
- Having a breakdown of your main argument is the best way of writing your thesis. In this way, you can create a great structure for the body of your essay. This will also help the readers know what are the succeeding contentions.
Body of the Essay
The body is considered as the main part of the essay. Here are some things that you can include in the body of your essay.
- Expand your argument. To do this, you have to evaluate your topic and provide some facts.
- Present the research that you’ve done about the topic. This can help you in boosting your argument since you will be presenting some samples.
- Be sure to follow your outline when writing your body paragraphs. Avoid jumping between topics since this can confuse your readers.
- Typically, the body of your essay may contain five paragraphs. Dividing them into paragraphs will make it easier to read.
- Always ensure that each paragraph contains a unique argument. Sometimes it’s hard to formulate an argument if you are writing a short essay due to the limited space. The best thing to do is to make each argument concise. Be apparent and do not complicate things.
- Your first paragraph must convey your strongest argument along with some evidence and facts.
- Arguments with lesser information should be placed on the last part. This will be beneficial to your essay, most especially if you are using quotations as part of your evidence.
- Always cite your quotations. Follow the guidelines for APA short essay format.
- Although organizing your arguments from the strongest to the weakest can be helpful to the readers yet you should not sacrifice the flow.
- A highly exceptional argument can help in convincing the readers no matter how you order them. This is the reason why it is very critical to have an outline of your argument.
Conclusion
Since you only have a short essay length, then keep your conclusion as brief as possible.
- Here, you will include your major argument accompanied by an explanation of how it can affect the future. This is just a simple strategy, yet it can help in letting your readers know that you have not lost your focus on your main topic.
- Keep it short and brief to avoid wasting your time and space. You can make your conclusion around three sentences.
- In your conclusion, you will be presenting the outcome of your analysis.
- Convey how the ideas from the body relate to the thesis statement.
- A conclusion is not just a summary of your essay. Here, you will provide an answer to the question that you have mentioned in your introduction. So, if you are making your introduction interesting, then your conclusion should be able to satisfy your readers.
- The first thing that you should mention in your conclusion should be your thesis statement. This is a great strategy for associating your introduction to your conclusion.
- Then, it should be followed by a summary of the body paragraphs.
- Having a clean conclusion can help the readers in evaluating your arguments.
Check Your Short Essay
Once you have finished making your conclusion, the next step is to check your work. Try to go over your work and check any syntax errors, grammatical errors, or any type of errors that can affect your argument. This can help you in becoming a good writer since you will try to avoid making these mistakes again. Professional editing services may help you as well. Make sure that your short narrative essay must make sense.
After editing your essay, you are now ready to present your well-written short essay. If you want to become a better essay writer, then you should keep on practicing. Keep in mind that the more you practice, the more it gets easier. Study a sample short essay before you make one. There are also short essay scholarships that you can avail of. Always remember that when writing an essay, the most important thing is to satisfy your readers and let them know how important your topic is.