Composing A Winning Formal Persuasive Essay: Basic Hints For College Students

You may be familiar with writing a persuasive essay, but what is a formal essay? Is this something new you haven’t encountered before? Here are some characteristics of a formal paper. Of course, they are things you’ve probably always strived to achieve in any piece of writing you’ve done. They are even more important now.

• Paper should be organized very well


• Take your audience and their level of education into consideration


• Your thesis should be clear and be a statement or question that well represents your paper


• Your paper should be very clean; devoid of careless mistakes and English errors

An excellent essay is written from a carefully constructed outline. If you have never learned how to make an outline before, now is the perfect time to learn this skill. Before you get to that step, you need to write your thesis statement. Once you know and are familiar with your topic, you will be able to formulate an effective thesis.

Constructing your outline

Planning the structure of your paper can be done after you’ve developed your thesis statement. The outline is like a skeleton or pattern that you can follow. This is a really great thing to do because it’s easy to look at your outline and see the big picture. You can tell which areas need a little more details and you can tell if you’ve missed anything or not. Once you’ve filled in your outline without actually writing the paper, you can see at a glance what you need to do.

Considering your audience

Communication is between two people or two groups of people. Writing your paper is a communication between you and some readers. It’s important to remember this is a formal audience, which may include your college professor, and perhaps a group of university admissions committee members.

Writing the paper

Use your outline to write the introduction, body and conclusion of your paper. Keep your audience in mind as you choose your words and sentences. Follow your outline and make sure you thoroughly cover all main points and give them sufficient supporting evidence. Avoid casual language, slang and contractions while writing. When using complicated words make sure you know what they mean, use them in context and don’t over-use this type of language. This only tends to make your written work less effective rather than give it the professional tone you’re looking for.