Your Guide To Writing Informative Essays – Outline, Topics, And Tips

May 15, 2023 Martha Simons

by Martha Simons

I’m Martha Simons, a 36-year-old woman from the lovely state of Arkansas in the United States. I have a Master of Philosophy degree, which demonstrates my profound devotion to investigating and comprehending diverse intellectual interests. I have a desire for information and a passion for critical thinking. Read More

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When the word informative comes to mind, it means a piece of writing that provides information on a given topic or subject. Essentially, every type of essay is “informative” to a great extent as authors illustrate, narrate, or describe the subject to not only educate or entertain the readers but also inform them. When students are in schools and colleges, they need to write and submit all types of essays on different topics.

Since there is almost no training or tools for them to explore the bases, they fall short of the task and even look for “someone to write to write my essay”. WriteMyEssay is a leading brand for essays, research papers, and more. With a team of professional academic writers, we not only provide excellent writing services but also impart knowledge on how to make students better writers.

This blog is one of the links in that chain!

Informative Essay 101

Defining an informative essay can be extremely hard to simple depending on who is asking about it. In the simplest terms, it is a type of essay where the writer informs the readers about the subject or topic of the essay. Depending on the focal point and the context, the nature of the essay can be explanatory, compare and contrast, cause and effect, and so on. While writing your informative essay, it does not matter which medium you choose, as long as it covers the basic premise of the task.

One way of executing a well-structured informative essay is to assume that readers do not know anything about the subject. This will allow you to build the essay from the ground up, covering all the bases – from start to finish.

However, when you are writing at higher levels, such as advanced studies in universities in post-graduate years, you can easily gauge the understanding index of your readers and adjust accordingly.

Two simple yet concrete points can make the case for the informative essay. First, the essay’s text is based on facts and figures, backed by scientific evidence. Second, there is no need for the author to give his opinion or views on the topic.

Informative Essay Outline

Every time you hear about writing an essay, it is not about simply sitting down at a table and churning out the whole piece. The process starts and ends with careful consideration of the things around the writing phase. In this section, we will explore the outline of informative essay writing profoundly and ensure that all the bases are covered. It is because without defining the scope and mapping out the whole essay, it is impossible to write a well-researched informative paper.

Tracing The Origin of The Topic

Writers need to let readers know why they chose the topic. For that, they can explore the history of the problem or the issue that they want to inform the audience about. This is covered in the opening paragraph or introduction of the essay. From starting with a hook to providing context and putting down a thesis statement, it is about tracing the origin and making others care about it.

Processes & Operations For Investigation

If we are to describe this part according to the main sections of an informative essay, we can say that it is the main body area. Based on the points made in the opening, writers need to explain the processes and operations for investigations. This includes picking the right type of essay, such as compare and contrast, cause and effect, and so on. The highlight could be the who, why, how, and when of the subject.

Moving Forward With The Main Idea

Once the base is set and explored in the relevant section, it is time to move forward with the main idea. This main idea could be the extension of the thesis or the exploration of the topic at a more expansive level. No matter what avenue you choose to proceed, you need to ensure that all the text of the section is true to the main topic and essay questions of the informative paper.

How To Write An Informative Essay Structure

One of the ways to define and understand a thing or a subject is to learn about its structure. When we talk about informative essay structure, there is nothing novel or new about it as it is essentially the same as that of narrative, descriptive, or expository essays. However, the contents of the respective sections can differ and we need to address those in the bird’s eye view of the format in this phase.

Opening Paragraph

This is where all the action begins. The opening lines of the introduction should be crafted with care. Since many readers are scanners in the beginning and looking for reasons to read the essay completely or leave it at that. The hooks, as experts call them, can be a question, a fact, a shocking statement, and so on. After that, let the readers ease into the main topic by providing some context on the title. Once they are settled, it is time to put down the thesis statement.

Thesis Statement

At this point, there is no need to define extensively what a thesis statement is. Simply put, it is a bold and brief statement that lets the readers know about the writer’s take on the subject. The best place to mention the thesis is the closing lines of the introduction. There, it not only cast a shadow on the upcoming points or ideas in the main body but connects the opening section with the main body paragraphs. Since it is an essential part of it, an essay is incomplete without it.

Main Body

If the name is any indication, the main body makes up the bulk of the informative essay. The elements the writer chooses to play with, all come into effect in this section. In a 1000-word essay with five paragraphs in total, at least three should be assigned for the main body. Whether it turns out to be a cause-and-effect essay or any other type of expository one, the respective elements should be explained and described in this phase. Instead of keeping only paragraphs with large blocks of text, you can splice them for even distribution.

Closing Paragraph

Just like the opening paragraph, the conclusion is one of the most important sections of the essay. It ties up all the loose ends together and ensures that the narrative is tight not only at the core but also around the edges. The best way to write a closing paragraph is to consider it as an independent piece. The opening lines rephrase the thesis statement. The main body of the conclusion summarizes the ideas and points from the body paragraphs. The closing lines furnish departing thoughts for the readers.

Informative Essay Topics

Most of the time, students are provided with clear topics and focal points that they should cover in the essay. Other times, they have to find the best ones after going through extensive research and a fair bit of hard work. Since we are an authority in writing and editing academic papers and essays for over a decade, we have dedicated this section of the blog to share some of the best topic ideas and questions for informative essays.

Depending on your academic level and scope, you can either pick a topic as is or experiment with it a little to add a new dimension to it.

Informative Essay Ideas On Social Issues

In your informative essay, you cannot only identify the issues causing the problems and their effects but also suggest countermeasures to eradicate them:

Effects of Gambling on the Personal and social life of a Person
Issues that trigger eating disorders in humans
Censorship in modern society and cancel culture
Causes and effects of water pollution in urban areas
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the global economy
Importance of learning and skills in the 21st century
Bullying in Schools and How to eradicate it
Ways to Minimize and prevent child abuse in Society
Causes and effects of environmental degradation on human lives

Informative Essay Topics On History

In this section, we will take a look at some of the best topics in History:

Concept of Ethics during the Vietnam War
Analyzing the History of Slavery in the US Post-Revolution Era
Causes of the US Civil War
Native Americans and their Impact on the modern world
Analysis of the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
Declaration of Independence and Status of the US
The US Foreign Policy and its Impact on World’s Peace in the 21st Century
The interwar period was a constant time of crisis
Industrialization and changing dynamics of American social movements

Best Tips On Writing A Winning Informative Essay

Writing guides can only be complete with a dedicated section on tips and hacks, so this blog is no exception. This section will share some of the best and most effective tips for students to ensure that the process of writing and editing an essay goes down without any significant hiccups. So, let’s go through them.

Brainstorming The Topic

We have already shed some light on the idea of choosing a topic and then making it a focal point for all the writing. The process of doing so starts with shortlisting a handful of ideas and then testing them out to see their depths. Whether you are good at doing that in your head or using paper, it is fine as long as you get results.

Creating A Strong Title

A topic is a wide area of research that requires a lot of narrowing down and fine-tuning before a writer can write an essay on it. So, when a student submits the order for “write my research paper”, writers at WriteMyEssay pick a topic and narrow it down with only a single dimension or angle to explore. For instance, climate change is a topic and the title of an informative essay could be its causes and effects in the Middle East.

Researching & Outlining Simultaneously

No matter how much of an expert you are in a subject, writing an essay requires collecting relevant information from multiple sources and then refining it to make it usable for the text of the essay. However, many students do the two tasks separately which can take a lot of time time. Instead, you can do them together and it will be easier to go through the writing process and ensure that all the bases are covered.

Proofreading Before Submission

Writing an essay is one thing and fine-tuning it in such a way that it becomes technically sound, you need to set aside time and effort to make it so. We have seen that many students write an essay and then submit it without proofreading or editing it. This results in poor grades since there were countless mistakes and errors in the text. Pro Tip: Use Grammarly or Hemingway Editor to speed up the work in this phase.

Summing Up The Discussion

An informative essay is intermediate in terms of difficulty and complexity when compared with argumentative and expository essays. However, they require a lot of knowledge and information, to begin with, and touch on topics and areas that are hard to explore. In this post, we have shared our insights on the nature of the informative, how to write an informative essay, and some tips and hacks to speed up the process of writing. We hope that students will find it helpful in pursuing academic excellence.

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