Tips for the best essay formatting

Every college has its own peculiarities when it comes to formatting. Moreover, your teacher may also have a favorite style, which you will most likely have to follow.

Unfortunately, some of the students think that formatting is not important and neglect this step. The truth is that formatting makes any essay readable, organized and plagiarism free. That is why it is very important to know how to format your essay according to different styles and to be able to distinguish them from each other.

Essay format definition

Essay format is a collection of requirements and guidelines, which explain how you should arrange your paper. It includes such sections as title page, general structure, citations and so on.

How to format your essay

When you are working on paper’s formatting, you already need to have every element ready: title page, all the sections, capitalization and citations. Below is a simple but effective guide, which contains everything you need to know about essay formatting.

Title page formatting

• Double-spaced page;
• Times New Roman, 12 pt;
• Write down the title of your educational establishment;
• Beneath institution’s name write your essay’s title;
• On the bottom write your full name, course title and number, name of the instructor and date of delivery.

We will help you with your homework – Order now!

First page formatting

Before you start writing the paper, you need to work on its first page:

• Every page of your essay, apart from the title page and the page with cited works should contain a header. It must be situated in the right corner 0,5 inches below the edge;
• Heading should be placed in the upper left corner;
• Write the title of your paper and center it one inch below the top of the paper;
• Beneath paper’s title start writing your essay without any other spacing.

Introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion

Every academic assignment, whether it’s a one-page essay or a research paper, should consist of an introduction, body and conclusion. When you master writing these typical paragraphs, it will become much simpler to write even complex assignments.

• Times New Roman, 12 pt;
• State the key idea of your essay in the introductory paragraph;
• Every body paragraph should start with a topic sentence and be followed with proper citing of evidence, which you found through a careful research. Make sure you use transition words between paragraphs;
• In your conclusion summarize every element you have discussed. Use this section as a chance to once again state how important the discussed issue is. Never introduce new information in your conclusion.

Remember, if you don’t want to work on the task yourself or find the required formatting style too complicated, just contact Mcessay!

In-text citing

Every time you cite someone’s work in your essay, it is necessary to use in text citing to show the audience where you took the information from. Just place the page number in parentheses and put the citation in quotations. If you don’t include name of the author to the quote, you should also put it into parentheses before the page number.

Page of cited works

It is a page, where you list all of the used sources. Here are some of the key tips:

• Organize all of the sources in an alphabetical order;
• If the reference occupies more than two lines, you need to indent the second one by 1 inch and other lines should go as usual;
• If you take materials from websites, in-print or lectures, you need to apply other formatting rules: write author’s last name and then his first name. Write the title and all the publishing details.

There is a huge variety of requirements, because there are hundreds of various media types. To be on a safe side, ask your teacher for additional requirements.

Tips for becoming a writing guru

Writing is a difficult and time-consuming process and even the most experienced authors experience difficulties from time to time. We have collected the most efficient tips to help you succeed:

• Learn maximum on the topic. You should have enough free time to research the subject in order to find out interesting and unknown facts about it. Write down such information and don’t forget to accompany the quote with author’s name and all the necessary information on publishing. In such a way you will be able to find it in future;
• Pre-writing stage. When you need to write an essay, everything starts with an idea. Just take a piece of paper and write down every word that comes to your mind. Before you notice, you will have plenty of topics to choose from;
• Start writing. The most experienced and talented writers will tell you that the secret of writing a great story is to write! This means that you just need to sit down and put your thoughts on paper without thinking too much about mistakes and the plot;
• Never procrastinate. Once you get an assignment, try to start working on it as early as possible. If you decide to wait till the final minute, you will hardly get a first-class essay;
• Always check your paper. Even if you have perfect English and have experience writing hundreds of essays, you can still make some mistakes. That is why you should always check spelling and grammar mistakes before submitting the assignment.

We are always there to help

Hopefully our brief guide gave you a direction and now you know how important formatting is and why you should take it seriously. In case you need additional help, you can always turn to Mcessay. We have the best writers and editors on the market and they know peculiarities even of the most difficult formatting styles.

Moreover, they can write any assignment and assist you with editing and proofreading your work. Just visit our homepage to learn about everything we have to offer! If you have no time, simply contact our managers and they will do everything for you.