What is an Essay Format?
An essay format is a set of guidelines that tells you how you can organize the research information in your essay. It helps you determine how your essay should be arranged. The basic guidelines cover the title page, outline, essay structure, conclusion, etc.
The main purpose of formatting an essay is to:
- Enhance the presentation of your essay
- Organize information
- Give readers the information clearly
Further, if your essay is poorly structured, your readers will face difficulty understanding your main argument or idea in the essay.
There are several different ways to format your essay, and each professor has its requirements. Thus, you need to follow his guidelines but adhere to the standard essay formatting styles such as APA, MLA, and Chicago.
Essay Format Outline
The format is essential, whether you write a scholarship essay, college essay, or general academic essay. Each type of essay follows a specific structure consisting of an introduction, body, and conclusion.
Here is a traditional essay outline that should be followed for all essays.
- Introduction
An essay starts with an introduction where you are supposed to introduce the subject of your essay. Begin your essay introduction with an interesting hook to grab the reader’s attention. Provide a little background information to help the reader connect with the topic of the essay. Present the thesis statement that states the main theme of your essay.
- Body Paragraphs
There is a minimum of three body paragraphs in any traditional academic essay. However, the number of body paragraphs can be changed according to the type of essay and how much information you need to provide. Each paragraph discusses a separate point related to the topic and thesis statement. - Conclusion
Finally, in the conclusion paragraph, you should wrap up the whole essay and give a call to action. Restate the thesis statement to remind the reader what your essay was all about.
The following is an essay format template for your help.
MLA Essay Format
Modern Language Association (MLA) formatting style is the most commonly used citation style in humanities.
The below table shows the formatting guidelines that help in your writing phase.
| Font Size | 12pt |
| Font Style | Times New Roman |
| Spacing | Double spaced No extra spacing between paragraphs |
| Heading | The upper left corner of the first page |
| Margin | One-inch margin from all sides of the paper |
| Page Number | It appears in the header |
| Title | Center of the page |
| Indentation | ½ inch or a tab |
| Alignment | Left justified |
| Work Cited Page | Author’s last name, First name. “Title of Article.” Title of Journal, vol. Volume, no. Issue, Month Year of publication, pp. Pages, URL. |
| In-text Citation | Parenthetical: (Author’s last name Page) Narrative: Author’s last name (Page) |
Below you can find a good MLA essay format example that will guide you to write your essay.
APA Essay Format
Many students and researchers commonly use the American Psychology Association (APA) format. It is mostly used in the social sciences field.
Below are the basic guidelines provided for formatting your paper in APA style.
| Font Size | 12pt |
| Font Style | Times New Roman |
| Spacing | Double spaced |
| Heading | Center aligned on the first page |
| Margin | One inch margin from all sides of the paper |
| Page Number | It appears in the header, top left corner of every page |
| Title | Top right corner |
| Indentation | ½ inch or a tab |
| Alignment | Left justified |
| Work Cited Page | Last Name, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of page. Site name. URL |
| In-text Citation | Parenthetical: (Author’s last name, year) Narrative: Author’s last name (year) |
Here is an APA essay format example to help you nail your next APA-style essay.
Chicago Essay Format
Chicago style is the most difficult formatting style used to organize college essays and papers. It is most commonly used in the field of humanities. Refer to the table below to know the basic guidelines of the Chicago citation style.
| Font | Times New Roman size 12 |
| Spacing | Double spaced No extra spaces between paragraphs |
| Heading | Center aligned on the first page |
| Margin | One-inch margin from all sides of the paper apart from the right side |
| Page Number | Appears in the header, top right corner of every page |
| Title | Middle of the page |
| Indentation | ½ inch or a tab |
| Alignment | Left justified |
| Footnotes | Author first name last name, Title of Book (Place of publication: publisher, year), page number(s). |
| Bibliography | Author last name, first name. Year. Title of Book. Place of publication: publisher. |
| In-text Citation | (Author last name year, page number(s)) |
Check out the Chicago-style essay format example given below and format your paper by following the guidelines.
Essay Format Examples
You can easily format your paper according to the standard academic citation styles by following the guidelines given above. Moreover, we have provided some samples to help you ace your academic essay.
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