We’re so used to evaluating arguments, perspectives, events, stances, and people and their positions, that writing something just for the sake of informing can be challenging. However, don’t worry, we’ve got a guide for how to write informative essays.
Define your point
For these essays, you don’t need an argument, you just need to explain something throughout your informative essay outline. Consider what you want to write about, maybe you want to explain the basics of your favorite show or movie, or you’d like to inform your audience about an event that’s happening in your community. Let’s give an example of what an informative thesis looks like compared to one for an argumentative essay:
Informative Thesis: Electric cars have become popular because of their low cost, tax incentives, and distance they can cover on one charge.
Argumentative Thesis: Electric cars are better than their gasoline-powered counterparts because of their low cost, tax incentives, and the distance they can cover on one charge.
Can you see the difference? The first one just talks about electric cars while the second adopts a stance toward them.
Don’t Write the Introduction Just Yet
We know the introduction is the first thing in any informative essay outline, but since you still don’t know what your other points are or what they mean, it’s best if you leave this until the end, trust us.
Be Objective!
Informative essays should only be about informing, not about presenting a specific argument in favor or against something or explaining why a product or topic is better than another. These essays will test your ability to state facts, so make sure you’re reading and writing with this in mind.
Do Appropriate Research
Your informative essay outline needs tangible facts because even though you’re not trying to convince anyone of anything, you still need legitimate information. While doing this, keep in mind that many sources will try to argue in favor or against something. Returning to our example of electric cars, some articles could focus on why cost is a necessary factor when deciding which car to buy. Your task is to take this information and understand the facts as they relate to your topic.
Brainstorm Possible Points
When you do research, you’ll come across different arguments and perspectives. For this stage, you can make a list of the different things you encounter including where you found them. Remember that an informative essay outline needs to make sense. After you do this, you’ll probably have a jumbled mess of ideas, but now you have the task of categorizing them. Let’s continue with the example of electric cars and the thesis we wrote. The first point says that they are popular because of cost, but what does this mean exactly? Cost could refer to maintenance, taxes, or just the initial cost of the car itself. When you do research, you’ll probably encounter these points throughout, so you need to see if some points fit within the same category.
Establish Your Main Points
Now that you wrote a thesis, understood why you need to be objective, and did some research, you need to define what you’re going to talk about. Your informative essay outline should consider at least 3 body paragraphs, so you need at least 3 points. We’ve gone over the structure for body paragraphs in other articles, but we’re going to include the basics here:
- Topic sentence: here you’ll give an introduction to your point for this paragraph.
- Context.
- Sources (paraphrases and/or quotes).
- Explanation for sources.
- Transition sentence.
Start Writing
This point is pretty straightforward, but we do want you to focus on the topic sentence and sources parts of your informative essay outline first. The reason for this is that these are the main parts of your paragraphs, and you should know what you’re writing in each one. This way, you’ll understand your points so when you go back to write the transitions you know how they connect.
Cite Your Sources
Don’t listen to that voice inside your head that tells you to cite things later. That’s the voice that wants you to fail. You should always keep track of your sources. However, you can be a bit relaxed with them while you’re still writing your informative essay outline. Litero has a function where you can enter all the information for your sources and it’ll give you the citation in any style you need. While you’re still writing your informative essay outline, you can do something like write the name of the author and maybe the page that you used. By the time you start editing, you don’t have to guess where you got that information.
Add Details
After you’ve got the main parts of the paragraphs done, you can move on to connecting them to the other parts of your informative essay outline. You can use Litero’s ‘Expand Point’ command or just let the AI help you keep writing if you have it set to be automatic. Also, remember to give context and add explanations about your sources, think about why they’re relevant or what they say about the topic.
Conclusion
Here, you’ll add the thesis again and then summarize each point you made. The points should reflect everything you learned so you can give a good summary. Finally, close the paragraph with a memorable ending.
Edit
This is the time when you can focus on the smaller details of your informative essay outline like missing transitions, adding citations, and correcting grammar mistakes that you missed. You can use Litero’s grammar check function to correct mistakes and improve the flow of your essay. Also, if you’ve been adding your sources to Litero as you go, they’re already there at the end, and if you need a different citation style, you can just change it to the one you need.
Plagiarism Check
Even if everything you’ve written was original, it’s best to pass it through a plagiarism checker like Litero’s. This will let you see if you missed any citations or need to edit a few sentences to be more different.
Highlight of Litero.AI: Simplifying Informative Essay Writing
Writing an informative essay requires precision, research, and clarity, and Litero.AI is the perfect tool to streamline the process. From the brainstorming phase to polishing your final draft, Litero offers features designed to make writing less daunting and more efficient.
Need help defining your points? Litero’s AI-powered suggestions provide clear, relevant ideas for structuring your essay. Its citation management tool ensures your sources are organized and correctly formatted, saving time and avoiding errors. When it comes to expanding or refining points, Litero’s “Expand Point” feature allows you to add context or elaborate on key details effortlessly.
The editing stage becomes a breeze with Litero’s grammar and plagiarism checkers. These tools help you refine your essay, ensuring it is grammatically sound and free from unintended overlaps with other works. Whether you’re adding transitions, summarizing your conclusion, or polishing the finer details, Litero.AI is your go-to writing companion, ensuring your informative essay stands out for all the right reasons.