what does structure essay mean

Basic essay structure

Improve your writing

Organise your essays to demonstrate your knowledge, show your research and support your arguments

Essays are usually written in continuous, flowing, paragraphed text and don’t use section headings. This may seem unstructured at first, but good essays are carefully structured.

How your assignment content is structured is your choice. Use the basic pattern below to get started.

Essay structure

An essay consists of three basic parts:, introduction.

The essay itself usually has no section headings. Only the title page, author declaration and reference list are written as headings, along with, for example, appendices. Check any task instructions, and your course or unit handbook, for further details.

Content in assignment introductions can vary widely. In some disciplines you may need to provide a full background and context, whereas other essays may need only a little context, and others may need none.

An introduction to an essay usually has three primary purposes:

• To set the scene
• To tell readers what is important, and why
• To tell the reader what the essay is going to do (signposting)

A standard introduction includes the following five elements:

• A statement that sets out the topic and engages the reader.
• The background and context of the topic.
• Any important definitions, integrated into your text as appropriate.
• An outline of the key points, topic, issues, evidence, ideas, arguments, models, theories, or other information, as appropriate. This may include distinctions or contrasts between different ideas or evidence.
• A final sentence or two which tells the reader your focal points and aims.

You should aim to restrict your introduction to information needed for the topic and only include background and contextual information which helps the reader understand it, or sets the scene for your chosen focal points.

In most essays you will have a considerable range of options for your focus. You will be expected to demonstrate your ability to select the most relevant content to address your focal points.

There are some exceptions. For example, if an assignment brief specifically directs the essay focus or requires you to write broadly about a topic. These are relatively rare or are discipline-specific so you should check your task instructions and discipline and subject area conventions.

Below are examples of an opening statement, a summary of the selected content, and a statement at the end of the introduction which tells the reader what the essay will focus on and how it will be addressed. We've use a fictional essay.

The title of our essay is: 'Cats are better than dogs. Discuss.'

To submit this essay you also would need to add citations as appropriate.

Example of opening statements:

People have shared their lives with cats and dogs for millenia. Which is better depends partly on each animal’s characteristics and partly on the owner’s preferences.

Here is a summary of five specific topics selected for the essay, which would be covered in a little more detail in the introduction:

• In ancient Egypt, cats were treated as sacred and were pampered companions.
• Dogs have for centuries been used for hunting and to guard property. There are many types of working dog, and both dogs and cats are now kept purely as pets.
• They are very different animals, with different care needs, traits and abilities.
• It is a common perception that people are either “cat-lovers” or “dog-lovers”.
• It is a common perception that people tend to have preferences for one, and negative beliefs about and attitudes towards, the other.

Example of closing statements at the end of the introduction:

This essay will examine both cats’ and dogs’ behaviour and abilities, the benefits of keeping them as pets, and whether people’s perceptions of their nature matches current knowledge and understanding.

Main body: paragraphs

The body of the essay should be organised into paragraphs. Each paragraph should deal with a different aspect of the issue, but they should also link in some way to those that precede and follow it. This is not an easy thing to get right, even for experienced writers, partly because there are many ways to successfully structure and use paragraphs. There is no perfect paragraph template.

The theme or topic statement

The first sentence, or sometimes two, tells the reader what the paragraph is going to cover. It may either:

• Begin a new point or topic, or
• Follow on from the previous paragraph, but with a different focus or go into more-specific detail. If this is the case, it should clearly link to the previous paragraph.

The last sentence

It should be clear if the point has come to an end, or if it continues in the next paragraph.

Here is a brief example of flow between two summarised paragraphs which cover the historical perspective:

It is known from hieroglyphs that the Ancient Egyptians believed that cats were sacred. They were also held in high regard, as suggested by their being found mummified and entombed with their owners (Smith, 1969). In addition, cats are portrayed aiding hunters. Therefore, they were both treated as sacred, and were used as intelligent working companions. However, today they are almost entirely owned as pets.

In contrast, dogs have not been regarded as sacred, but they have for centuries been widely used for hunting in Europe. This developed over time and eventually they became domesticated and accepted as pets. Today, they are seen as loyal, loving and protective members of the family, and are widely used as working dogs.

There is never any new information in a conclusion.

The conclusion usually does three things:

• Reminds your readers of what the essay was meant to do.
• Provides an answer, where possible, to the title.
• Reminds your reader how you reached that answer.

The conclusion should usually occupy just one paragraph. It draws together all the key elements of your essay, so you do not need to repeat the fine detail unless you are highlighting something.

A conclusion to our essay about cats and dogs is given below:

Both cats and dogs have been highly-valued for millenia, are affectionate and beneficial to their owners’ wellbeing. However, they are very different animals and each is 'better' than the other regarding care needs and natural traits. Dogs need regular training and exercise but many owners do not train or exercise them enough, resulting in bad behaviour. They also need to be 'boarded' if the owner is away and to have frequent baths to prevent bad odours. In contrast, cats do not need this level of effort and care. Dogs are seen as more intelligent, loyal and attuned to human beings, whereas cats are perceived as aloof and solitary, and as only seeking affection when they want to be fed. However, recent studies have shown that cats are affectionate and loyal and more intelligent than dogs, but it is less obvious and useful. There are, for example, no 'police' or 'assistance' cats, in part because they do not have the kinds of natural instincts which make dogs easy to train. Therefore, which animal is better depends upon personal preference and whether they are required to work. Therefore, although dogs are better as working animals, cats are easier, better pets.

Download our basic essay structure revision sheet

Download this page as a PDF for your essay structure revision notes

Better Essays: Signposting

Paragraphs main body of an assessment

Module: Beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay

Introduction to organically structured essays, what you’ll learn to do: recognize characteristics of organically structured essays.

High school writing often emphasizes formulaic structure, such as the five-paragraph theme or the three-point essay. Those structures are appropriate as an introduction to academic writing because they teach writers to make a point and use evidence to support it in an organized way. Those structures are especially useful when responding to standardized tests under time pressure. In college, though, you’ll be writing in a wide variety of disciplines for many different purposes. You’ll need to move beyond formulaic structures and learn how to develop and organize your ideas more organically. So, what’s the difference between formulaic and organic structure? Read on to find out.

• Organically Structured Essays. Authored by : Karen Forgette. Project : UM PLATO Project. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Piano — What Does Piano Mean To You?

What Does Piano Mean to You?

• Categories: Classical Music Piano

About this sample

Words: 595 |

Published: Jun 6, 2024

Words: 595 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, body paragraph 1: emotional release, body paragraph 2: intellectual challenge, body paragraph 3: personal growth.

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Verified writer

• Expert in: Entertainment

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3.5 pages / 1551 words

2 pages / 1010 words

5 pages / 2364 words

5 pages / 2113 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Piano

Learning how to play the piano is an invaluable skill that can provide a lifetime of enjoyment and personal growth. Not only does playing the piano improve cognitive abilities and enhance creativity, but it is also a great way [...]

“The Piano Lesson”, written by August Wilson, utilizes the relationship between past, present and future to convey a deeper message of power through ancestry. The key symbol in this story is an old classical piano engraved [...]

From the American Revolution onward, the United States has gained international recognition as a land of hope and equal opportunity. America’s founding fathers imagined the nation to be a place of widespread promise, operating [...]

Maxine Kingston’s The Woman Warrior wrestles with the importance of language for Chinese-American women, using Kingston's own life experiences as the novel’s foundation. In the book’s final chapter, “A Song for a Barbarian [...]

Identity is fluid. Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (first performed 1895), affirms this concept. The play asserts the notion that we, as humans, carve our own identity through conscious decision. In doing so, Wilde interrogates [...]

The fairy tale of Bluebeard has fascinated writers, filmmakers, photographers, and artists throughout history and across national boundaries. Coming from the European oral tradition, the first, and most famous, written version [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

Trump called ‘Apprentice’ contestant a racist slur, former producer says

Bill Pruitt, who served as a producer on the reality show, said in an online essay that Trump used the slur when discussing who would win the show’s first season. “‘Yeah,’ he says to no one in particular, ‘but, I mean, would America buy a [n-word] winning?’” Pruitt wrote.

Former president Donald Trump used a racist slur while discussing a contestant on “The Apprentice” during a recorded conversation two decades ago, a former producer for the show wrote in a new essay .

The producer, Bill Pruitt, said Trump made the comment while deciding between a Black finalist, Kwame Jackson, and a White finalist, Bill Rancic, in the finale of the show’s first season, which aired in 2004. As Trump adviser Carolyn Kepcher, who served as a judge on the show, began advocating for Jackson, Trump winced multiple times and questioned Jackson’s performance on the show, Pruitt wrote.

“I mean, would America buy a [n-word] winning?” Trump asked, according to Pruitt in his essay that Slate published Thursday.

Trump ultimately picked Rancic and awarded him a job at the Trump Organization. The reality competition series ran for 15 seasons, helping make Trump a household name before his first presidential campaign in 2016. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024, again running against President Biden after losing to him in 2020.

Trump’s campaign said Pruitt’s account was a “completely fabricated … story that was already peddled in 2016.”

“Nobody took it seriously then, and they won’t now, because it’s fake news,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Post. “Now that Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats are losing the election and Black voters are rejecting their policies, they are bringing up old fake stories from the past because they are desperate.”

Trump has a long history of espousing antagonistic views toward African Americans. He declined to apologize in 2019 for taking out ads in 1989 that targeted the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino men who were wrongly convicted of raping a jogger in New York City. And Trump gained political notoriety during Barack Obama’s presidency by embracing the false claim that Obama — the nation’s first Black president — was ineligible to be president because he was not a natural-born citizen.

During the first year of his presidency, Trump drew widespread condemnation when he said there were “ very fine people on both sides ” of a 2017 white nationalist and supremacist rally in Charlottesville that turned violent.

Despite his history, Trump has been making increasing appeals to Black voters in his race against Biden, including during a South Bronx rally last week .

Pruitt, one of four producers who worked on the show in its first two seasons, said he was bound by an “expansive nondisclosure agreement” that expired this year. He would have faced a $5 million fine or possibly jail time if he violated the agreement, he said.

Pruitt said the conversation was recorded as part of the show’s efforts to ensure such off-air deliberations did not run afoul of federal regulations for game shows.

Jackson, the contestant Pruitt says Trump described using the slur, said in a 2016 interview with Salon that at the time he was on the show, he did not think race played a role in his loss to Rancic. But Jackson said he later came to believe race factored into the outcome.

Jackson spoke out against Trump’s 2016 candidacy in the interview , saying he has “no interest in supporting someone who I think is, at his core, racist.”

The essay also described multiple instances in which Trump made sexist remarks about the appearance of women working on the show. Trump once told a female camera operator to get off an elevator because she was “too heavy,” Pruitt recalled. Trump also told other people on the set that another female camera operator was a “beautiful woman” who is “all I want to look at,” according to the former producer.

There has been intrigue for years surrounding possible unreleased tapes from “The Apprentice,” especially after the 2016 campaign. Weeks before that election, a recording surfaced from a 2005 hot-mic conversation with “Access Hollywood” co-anchor Billy Bush in which Trump boasted about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women.

The creator of “The Apprentice,” celebrity producer Mark Burnett, said at the time that he “does not have the ability nor the right to release footage or other material from ‘The Apprentice.’ ”

Trump said in a 2018 social media post that Burnett told him there were “NO TAPES of the Apprentice” where he used the same racist slur that Pruitt attributed to him. Trump called it a “terrible and disgusting word.” At the time, Trump was responding to claims by former White House aide Omarosa Manigault-Newman — once a contestant on the show — that there was a tape of him using the slur during the show’s filming.

Efforts to reach Burnett for comment Thursday through multiple publicly listed points of contact were unsuccessful.

Pruitt’s account comes as Biden is working to shore up his support among Black voters against Trump in their November election rematch. Biden and Vice President Harris, who is Black, visited Philadelphia on Wednesday to launch an initiative called “Black Voters for Biden-Harris.”

Responding to Pruitt’s essay, Biden’s campaign said it was more proof that Trump is a “textbook racist who disrespects and attacks the Black community every chance he gets, and the most ignorant man to ever run for president.”

“No one is surprised that Donald Trump, who entered public life by falsely accusing Black men of murder and entered political life spreading lies about the first Black president, reportedly used the N-word to casually denigrate a successful Black man,” Biden campaign spokesperson Jasmine Harris said in a statement. “Anyone notice a pattern?”

Election 2024

Get the latest news on the 2024 election from our reporters on the campaign trail and in Washington.

Who is running?: President Biden and Donald Trump secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency . Here’s how we ended up with a Trump-Biden rematch .

Presidential debates: Biden and Trump agreed to a June 27 debate on CNN and a Sept. 10 debate broadcast by ABC News.

Key dates and events: From January to June, voters in all states and U.S. territories will pick their party’s nominee for president ahead of the summer conventions. Here are key dates and events on the 2024 election calendar .

Abortion and the election: Voters in about a dozen states could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. Biden supports legal access to abortion , and he has encouraged Congress to pass a law that would codify abortion rights nationwide. After months of mixed signals about his position, Trump said the issue should be left to states . Here’s how Biden’s and Trump’s abortion stances have shifted over the years.