The fear of a clean sheet is familiar even to experienced writers; for students, the more serious problem may be how to begin entering an essay.

How to start writing an essay

Examples of essays that can be found on the Internet are very diverse. At its core, the essay genre involves considerable creative freedom (far more than coursework and diploma regulated by standards and methodological manuals). The topic of the essay is usually different problem and debatable – in this work it is not enough just to retell written in the textbook, as often happens in the abstract, or to apply the method of solving the problem, as in the control.

When writing in the introduction essay, you can be guided by an example of the logic of construction, familiar from the abstract, and start with the relevance of the topic.

Example 1

At the same time, we must not forget that the essay is characterized by a journalistic rather than a scientific style of speech, therefore, patterns like “the relevance of the topic of work is due to …” are not relevant to it; on the other hand, rhetorical questions and appeals to the reader are admissible: “Have you ever thought about whether …” – or, alternatively, “Few people think that…”.

The introduction to the essay may include the following aspects:

• Relevance of the topic.
• Historical review, the degree of knowledge of the problem, the scientific interest shown to it.
• Characteristics of the object of study (problem area), its state and key terminology.

Types of entries in the essay

Before you write an entry in an essay, it is useful to familiarize yourself with the types of entries that are possible for an essay. Examples of the most popular varieties (in fact, much more):

• Historical entry.

Example 2

To make it clear what we are talking about, we will give the text of the entry from Star Wars: “Once upon a time, in a far-away galaxy …”. Fairy tales begin in the same way. It is applicable to the essay – you can compare the past and the present: “A few centuries ago, money was made of precious metals, and mankind did not know what inflation is.”

• Biographical introduction. It is appropriate if this essay is about a person (or his work).
• Analytical entry. You can start an essay by defining key terms (appearing in the heading or relevant to the presentation):

Example 3

At the household level, every adult knows what money is, but economics has not yet formulated a clear definition of this concept.

• Quote entry. As the first sentence of the essay, you can use a quotation suitable for the meaning of one of the great ones (scholars, writers, politicians). In this case, the main part of the essay can both confirm and refute the content of the quotation.
• Personal entry. You can talk about personal experience, which led to the choice of topics.

How to make an entry in the essay

Entry into the essay is not allocated as a separate block (no title is made like “Introduction” or “Introduction”), it is not placed on a separate page. After the introduction, no empty lines are needed – the subsequent text immediately begins. Due to the small volume of most essays, the volume of the entry is usually less than a page (several paragraphs of text). It is necessary to provide a logical transition between the introductory part and the main text.

When making an entry, the same settings are used (from a technical point of view) as in the entire text (no need to make it in italics or in other ways): most often it is Times New Roman, 12 or 14 size, one and a half line spacing, indent “red lines” at 1.25 centimeters.