The readability of your essay depends on the formatting and the vocabulary you use. If you are doing academic writing, your professor is going to score you based on your essay formatting as well as the content of your essay. If you are writing an essay for business purposes, you need to properly format your essay to increase readability and make your essay attractive.
What is the Importance of Essay Formatting?
According to studies, the format of your essay accounts for at least 10% of your overall grade. Ten percent may look small, but it can make a huge difference between scoring "A" or "D" in your academic writing.
You should know what formatting that is required for a specific essay even before you begin writing. You can as well set out a day to properly ensure that your essay sticks to the proper format requested by your academic supervisor.
The main purpose of essay formatting is to improve the readability of your essay. Format helps those reading your essay to easily assimilate the points enumerated in your essay. Without proper formatting, even the most interesting essay can look very boring.
Common Essay Formatting Styles
There are many types of essay formatting styles available. In some cases, you will be required to write an essay based on a particular format. If you are given an essay task without a specific format requirement, we recommend that you should use the most common formatting style according to your location or school.
Below are some of the most common essay formatting styles:
• MLA
• APA
• Harvard
• Chicago
One may ask what the differences between these styles are. The differences between these formatting styles depend on their title, page numbering, margins, indentation, the spacing between lines, binding, font size, paragraphs, and proofreading.
You can get a guide on each of these formatting styles online. The soft copy or even the hard copy guide can easily be purchased online. You will need to understand how they are used to write your given essay. Another option will be to hire a professional essay writer to help you out with the formatting.
How to Number your Essay Pages and Use Paragraphs Correctly
You should pay attention to the numbering of your essay pages. The recommended format is to number your pages in consecutive order. The number of each page should be put in the upper right-hand corner of each page and it should be half an inch from the top and flush with the right margin.
Another good tip for numbering is to keep them as simple as possible. Don't try to make them look sophisticated by putting periods after page numbers or underlining them. Avoid embellishing them with graphics of any kind. A good tip is to use Arabic numerals (i.e 1,2,3). Arabic numerals are more common and easy to understand compared to Roman numerals (I, II, III).
How to Add Spacing between Words and Sentences
The best practice when it comes to adding space between words is to leave a single space between each word in a sentence. After each comma, colon or semi-colon, leave only a single space. Adding space in front of the punctuation at the end of a sentence is not allowed; endeavor to avoid this practice.
Traditionally, you can add double spaces between sentences. However, in recent time, most people are using only a single space between sentences. If you are not entirely sure about this, endeavor to ask your supervisor to get a clear picture of what he needs.
How to Write Your Essay Title
When writing your essay title, you must capitalize the first letter of each word in a title. However, there are some exceptions. You are not required to capitalize articles such as "a", "the", "an" and also avoid capitalizing prepositions "of", "on", "in", "over" and more.
Using Double Spacing and Wide Margins
If you are writing an academic essay, it is important that you leave enough space between the lines of your essay. The reason for this is to leave adequate space for your essay supervisor to leave his comments for you. This will help you improve your next essay writing.
Note that if you leave double space between lines, it is, therefore, a good practice to leave four spaces between paragraphs so that the paragraph can be easily distinguishable.
Conclusion
Writing a good essay demands that you first understand the requirements of the essay; your focus shouldn't be on only the topic or the content of your essay, you should understand what format is required of you. If you are in doubt, endeavor to ask your supervisor. Learning correct formatting takes time, if you don't have time for this, you simply need to outsource your essay work to professionals to ensure you get a polished and well-formatted essay.
If you struggle with your academic essay and want qualified assistance on research, writing and formatting your college paper, you can order this assistance from Personal Writer. We have successfully been in the business of custom essay writing for more than 10 years. Get your paper today and use the expertise of our professional writers!
