Different Kinds of Essays: What You Need to Know | UPSC Mains Essay Preparation PDF Download

Introduction

Ensuring the correct and visually pleasing format of an essay is crucial for the overall success of the project. A proper layout contributes to 10% of the total grade. While formatting alone may not be the sole factor influencing grades, it can be a distinguishing factor. Proper formatting enhances the readability of an essay, instilling in students the importance of attention to detail and adherence to established academic standards. This section highlights the significance of accurate layout and organization in an academic paper.
It delves into essential formatting considerations, encompassing the following:

1. Paper selection
2. Correct use of margins
3. Title page formatting
4. Page numbering and paragraphs
5. Spacing between lines; indentation
6. Titles of books, magazines, newspapers, or journals
7. Capitalisation
8. Table of contents
9. End of essay and binding your paper.

Paper

• The writer should use clean sheets of good quality paper. Type the text on one side only. Do not decorate the sheets as it is an academic piece of writing. Keep the text of your paper double spaced. 
• Use standard and approved fonts, either Times New Roman or Arial; font size 12. The font size and type vary according to the style followed, whether MLA, Harvard, or APA.

Margins

• It is important to pay attention to what your instructor advises you. Margins vary according to the style of referencing (APA, MLA, and Harvard). MLA format is the most commonly used format.
• Normally, margins of the essay should be 1’ (2.54 cm) at the top, bottom, left and right sides of each and every page. 1’ equals to 14 typed spaces. Exception is made for page numbers which are placed 1/2’ (1.27 cm) from the top upper-right hand corner, flushed to the right margin.

Title Page

• Different style guides offer instructions for creating a title page. The MLA Handbook, for instance, provides comprehensive guidance on referencing and source documentation. If no specific style is indicated, it is advisable to adhere to the instructions provided by the instructor. 
• This may include details such as page numbering for the first or second page, the choice between single or double spacing, and the preferred placement of the title (centered or left-aligned).

Numbering Pages and Paragraphs

• Keep the pages consecutively numbered, with numbers put in the upper right hand corner, flushed with the right margin and 1/2’ from the top. It is suggested that you type your last name just before each page number so that pages do not get misplaced. On page 4 of your essay, for example, your top right-hand corner should show: Mahesh.
• Use only Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and not I, II, III, IV, V) for the main body of the paper. Avoid decoration on the pages. Do not use a period after the page number.

Spacing between Lines

• To allow the teacher leave comments, keep the entire paper double spaced; please don’t forget to use 1-inch margins on all sides – this is for your teacher’s comments too.

Spacing between Words

• The author should include one space between words and one space following each comma, semi-colon, or colon. Traditionally, it has been customary to leave two spaces at the conclusion of every sentence, whether it concludes with a period, question mark, or exclamation mark. 
• However, in contemporary writing, it is entirely acceptable to use only one space after each punctuation mark. Importantly, there should be no space before a punctuation mark.

Indentation

• For writers using computers, it is recommended to indent their essays by 7 spaces or half an inch (1/2") at the start of each paragraph. Quotations that are set off should be indented by 10 spaces or one inch (1') from the left margin. During exams, candidates may be given the option to choose whether or not to indent their paragraphs. 
• Whichever choice is made, consistency must be maintained throughout the entire essay. Writers opting not to indent should begin each paragraph aligned with the left margin. Ensuring double-spacing between lines and quadruple-spacing between paragraphs is essential. Additionally, setoff quotations should be indented by 14 spaces or one inch (1') from the left margin.

Titles of Books, Magazines, Newspapers, or Journals

• The writer should underline the titles of all full-length works such as novels, plays, books, for example, Shakespeare’s Theatre. The writer need to put titles of shorter works in quotation marks—newspaper, journal, magazine articles, chapters of books or essays, for example, ‘Giving Back to the Earth: Western Helps Make a Difference in India’.For title citations in the text, every word other than articles (‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’), prepositions (such as ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘under’, ‘over’) and conjunctions (such as ‘and’, ‘because’, ‘but’, ‘however’), should be capitalised, unless they occur at the beginning of the title or subtitle, for example, ‘And Now for Something Completely Different: A Hedgehog Hospital.’ 
• To understand other complex details on how to cite titles and quotations within titles, sacred texts, shortened titles, exceptions to the rule, etc. the MLA Handbook should be consulted.

Writing an Essay in All Capital Letters

• The writers should not write the entire text in capital letters and should capitalise only when necessary. Unnecessary capitalisation will eventually lead to unwanted problems of reduced reader comprehension, slow reading speed and consequently would cause irritation.

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents is not required for a short essay. However, for a long essay, a Table of Contents relating each section to its corresponding page number could be helpful for the reader. A Table of Contents comprises following sections: Introduction, Body— use main section headings—Conclusion—Summary, Works Cited or References and the corresponding page numbers where each section begins.

End of Essay

An essay does not require any special word, phrase or fancy symbol to mark its end. Rather, a period at the end of the last sentence marks the end of the essay.

The Importance of Binding the Essay

Attach the sheets of paper using a staple in the upper left-hand corner; if a stapler is unavailable, a paper clip can be used as an alternative. Avoid using pins or folding the paper. In the case of significant exams, candidates may choose to have their paper sheets bound. Even if neatly numbered and arranged in an envelope or folder, loose sheets should not be submitted for the essay. Crafting an essay with a flawless format and structure is a challenging task that demands extensive practice. Initially, students may find it tough to format essays accurately, but with diligence and perseverance, they can master the art of essay formatting.
Various authors, ranging from university students to professional essayists, use different forms and styles discussed as follows:

• Cause and Effect: The distinguishing features of a ‘cause and effect’ essay are causal chains connecting from a cause to an effect, careful use of language and chronological or emphatic order. A writer using this rhetorical method must evaluate the subject, decide the purpose, study the audience, have a critical thinking about different causes or consequences, create a thesis statement, organise the parts, assess the language, and decide on a conclusion. 
• Classification and Division: Classification is termed as categorising the objects into larger groups whereas the breaking of a larger whole into smaller segment is known as division. 
• Compare and Contrast: The characteristics of compare and contrast essays are the basis for comparison between two objects, points of comparison and analogies. It is grouped by object (chunking) or by point (sequential). Comparison emphasises upon the similarities between two or more similar objects while contrasting emphasises upon the differences between two or more objects. The writers writing a compare and contrast essay need to determine their purpose, study their audience, analyse the basis and points of comparison, create their thesis statement, organise and develop the comparison, and identify a conclusion. Compare and contrast is organised in an emphatic order.
• Descriptive: Descriptive writing is characterised by employing the sensory details that include sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste to capture the attention of the readers. It appeals to the physical senses, and uses details that are appealing to a reader’s physical, emotional or intellectual sensibilities. The rhetorical choices to be considered when using a description are determining the purpose, judging the audience, developing a dominant impression, applying descriptive language and organising the description. Generally, the description is organised in spatial order though it can also be in chronological or emphatic order. Keeping the scene in focus, description uses various language tools such as connotative language, denotative language, figurative language, metaphor and simile to arrive at a dominant impression. One university essay guide provides the definition of descriptive writing as ‘descriptive writing says what happened or what another author has discussed; it provides an account of the topic’. A significant creative form of descriptive essays is lyric essay.
• Dialectic: This form of essay is commonly used in Philosophy. In the dialectic form, the writers create a thesis and argument, then create a counterargument against their own argument and then develop a final and novel argument as a counter to the counterargument. The dialectic form provides the benefits of presenting the theme in a broader perspective while countering a possible flaw that may be present. 
• Exemplification: In an exemplification essay, the writer makes use of a generalisation and examples that are believable, relevant and representative including anecdotes. Writers need to analyse their subject, determine theirpurpose, study their audience, decide on specific examples, and organise all the parts together to present an argumentative essay.
• Familiar: In a familiar essay, the essayist describes as if it is addressing a single reader. He speaks about himself as well as a particular subject. According to Anne Fadiman ‘the genre’s heyday was the early nineteenth century’, and Charles Lamb was its greatest exponent. She also states that familiar essays uses the characteristics of both critical essay, using more brain than heart, and personal essay, using more heart than brain, in equal measures to provide a balanced view. 
• History: A history essay occasionally named as a thesis essay, presents an argument or claim based on one or more historical events and provides evidence, arguments and references in support of that claim. The text also provides clarification in support of the argument or claim made to the reader.
• Narrative: A narrative keeping its focus on the plot utilises various tools such as flashbacks, flash-forwards and transitions that often lead to a climax. The writers creating a narrative take into account its purpose, study their audience, provide their point of view, use dialogue and organise the narrative chronologically.
• Critical: It is a form of an argumentative piece of writing that carry out an objective analysis of the subject matter, focussed on to a single topic. The basic idea of the criticism is to provide the readers with an opinion either of positive or negative implication. Hence, a critical essay requires strong internal logic, research and analysis and sharp structure. Critical essay require sufficient evidence in relevance to the point made in the support of each argument. 
• Economics: An economics essay is the form of essay that could be started with either a thesis or a theme. The course of interaction taken by it could be both narrative and descriptive. Writer can even make it an argumentative essay if the need arises. After the essay is introduced, the author need to made the best use of his ability to bring out the economic rationality associated with it, to analyse it, evaluate it and draw conclusion. If the essay is presented in a narrative form then the writer need to bring out each aspect of the economic puzzle to the reader in a way that makes it clear and understandable to him. 
• Other logical structures: The structure of an essay can be organised in various forms its logical progression can also take many forms. Managing the movement of thoughts through an essay in an effective manner can have significant impact on its overall relevance and its ability to impress. Numerous alternative logical structures for essays visualised as diagrams are available that could be easily implemented or adapted to construct an argument.

Magazine or Newspaper Essays: Importance for Employment

Many magazines, especially with an intellectual bent, include essays such as, The Atlantic and Harpers. Many of the essay types in various forms and styles are adopted in magazine and newspaper essays, for example, descriptive essays, narrative essays, etc. Some essays are also printed in the op-ed section in newspapers. 

• Employment: Employment essays provide details of experience in a certain occupational field and are used for applying jobs, especially government jobs, in the United States. Similarly, for applying to certain US federal government positions, essays known as Knowledge Skills and Executive Core Qualifications are required. 

Application to the federal government job openings in the United States uses a series of narrative statements known as a KSA, or ‘Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities’. To determine the best applicants among several candidates qualifying for a job, KSAs are used along with resumes. Each job vacancy announces the knowledge, skills and abilities required for the successful performance of a position. KSAs are concise and focused essays related to one’s career and educational background that presumptively qualify one to perform the duties of the position being applied for.
For applying to the Senior Executive Service positions within the US Federal Government, a narrative statement known as Executive Core Qualification, or ECQ, is necessary to produce. Similar to KSAs, ECQs are used along with resumes to make choice for the best applicants among several candidates qualifying for a job. All the applicants applying to enter the Senior Executive Service, must demonstrate five executive core qualifications established by the Office of Personnel Management.

Forms of Non-literary Type Essays

• Visual Arts: An essay in the visual arts is a preliminary drawing or sketch which provides the basis for the final painting or sculpture, made as a test of the work’s composition. This meaning of the term, like several of those following, originates from the word essay’s meaning of ‘attempt’ or ‘trial’. 
• Music: In the domain of music, a set of ‘Essays for Orchestra’ based on the form and content of the music, were presented by the composer Samuel Barber instead of any extra-musical plot or story to guide the listener’s ear. 
• Film: A film essay also termed as ‘cinematic essay’ involves the evolution of a theme or an idea instead of a plot as such or the film literally being a cinematic accompaniment to a narrator reading an essay. From another point of view, an essay film could be interpreted as a documentary film visual basis along with a form of commentary that contains elements of self-portrait instead of autobiography, where the signature of the film maker, instead of his life story, is apparent. The cinematic essay uses tones and editing styles to often fuse documentary, fiction and experimental film making. Though the genre is not defined properly, but it might include works of early Soviet parliamentarians like Dziga Vertov and present-day film makers including Chris Marker, Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line (1988), Michael Moore (Roger & Me 1989), Bowling for Columbine (2002) and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Morgan Spurlock (Supersise Me: A Film of Epic Proportions) and Agnès Varda. Jean-Luc Godard identifies his recent work as‘film-essays’. Georges Méliès and Bertolt Brecht are the two film makers whose work was the antecedent to the cinematic essay. Méliès mixed actual footage with shots of a recreation of the event of the 1902 coronation of King Edward VII to make a short film—The Coronation of Edward VII (1902). Brecht, a playwright, experimented with film and included film projections into some of his plays. Another essay film F for Fake released in 1974 was made by Orson Welles in his own pioneering style The film dealt specifically with art forger Elmyr de Hory and generally with the themes of authenticity, deception and ‘fakery’.
  An article from David Winks Gray ‘The essay film in action’ states that, ‘the essay film became an identifiable form of film making in the 1950s and 1960s’. He states that, since that time, the tendency of essay films is ‘on the margins’ of the film making world. The essay films are of ‘peculiar searching, questioning tone’ which is ‘between documentary and fiction’ but without ‘fitting comfortably’ into either genre. Gray notes that similar to written essays, essay films ‘tend to marry the personal voice of a guiding narrator (often the director) with a wide swath of other voices’. The University of Wisconsin Cinematheque website repeats some of Gray’s comments; it calls a film essay an ‘intimate and allusive’ genre that ‘catches film makers in a pensive mood, ruminating on the margins between fictions and documentary’ in a way that is ‘refreshingly inventive, playful, and idiosyncratic’. 
• Photography: Photographic essay refers to an attempt which covers a topic with a linked series of photographs. Be it purely photographic works to photographs with captions or small notes to full text essays with a few or many accompanying photographs, both comes under photo essays. These can be in the form of non- ordered photographs to be viewed all at once or in an order chosen by the viewer or sequential in nature, where the intention is to view them in a particular order. Though all photo essays can be considered as collections of photographs, but all collections of photographs are not photo essays. Photo essays generally address a certain issue or attempt to capture the character of places and events.

Five-Part Essays and Their Advantage

The five-part essay, commonly referred to as the 'persuasive' or 'argumentative' essay, represents an advanced evolution of the basic five-paragraph essay. It is a more intricate and sophisticated form, with its origins deeply rooted in classical rhetoric. The primary distinction lies in its development after refining the 'body' of the simpler five-paragraph essay.
The specific names assigned to its five parts may vary across sources, yet they generally encompass the following components:

• Introduction: This segment presents a thematic overview of the topic, and introduction of the thesis;
• Narration: This segment presents a review of the background literature to familiarise the reader to the topic; also, a structural overview of the essay;
• Affirmation: In this segment the evidence and arguments in favour of the thesis are produced; 
• Negation: In this segment the evidence and arguments against the thesis are produced; these also require either ‘refutation’ or ‘concession’; 
• Conclusion: This segment presents the summary of the argument, and association of the thesis and argument with larger, connected issues. 

The five-part essay is less ‘thesis-driven’ and more balanced and fair as it includes the ‘narration’ and ‘negation’ (and its ‘refutation’ or ‘concession’) in comparison to the five-paragraph essay in which the ‘body’ is all ‘affirmation’. Rhetorically, Contrastive terms such as ‘but’, ‘however’, and ‘on the other hand’ are used to show the transition from affirmation to negation (and refutation or concession). Being purely formal, the five parts can be created and repeated at any length, from a sentence, though it would be a highly complex one; to the standard paragraphs of a regular essay; to the chapters of a book; and even to separate books themselves, though each book, while emphasising a particular part, would, of necessity, include the other parts also.
Another form of the five-part essay consists of: 

• Introduction: It is about introducing a topic. An important part of this is the three pronged thesis. 
• Body Paragraph 1: It explains the first part of the three pronged thesis. 
• Body Paragraph 2: It explains the second part of the three pronged thesis. 
• Body Paragraph 3: It explains the third part of the three pronged thesis.
• Conclusion: This part sums up the points and restate the thesis where first part refers to the introduction, the second part refers to the body, and the third part refers to the conclusion. The main emphasis of the five-part essay is in demonstrating the opposition and give-and-take of true argument. Based on the formula of ‘thesis + antithesis = synthesis’, dialectic is the foundation of the five-part essay.

A writer could also use:

• Introduction:
  • Hook (3 sentences),
  • Connector (3 sentences),
  • Thesis
• Body 1:
  • Topic Sentence,
  • Evidence,
  • Analysis (1),
  • Analysis (2),
  • Analysis (3),
  • Transition,
  • Evidence 2,
  • Analysis (1),
  • Analysis (2),
  • Analysis (3),
  • Concluding Sentence
• Body 2:
  • Topic Sentence,
  • Evidence,
  • Analysis (1),
  • Analysis (2),
  • Analysis (3),
  • Transition,
  • Evidence 2,
  • Analysis (1),
  • Analysis (2),
  • Analysis (3),
  • Concluding Sentence
• Body 3:
  • Topic Sentence,
  • Evidence,
  • Analysis (1),
  • Analysis (2),
  • Analysis (3),
  • Transition,
  • Evidence 2,
  • Analysis (1),
  • Analysis (2),
  • Analysis (3),
  • Concluding Sentence
• Conclusion:
  • Essayists should summarize all their elements and ensure their essay sounds finished.