College Essay Writing Tips: Catching the Reader's Attention

It is difficult to believe that anyone in college has been able to actually avoid writing an essay at least once in their lifetime. Actually, the sole fact that you are already in college means that you had to write at least one essay before this: your admission essay (if not many other essays written for class in high school).

The fact that you may have a bit more experience with writing essays than you have with writing research papers does not mean that you feel that you can actually master this type of writing. As a matter of fact, essays can be quite misleading in the fact that they do give you more freedom when it comes to your creativity, but that they still need to follow some quite strict rules of writing. Things such as the basic structure of the genre and the general guidelines of the academic style in which you have to write it are as important in the case of an essay as they are in the case of a research paper or dissertation.

How to Write Essays that Are Interesting for the Reader

The hardest part about academic writing is keeping your readers’ interest alive. Even in those cases when your readers are knowledgeable and interested in the subject you are writing about, having a unique writing style will be extremely important if you want to attract the attention of your readers.

Essays may be generally easier to follow than other types of academic writing, but this does not mean that you should disregard the fact that you still need to keep your readers with their eyes on your work. Here are some of the things you will definitely want to keep in mind regarding college essays and the attention of the reader:

  1. Structure is more important than you may think. When they start reading an academic piece of writing, readers expect to find something that is actually well-structured and that they can follow with ease.
  2. Language is extremely important as well. Although you will have to be formal in the language you choose, try not to use words that are too complicated (outside of the jargon words, of course).
  3. Keep in mind this: readers usually remember what is written in the introduction and in the conclusion of a paper (and in the introduction and conclusion of a paragraph in the paper). What is in the very middle of the paper will most likely not be remembered, so do make sure to say the things that are most important either in the beginning or in the end of the essay or of a paragraph in your essay.