A lot of people have trouble with setting up a paper. This is a simple guide that will show you how to basically organize almost any paper you need to write. At the very least, your paper should follow these guidelines.

Your paper should have three parts, an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. This is what should be in each part:

 

Introduction

  • You should introduce your topic and give any background information that the audience might need to know.
  • At the beginning, you should have something interesting to hook your audience. Don't start out, "I'm going to write about (insert boring topic here)."
  • You should have a thesis statement. A thesis statement should be the main idea of your paper, summed up to one or two sentences. It should match the organization of your paper.
  • You should also briefly state (if this isn't a narrative) the topics you will talk about in each paragraph or section.

 

Body


The body is simply the whole middle of your paper. It should have at least one paragraph, but most papers have three or more. Each paragraph should meet the following requirements:

  • It needs a topic sentence that states the main idea of the paragraph. It will be like a "mini-thesis" of your paragraph. This usually goes at the beginning. This topic sentence should relate back to the thesis.
  • All of the sentences in this paragraph should relate to the topic sentence. 
  • There should not be any information that doesn't relate back to the topic sentence.
  • At the end (or at the beginning of the next paragraph) there should be some type of transition that indicates you are going to talk about something new. Transition phrases include, "In addition to," "Another...," "However," etc. When trying to write a transition, try to think of why you organized your paragraphs that way.  How are these topics related?

 

Conclusion


When you write your conclusion, try to remember the purpose of your writing. What should the reader have gotten out of reading your paper? Look at your introduction. Did you accomplish all you meant to? Remember, this is your last chance to get your point across to the reader. The conclusion should:

  • restate your thesis in different words.
  • restate all your main points Look at all your topic sentences, and make sure that there is some reference to each main idea.
  • not have any new information.
  • not say "In conclusion..." because it should be obvious enough to your reader that it is, in fact, a conclusion.