INFORMATIVE ESSAY

Table of Contents

• What an Informative Essay is (and What it is Not)
• Being a News Reporter
• Typical Informative Essay Topics
• Informative Essay Writing Process
• Some Informative Essay Examples

What an Informative Essay is (and What it is Not)

To inform. That is the obvious point of an informative essay. You will be gathering facts on a given topic, organizing that information, and presenting it to a reader. The purpose is to educate your reader and hopefully increase their understanding so that they may come to their own conclusions. It is not your purpose to impose or provide your own biases or opinions. Those are the things for persuasive and argumentative essays. So, watch yourself. It’s easy to insert your own opinions.

Being a News Reporter

Newspapers are usually divided into sections. There is a large section devoted to actual news events. These are reported objectively and follow the answers to the questions, who, what, where, when and why (sometimes how). The purpose of these articles is to inform the reading public of events, circumstances, etc. And reporters do not inject their own opinions. Those articles are reserved for the editorial sections, sometimes now called “op-eds,” or may even be in such sections as book and movie reviews, or as those created by regular columnists.

Informative essays can be about virtually anything as long a there is information on a subject for someone to learn – everything from changing a tire, to the destruction of the coral reef, to life in the Himalayas, and anything in between. An informative essay can even be the result of an interview, so long as it remains factual and objective. That does not mean that the interviewee will necessarily be objective – only your reporting must be. 

If you are struggling for a topic, here are some general areas that should give you ideas of interest:

• Famous People
• Historical Events
• Lifestyles
• Sports
• College Life
• Careers 
• Addictions
• Population Growth
• Climate Change
• Poverty
• Mental Diseases
• Eating Disorders
• Cyberbullying
• Nutrition
• Famous Criminals
• Immigration

Informative Essay Writing Process

The process for how to write an informative essay is something that should not be foreign to you. After all, you have written essays before. But here’s the thing about informative essays: unless you are an expert on a topic of choice, you are in for some research. You need facts and data, not personal thoughts and opinions. 

1. Research your topic thoroughly, and use reputable resources. As you do your research, be sure to keep track of those source materials, so that you can cite them when you write your essay.
2. Organize your research into sub-topics that will become paragraphs of your essay. Depending upon the length requirement, you will have anything from 3 to 7 or ore sub-topics. Each sub-topic should cover one aspect of your topic. So, if you are writing on mental illnesses, for example, you may want to narrow that topic to even one disease, and then cover the symptoms as separate paragraphs.

3. Once you have your sub-topics identified, you are ready to craft an informative essay outline. A lot of students skip this step, but not wise at all. You need to have some kind of an organizer, so you don’t get off track. No need for a formal outline – just list your sub-topics and the details you intend to include in each of them.
4. Write your rough draft from the outline, but don’t worry about our introduction or even your thesis statement yet. Get the body paragraphs written with solid topic sentences and good transitions between those paragraphs.
5. Once your essay body is written, review it and determine the overall point you are intending to make. This will become the “meat” of your topic sentence. If you struggle with topic sentences, do a bit of study on how they are formed.
6. Now you are ready for your introduction. This is the most important part of your essay because it will either hook your readers or turn them off. There are several things you can do to provide a good hook:

• For an informative essay, a startling statistic is often a great way to begin your introduction. If, for example, you are speaking to poverty in America, you might begin with the statistic that 14 million children in this country go to bed hungry each night.
• Beginning an introduction with a very cool quote is also a great start. Plus, it stimulates some curiosity – what does this quote have to do with your essay?
• Still, a third hook can be a short anecdote. Tell a brief story to show that what you will be speaking to is important. “Billy gets free breakfast and lunch at school each day. But his cupboards at home are bare, and he will have to do his homework on an empty stomach tonight.”

You will need to give your introduction some serious and creative thought, if you intend to pique enough interest for a reader to move forward.

No need to speak to the rest of the process. You know the drill. You edit and revise that first draft and get help if you need it. Your final copy meets all of the format and citation specifications of your instructors (they get irritated if you don’t, and irritated instructors are never good for your grade).

Some Informative Essay Examples

You can find examples of informative essays all over the web. Read several, and if you can find some on the topic you have chosen, all the better. But be mindful that plagiarism is easily detectable, and you will get caught. Don’t risk it. And as you do your research on a topic you will also come across journal or newspaper articles on that topic. Review these, so that you understand how these authors avoid injecting biases and opinions while just reporting the factual information.