A good academic essay is organized, and the ideas are logical and relevant. Organized means the essay follows a template - introduction, body, and conclusion. Familiarize yourself with these components and use them every time you write an academic paper. It must be second nature. Logical and relevant ideas mean you support your thesis with data and facts that strengthen your argument. They must relate to the question and the point you want to make.

Practice and perfect the grammar and sentence structures common in academic writing. For example, typical sentence patterns combine simple, compound, and complex sentences. Other devices such as noun forms and descriptive phrases are important. (We'll delve into grammar forms in a later post.)