Analytical Essay: What? why? how? where? and when? are some of the fundamental terminologies that one should keep in mind while writing an analytical essay. An analytical essay is not a summary of an event or a movie or a book or any generic topic for that matter but it is an analysis from the reader’s point of view. An analytical essay can be written on various topics right from abstract to politics to scientific research to movies and books or even statistics and data.
In this particular article on how to write an analytical essay, we shall be covering various answer that a student might have while writing an analytical essay. At the end of the article, the student will be able to answer the following questions about the analytical essay.
- What is an analytical essay?
- How to choose a topic for an analytical essay?
- How to write an analytical essay?
The above 3 questions are the most important ones that one should know before starting with an analytical essay. Analytical essays are not just confined to literature students but it also helps science and management students to articulate their points of view in a structured manner so that the reader understands it at one go.
What is an Analytical Essay?
An analytical essay is an essay where the writer presents his point of view or argument or assumption on the given particular topic. And like a character analysis essay, in an analytical essay, the writer should, to an extent, be biased because this essay is all about one’s point of view and line of thinking. An analytical essay is not an essay that gives the highlight of the topic or a summary of the topic but it’s only a direction of an argument with logical and critical reasoning on the given topic. The objective of an analytical essay is to break the topic down into silos and analyse each of the silos from one particular angle.
Before jumping into writing a particular topic one needs to keep in mind that choosing to write a topic can itself be a daunting task. Given the vast plethora of topics in various fields, this step in itself can be overwhelming. One of the easiest ways to choose a particular topic is to go with the field that one is already strong and well informed about but more often than not the writer will have less say in choosing the topic.
From the student’s point of view, to write an analytical essay on the topic might be given by the teacher for his or her professor and from an employees point of view, the topic might be given by his or her manager or from a freelance writers point of you the topic might be handed over by his client and that is the reason the writer will have very less say in choosing the topic. However, even if the topic is entirely alien to the writer the best way to start is to conduct a rudimentary google search on the topic. Firstly, one needs to understand the basics and fundamentals of the given topic and then dive into the integrities and details about the same.
How to Choose A Topic for An Analytical Essay?
Like we discussed above, the writer will have very little say in choosing the topic but this part of the article talks about how to choose the particular silo in the given topic. This means, for example, if the topic is about cricket the content is a huge spectrum and one will have enough freedom to choose the particular topic or the style of writing and how to choose this particular Silo is what we are going to discuss below.
Irrespective of which topic is given to you and even though if you feel that you are well informed about the topic, the safest thing to do is to do rudimentary internet research on the topic and when the topics are scientific research or data analysis, the best way to go about it is to scroll through a few trusted websites on the Internet for good and reliable content. One needs to keep in mind that paraphrasing of the content already available on the internet is of no avail because an analytical essay is all about the writer’s point of you and his perception about the topic and hence the writer should read about the topic from a 360-degree overview and then start analysing from one particular angle.
The most popular and easy example that one can choose is a political analysis essay. Every writer will have his or her own bias and favourites regarding the political situation in the country and writing an analytical essay on the political arena is the best way to start for an amateur. This essay should be used as a platform to put out our thoughts and convert our line of thinking into a line of words but one needs to keep in mind that the tone and texture of the analytical essay should be such that it should touch upon all the angles of the given topic but the crux of the content should be the point of view that the writer is trying to propagate.
How to Write An Analytical Essay?
To start off with, an analytical essay should be written on a topic that one is already familiar with but when that is not the case the very first thing to do is conduct rudimentary research on the topic, brainstorm different ideas, talk to different people and get different opinions on that particular topic before forming one’s own opinion. In fact, an analytical essay is one such essay where the reader is expected to biased and one-directional but when the topic is unfamiliar, the writer must understand the overall 360-degree view of the topic and hence both the white and black and the right and left wings of the topic should be read and the writer should make an informed choice based on his or her line of thinking before writing an analytical essay.
Fundamental Things of an Analytical Essay
The fundamental things that one should remember while writing an analytical essay are the following:
- Objective statement
- Brief
- Opinion
- Supporting statements
- Outline
- Conclusion
The chronology that is mentioned above need not be strictly followed because sometimes certain people prefer an introduction or brief before the objective statement and some people prefer an outline before the brief and then objective statement. The chronology might be different but the above 6 points are the basic necessities for an analytical essay to be complete.
Objective Statement
The objective statement should not be more than three to four lines and in this particular article, we have mentioned objective statement to be the first part of the analytical essay because the reader should know the reason why this essay is being written before being introduced to the topic right away. But in certain cases, the introduction of the topics should come at the top where the cases are alienated and rare. Usually, in scientific journals or management journals, brief and outlines are given first so that the reader is made aware of the topic and then the objective statement will be followed. The chronology of the analytical essay body is left to the discretion of the writer and it varies from writer to writer.
Brief
A brief or summary should not be more than two paragraphs and the reason, why this brief is written, is to make the reader aware of the topic in question. The brief should be as neutral as possible and the objective of writing these two paragraphs is to give a basic idea to the reader of what is coming next in the analytical essay’s body. Even though the analytical essay itself can be biased or uni-directional, the brief and summary part of the essay should always be neutral and unbiased.
Opinion
The third part of an analytical essay is the opinion. This is the most important section of the analytical essay and is the crux of the entire article. And before coming to the opinion, the reader should make sure that the objective statement and brief is being read because without the outline of the topic if one starts reading the opinion directly, then they would not understand the head and tail of the article and that is the reason opinion is the middle part of the article and the most important part one. Usually, people keep this part of the article somewhere between 400 to 500 words but then again it depends on the type of topic that is being scrutinized. For scientific research articles, the opinion might be as big as four to five pages or management journals the opinion might be as small as two to three paragraphs. For an abstract blog article, the opinion part of the analytical essay my be between 600 to 800 Words.
One has to keep in mind that the opinion of an article should be totally different from the one that is being written under briefs or summary. The opinion is all about expressing the line of thought of the writer and not giving a summary of the topic in itself. If the summary and brief part is kept out, then it makes sense for the writer to give a small introduction about the topic in the opinion section but this can confuse the reader and hence these three sections should be divided as clearly as possible. The opinion part of the article should be biased and unidirectional or bidirectional. To make one’s opinion on an article, a neutral and unbiased approach makes no sense because if the opinion is neutral and unbiased it would be in synchronisation with the summary of the article.
Opinionated parts of the articles should be backed by logical and critical reasoning and for this, the entire scientific research journals or movies or books should be read thoroughly so that supportive and suggestive statement is mentioned to back the opinion written in the article.
Outline
The outline part of the analytical essay is also important and the objective of writing the outline section is to give a quick highlight of what has been written already and to connect the dots between the opinion of the writer and the summary of the article in question.
Conclusion of an Analytical Essay
Last but not the least, the conclusion is also one of the most important parts of the article and here the writer must figure out a way to highlight the entire article in less than 100 to 120 words. No new points, opinions, arguments, or critical reasoning statements should be mentioned in the conclusion part of the article.