The academic essays prompt the writer to take on a subject matter and use critical and analytical thinking to come up with ideas and arguments to answer the prompt. If you are assigned to write a persuasive essay examples you should have a complete understanding of it The essay can ask you to argue for or against a subject, it can ask you to provide analysis and evaluation on a subject or a couple of subjects, or it can call for you to dissect a complex topic into its various constituents.

Many writers provide a response consisting of only ideas and opinions and end up with a weak essay. Such writers end up taking help from a free essay writer to rescue their essay.

These writers should understand that it’s not enough to come out with original ideas and arguments alone. The readers expect you to back and align your ideas with the expert information produced by experts and scholars in their field. This information is taken out of scholarly sources and is used by writers to induce authority and credibility into the ideas and points.

The sources can be anything from scholarly papers to academic written and reviewed by experts in the subject’s field. The information that is used in the essay can range from quotes, statistics, observations, etc. and they can be used as direct quotes, paraphrased text, or summaries.

Why use outside source information?

The use of source information does more than support your ideas and make your essay whole:

Helps demonstrate your knowledge and research

When you cite various sources and include in your essay information borrowed from experts, you demonstrate your knowledge that you have gained through your research.

Induce ethos in your writing

When you align your ideas, points, and arguments with quotes and ideas of experts and scholars in their fields you borrow their expertise and bring them into your essay. You tell the reader: ‘since the scholars agree with my points and claims, you should too’.

Muster support for your opinions and ideas

There are times when you cannot back your ideas or opinions with direct evidence and examples. At times like these, it is important not to abandon your strong points, especially if you are able to find various instances where you find experts and scholars’ opinions aligning with and supporting your conclusions; no matter, if they align indirectly. This lets the readers appreciate the reasoning as well as the ideas.

Include evidence that can be independently verified

One of the strongest evidence you can use in your essays are outcomes of experimentations, surveys, and observations. This is concrete evidence that shows the results in numbers and facts. The readers often find such supporting evidence as helpful in convincing them as they can verify the number with minimal research of their own.

Different ways source information is used in essays

There are three main ways to borrow information from scholarly sources and whichever way you adopt in your essay, the information should be cited and referenced properly.

Quoting

When you borrow the text from the source word to word in your essay you are quoting the source. A source should be quoted when you cannot find any better way to communicate the message within it. The quote should be closed in quotation marks and cited soon afterward. It is useful to introduce the author before the quotation.

Paraphrasing

This allows you to borrow the central message of the text or its intent and present it in your own words, instead of quoting it word by word. Paraphrasing shows effort done on the part of the writer, otherwise, the essay will be filled with quotes and no writing of your own. If you're writing an analytical essay example about a piece of writing, you'll look into how the text was written and why the author chose to write it

Summarizing

At times it is useful to summarize the content of research and use it to support your ideas. This helps you save the essay space for other ideas and information. 

Related Resources:

Things to Keep in Mind when Writing Book Review Essays

What is an influential exposition, and how to compose it?

Understanding the Idea and Importance of Intelligent Exposition

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