How to Write an Informal Essay: A Complete Guide for Beginners and Experienced

An essay is one of the most popular assignments at educational institutions and pieces of writing around the world. What makes it so trendy? First, it is the best paper to express personal opinion. Second, it can be of different sizes, structures, and types, so it satisfies the demands of everyone, except for final written assignments like dissertations or thesis papers because these papers require a deep investigation of the topic and many pages to provide the required details. 

Generally, an essay is a piece of writing that helps a writer describe something or introduce a personal viewpoint, depending on the requirements. For example, an admission essay lets candidates surpass rivals and win the attention of the employer through unique idea, expression, and professional goals. What about the informal essay definition and examples? Let’s go deeper into details to clear everything out. 

What Is an Informal Essay and Why Do We Need It?

Informal writing serves informal purposes. As a rule, a person writes it to express oneself without the need to follow some rules that usually don’t let people concentrate and be sincere in their feelings and emotions. Traditionally, educators assign it to learn more about their students or their attitude to a personality, some notion, or an event. The only thing you should be careful about is your writing style. It mustn’t be sloppy; otherwise, it won’t be impressive.  A person who neglects grammar and simple rules cannot inspire or make the target reader believe in what he is saying.

What is the best way to learn more about informal essays? Definitely, the best method is to read informal essay examples to find out more about the ways you can express your opinion and yourself. Is an informal essay difficult? Everything depends on several factors:

• academic level
• language complexity
• purpose of an assignment
• genre of writing
• directions of an instructor

First, junior students regard informal writing as a very difficult assignment because it provides them with new requirements, and they don’t have related experiences. However, the more advanced a learner is, the more an educator or a reader expects to find in the paper.

Second, academic writing involves language of a higher complexity. Beginners usually use simple language, while school leavers are expected to utilize words and grammar of a higher complexity.

Third, the purpose of the assignment is significant. If it is for a simple self-expression, one can use any words to hit the goal. If it is a task of a college professor, students should break their heads and spend enough time composing decent writing to meet the supervisor’s expectations. 

Fourth, genres of writing can be different. It can be fiction and non-fiction. Depending on the purpose, writers can either be straightforward or use various stylistic devices to express personal opinions.

Fifth, if a person decides to write an informal personal essay independently, there will be no need to worry about instructions. If it is an educator’s task, it will be necessary to follow simple rules your teacher can ask to realize. 

To conclude, informal writing can be easy or difficult, depending on several factors. However, it usually serves as a channel between a writer and a reader. It conveys a writer’s emotions, feelings, or viewpoints because words are the best servants. Only the best writers can find matching words to express the idea and let the reader feel the same and agree on the point. 

What Is the Difference Between Formal and Informal Writing?

Formal writing is usually official. It has official requirements for a paper, including its formatting, structuring, lexical peculiarities, and language style. If a student is assigned to write a formal piece of writing, he or she will need to read carefully college requirements and follow them. Moreover, most students have to research the topic to be able to create a paper of the required length and depth. 

What is an informal essay as the opposite side of formal writing? Informality does not put pressure on a writer. As a rule, students are afraid of or just dislike the following requirements of formal writing.

1. Formatting style

Formatting is a nightmare for most students. It has so many things to care for, such as font (size and type), spacing, margins, word order, and other details. Except for that, there are several formatting styles that differ in small details, such as punctuation marks, spaces, font sizes, and other peculiarities. So, one should be attentive to literally everything to format a paper correctly. One of the hardest parts is the bibliography section, which all professors check from top to bottom.

1. Research

Another terrifying thing is topic research. The problem is not only in a pile of documents and books a student needs to read to finish writing but also in the trustability of sources. Many sources, especially online ones, are not credible. For example, everyone uses Wikipedia, but everyone can add its articles, which impacts its reliability. So, students have to bend over backward trying to verify the information they need to present in their formal papers. 

1. Emotions and subjectivity

Formal writing usually deletes all suppositions, predictions, and personal points of view. As a result, students feel uncomfortable when writing an essay on something. They have to read a lot or experiment to have a chance to sound neutral. Besides, most papers demand 100% objectivity, which is hard to achieve. Things become harder when students need to avoid 1st and 2nd person singular when presenting their topics. 

However, many students might be misled when getting an assignment to write an informal essay. 78% of students perform this task anyhow because the word “informal” is a common pitfall. This assignment does not mean “no rules at all,” and a student must keep in mind the following requirements.

• Grammar is significant.
• Spelling is vital.
• One can write it as fiction, so creativity is expected.
• Language should correspond to college requirements and the demands for the desired grades.
• The length can be different, but traditionally, it is medium or short. However, students must read college requirements attentively to avoid silly mistakes.
• Students should concentrate on the assigned topic or idea and develop it deliberately. 

Planning an Informal Essay Writing

Even though informal writing does not have some concrete requirements like formal writing, it is necessary to plan it properly to manage it successfully. How should you plan informal essay writing? Let’s figure it out.

1. Idea search

Nobody can feel inspired without a good idea for writing. Every person should write about things he or she is interested in or fascinated about. So, one should spend some time on searches. The better the topic is, the better the essay will be.

1. Study requirements

Informal writing fits many purposes. Traditionally, people write it to get a job or as a home assignment. Employers want to learn more about their candidates through unbiased and uncontrolled admission essays. Teachers assign informal papers to let students feel free and express their feelings and emotions without excessive pressure. 

1. Outline creation

Most experts recommend creating an informal outline for essay to provide the required information and not miss essential details. Even though not everyone needs outlines and planning, sometimes it helps to concentrate on things you want to say and neglect things you want to avoid. This technique is especially important for students who are limited in words. Outlining is the best assistant for students who have problems with too long phrases and overuse of long sentences. Plans let people exclude unnecessary information and introduce only valuable things.

1. Writing 

When a plan is ready, one can proceed to writing. It is better not to stop on the first variant of writing. If a person is in a bad mood, one should delay writing, take a rest, and write later. Exhaustion complicates things and turns writing into a very complex task. When a person is relaxed, task management becomes easier. Moreover, a rested brain makes fewer mistakes, so writing is more productive.

1. Check

Nobody should hand in an essay without a double-check. It does not matter what the purpose is because checking allows people to create good-quality texts without mistakes. Some students like sending papers without checking because this step takes too much effort, but a student risks getting a lower grade for poor-quality text full of grammar and spelling errors. 

A Good Structure for a High-Quality Essay

Except for the good informal essay topics, one should think about proper paper structuring. You should not listen to those who say that informal writing does not require proper structuring. Indeed, good writing is easier to understand when the text is well-structured. What is a good structure for informal essay writing? Actually, it includes three structural components – an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.  Let’s talk about it in detail.

The Best Introduction for Informative Writing

The beginning is always significant because it opens the door to the world of the story you are going to tell. Eventually, you should start brightly and impress the target reader. The main goal of an introduction is:

• to attract your reader to make him or her concentrate and read the paper from the very beginning till the very end
• to explain the choice of the topic and provide a background for the chosen subject
• to introduce a thesis statement whose purpose is to show your attitude to the described topic and idea

An informal essay definition does not tell you how to write an introduction, so we decided to provide more details here to help you start your essay properly. 

• You should start your essay with a hook

The first sentence is like your clothes and face. People look at you and judge your behavior regarding the way you look. That is why it is essential to make the first sentence impressive. There are several rules for the first sentence.

First, it must not be long and confusing. The best thing is to make it to the point and factual. 

Second, it must evoke a reader’s curiosity and make a person read it. 

Third, a sentence must lead a person and welcome it to read the text.

For example, “Inventions for disabled people make our life simpler” sounds unconvincing compared to “The first toothbrush was created for people with poor motor skills in 1954, but it helped thousands of people keep their teeth healthier”. 

The first sentence does not include details and cannot impress the target reader. The second sentence provides facts that can intrigue the target reader and make them read everything that comes after the first sentence. 

How to start an informal essay catchy? You should definitely avoid bookish and dictionary expressions because they kill the desire to read as it reminds a person of school textbooks. Compare the two following samples.

“Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is a book about hedonism”.

“Beauty makes people go crazy and sacrifice the most important things to stay young and beautiful, like in Oscar Wilde’s book “The Picture of Dorian Gray”.

Instead of a traditional factual presentation, you should highlight the key point but make it without telling everything in advance.

• Provide background 

Afterward, an informal essay introduction cannot be impressive without proper explanations. The beginning must slowly help a reader get to the point of your writing. Depending on the topic and purpose of writing, you should provide the context of the following character:

• historical
• theoretical
• geographical
• key term definition
• social

Depending on the target audience, you should either explain the terms or give more details that are relevant to your topic. However, one should be careful and avoid giving too many details that will kill the desire to read the body of the essay and its final part. In other words, if you are dealing with a historical event, personality, or book, you should clear out the background. If you speak about the cuisine of some country, you should investigate its geographical position to understand why local people prefer this or that food to others. 

• Creation of a thesis statement

A thesis statement is a core sentence of the text because it conveys the idea of the paper. It is a brief conclusion of everything you are going to say in your essay. As a rule, it consists of one sentence or less than 40 words. Some students fail to create a thesis statement, so they use thesis generators to make it precise and convincing.

• Provide mapping

This part suits only those who need to write a long essay. In this case, a reader needs to know what to expect from writing. Mapping must be catchy as well to involve readers in your story.

• Use One of the Hook Types

If you want to be catchy, it is better to use one of the following hooks that always work when used properly.

• a funny story or an anecdote
• a citation or a quote
• a life story
• a catchy fact
• a shocking statistic
• allegory 
• fable
• parable

All these tricks work great because they help a person feel everything the same way as a reader. If a person uses facts with a link to a trustworthy source, a reader believes in the written information faster because it sounds verified. Besides, it can let you create a stunning thesis statement with a factual pre-story. 

BUT!! Never make your introduction too long and overexplained because nobody will be interested in the continuation. 

Body: How to Create and Other Tips

The informal essay format is impossible without this essay part. The body is the largest part because its purpose is to explain everything you did not manage to say in the introduction. As been said, the introduction keeps the intrigue, and the body works as a guide that recalls historical events and facts about the place in the smallest details. 

If an essay is small, it might have only one paragraph. If its length is more than 500 words, it is recommended to divide it into several meaningful paragraphs. Each paragraph must introduce a certain idea or part of a general topic. The main thing is to make it related to the introductory part and a thesis statement in particular. Professionals have several rules for a perfect body creation.

• Start each paragraph with a topic sentence. If a person hesitates about whether to read your essay or set it aside, topic sentences work as summarizers that help you express your key points briefly. The rest part of the paragraph just develops the idea.
• By unpacking your topic sentence, it is necessary to use facts, statistics, personal life stories, or information that echoes the main idea of writing and helps you convey it convincingly. 
• Always analyze the provided evidence or story. Not all readers can draw conclusions from what you say. Some of them need support and even piece-to-piece explanations to get the idea. If you use a story, you should complete the puzzle and unwind complicated passages. This step is significant if you use parables that always have hidden content and ideas.
• Prove your argument. As a rule, students and job candidates give an argument in the introduction to win the audience’s attention. However, they have to provide objectives to convince the target reader that the chosen opinion is right. 
• Transitions are great logic chain helpers. Sometimes, a story becomes too long, and a reader gets confused. In this case, you should use transitions to provide a logical flaw in the story. The most popular words are “first/ second/ third,” “to begin with/ then/ finally,” etc. They help a reader understand where the end of the previous thought is and get ready for the next one. 

Professionals recommend using a language and writing style that fits the purpose. For example, if you write an admission essay, it must be written officially. If you write for other students, your language must be simple. You can use metaphors to create a fairy-tale style and sound friendly to the target audience. 

You should avoid long, complex sentences to avoid misunderstandings. You should speak to the point if you are limited in words. Otherwise, your writing will sound watery, and you will not manage to convey the message. 

Another tip is to avoid repetitions that bother readers to death. For example, “Robinson Crusoe” is a masterpiece, but constant repetitions usually bother readers who are already aware of Robinson’s actions, so they are reluctant to read the same information he describes in his diary.

Informal writing usually allows one to use the style he or she likes. It means you can juggle words to manipulate your reader’s attention. You are not bound by too many rules like in official essays. So, it lets you utilize the manner of writing you like, but it must be without grammar and lexical mistakes. 

How to Write a Winning Conclusion 

The final part of your writing is a conclusion. Its job resembles the function of a period at the end of a sentence. There are three types of a conclusion:

1. Summing up
2. Broadening
3. Editorial

The first one is a mere retelling of what has been already said. The second one aims to give more ideas that are not discussed in the essay but give a topic for further consideration. The third one is connected with a person’s viewpoint and feelings. 

A winning ending is one of the most significant parts of an informal essay structure. Its job is to highlight the significance of the idea. With its help, you can restate a thesis statement and help a writer leave a pleasant aftertaste in a reader. 

To create a striking conclusion, one should inform about a research topic once again, restate a thesis statement, and sum up the key points of an essay. One should not include or introduce new information in this section because an introduction fits this purpose or the body. The conclusion is a full stop, not a comma. 

Professionals recommend avoiding several things when creating a conclusion.

• It is better to avoid such phrases like “to conclude” and “to sum up.” They sound standard and cliche-like, and one should omit them.
• New information is only for an introduction or a body.
• Do not introduce your thesis statement in the introduction.
• Biased thoughts are the worst tools in the creation of a conclusion.
• Do not shift from one written style to another one, each essay part should be written in one style.

Title and Other Tips with Tricks

Professionals use several tricks to create striking, informative writing and win the attention of the target reader. Here are some of them. 

Title

Besides a good structure, an essay should have an impressive title. It is like a name for the book that a writer wants to sell. Sometimes, people are reluctant to read a story because its name is not inspiring. If it is possible, you should keep a mystery in your title. 

For example, compare  “My Day Off” vs. “The Routine I Can Hardly Change”. Your paper can be interesting and informative, but the title can be misleading and even boring. So, you should devote a little time to creating a convincing title.

Compare your essay to a receipt

An essay writing reminds us of a receipt on YouTube channels. First, you see the ready dish, but you have no idea how to make it. Your introduction is like a list of ingredients on a receipt. A body is like the steps a cook needs to complete to prepare the desired dish. A conclusion is a summarising of what you managed to prepare using the above-given ingredients and how you can serve it to impress your guests or family.

Experiment with a structure

You may start your informal essay about education with a climax (the most interesting part) and stop writing at the most interesting place. You will intrigue a reader and then proceed to a standard beginning and conclusion.

The Best Topics for Informal Essays

The topic selection may be time-consuming when a student has to do that independently. Sometimes, it is easier to get a detailed assignment from a teacher and complete it. However, free writing also involves free choice of topics. According to the interviews made at colleges and universities, the best informal essay topics are:

• Informal essay about success

A person should answer some questions like “Is it possible to be successful having social phobias?”, “Is it always necessary to leave a comfort zone to become successful?” or “How to become successful while sitting at home?”

• Feminism or patriarchy

Is it OK to have patriarchic and feministic relationships in the XXI century in Europe and America?

• Racism and nationalism today

We do not need Adolf Hitler to know that some people regard their nation or race as a supreme one. What are they? Is there any influence and chance to stop it?

• Personal identity

How do you understand the meaning of the word “identity,” and what is your self-identification?

• Free adult videos with easy access for children

What is your attitude to porn videos with free access?

• Social media impact on youth

Are children safe and psychologically stable when spending hours on social media?

• Loneliness on overcrowded Facebook and Twitter

Do you feel lonely on social media platforms?

• Motivation for studies in the youngest generation

Where do you search for inspiration to study?

• What is happiness for you?
• Pros and cons of bilingual families

Have you ever seen problems with self-identity among children who grow up in bilingual families?

• Is it bad to be a part of a poor family?

Society usually neglects poor families. Are all poor people that bad? Is it possible to become successful when being grown up by poor parents?

• Is adulthood better than childhood?

Are you afraid of making decisions? Would you like to become a child again?

• Are all school subjects important?

Is there any subject you think you could manage without being a school student?

• Organic products vs. natural goods

What is the difference between organic and natural goods, and do you prefer natural products to conventional alternatives?

• Is reading and book printing still actual?

Do you like reading? Is it important to read books today?

Which is not a subject for an informal essay? It is better not to discuss your pranks, good behavior, religion, politics, and great accomplishments. The topic must relate to something that can echo a reader’s emotions, feelings, and expectations. The above-given topics are good to reflect on, but do not research a lot because it is not formal writing. Informal writing aims to show your attitude to something or the way you can speak about vital things without being too formal and science-based.

Where to Find a Good Idea for Informal Essays

Sometimes, it is a problem to find a catchy idea for writing, especially when a student is free to choose the topic. Students start doubting about the idea selection when they really want to impress their tutors. As a rule, they start looking for ideas on the Internet and plagiarize the exciting essays. Consequently, a person should research independently to be unique.

To begin with, a student should understand the informal essay meaning to find a matching topic. This essay type is about personal experiences, feelings, and emotions. One can reflect on something that has changed in the lives of students or their relatives and friends. Some students have nothing to write about, while others have too many ideas and cannot select the best one to identify a worthy subject. That is why students should regard some basic rules for the topic choice.

1. Investigate the environment and try to find something that interests others.
2. Investigate your life and try to find something that can intrigue others.
3. Read interesting and trustworthy literature to get some unique facts and statistics to support your opinion and make it more vivid and trustable.
4. Talk to your friends, relatives, and teachers to decide what topic can really impress others. 
5. Be sincere, but do not talk too much about personal information because you can become vulnerable and reveal information you might not be willing to share with the world.

Sometimes, the best option is to read great samples of informal writing, especially the papers you are going to write. For example, if your task is to write an essay, you should read examples of informal essays. It is better to ask a tutor or a custom writing service to introduce a sample. A good-quality paper is a mirror that reflects the required structure, language peculiarities, and the idea presentation a student can follow. 

The best examples of informal writing are the yellow press, instructions, comics, posts on social media platforms, funny stores, anecdotes, SMS messages, personal blogs, and postcards. You can look through them to see what informal language sounds or informal writing looks like.

How to Improve the Quality of Informal Writing

Finally, how to differentiate between a formal and informal essay? This table will give you a hand if you still misunderstand the notions.

Things to compare	Informal essay	Formal essay
The idea presentation from an author’s perspective	The first-person singular	The third-person singular
Topic	Life experience of an author	Disciplinary topics, like History, Literature, Science, etc.
Tone	Requires a personal viewpoint, so it is subjective	A person observes a situation independently, so objectiveness is required
Structure	It is traditional and includes only an introduction, a body, and a conclusion	It needs a specific structure, depending on the essay type
Language	Simple language that a person uses daily	Formal language without jargon and collocations
Goal	The tool for self-expression and idea-sharing	The tool to prove a theory, support an argument, provide a logical explanation, give a factual assessment of something

Some writing tools might help you create an informal essay without mistakes or you can buy college essays from professional writers. They let students create papers of high readability because clear and concise sentences serve as the best idea transfer. These are some great tools to use to improve the quality of your writing.

Grammarly

This tool is based on artificial intelligence. It scans the text and marks words or punctuation marks that are wrong. The program highlights problematic extracts and shows the solution to the existing problem. It is up to a student to correct a mistake or not. Sometimes, a machine cannot clearly understand the purpose of writing and the selected language or stylistic device. The tool is great and very helpful, but a student should be careful with autocorrections. 

The tool has four sections – correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery. The first one is red and underlines grammatical or lexical mistakes. The second section is blue and shows whether the idea is properly expressed.  The third section is green and manifests the text’s correctness regarding the reader’s involvement in the idea presentation. The final part is to help people provide a proper impression of a person. 

Except for these sections, Grammarly offers a plagiarism detector that shows the used sources that were not altered for the sake of text uniqueness.

Hemingway

This tool is a great assistant for those who have problems with precise idea presentation. Many students overuse words when trying to say something important. They repeat themselves and write long sentences full of adverbs and complex constructions. As a result, a student cannot understand the text properly or has to read some paragraphs twice to get the idea. 

Hemingway scans the text and colors it using blue, purple, lilac, beige, and light green colors. Blue words are adverbs that a student can delete to make a text more readable. Green sentences contain passive voice that misleads a reader, so students should use active voice instead. Lilac phrases have simpler alternatives, and the other two colors stand for hard and too hard for reading sentences. Students can either divide long constructions to make two or three simple sentences or rewrite a passage.

Finally, the app shows the total number of words and the readability grade. The lower the grade is, the harder your text is to read and comprehend.

Cliche Finder

When the text is packed with cliche phrases, the text becomes monotonous. It means a writer has a poor vocabulary level, so he or she cannot be a good candidate for a communication-related position or a student for the same-kind profession. Due to this writing tool, students have a chance to identify trivial phrases and expressions and replace them with more actual and catchy phrases. The tool also helps to find stale and overused words that a writer can easily replace.

Quilbot

This tool is an excellent paraphraser that most students need when they see numerous repetitions in their texts. It is not a good idea to use this tool for essays found online. Some students have surely done it before you, so a tutor or an employer will definitely find out that you have cheated to perform the task. The purpose of this tool is to teach students to paraphrase words and sentences and avoid repetitions and self-plagiarism within one text. For example, it can provide possible sentence or word changes that a person can use to restate a thesis statement in a conclusion. 

AI detector

It is not a secret that many students use Chat GPT to create essays and presentations and do different types of homework. Sometimes, it is hard to identify its job, especially when it comes to testing and short answers to questions that might sound the same when being created by human beings. AI detector scans the text and colors it using green, orange, yellow, and red colors. Green means 100% human-made, and red means the text was 100% written by AI. 

Unfortunately, the machine can be mistaken as it is also based on AI, but it can show a general picture to help tutors understand they are reading a human-written text.

Google Docs

This tool is just good because it helps a person write online and be sure everything will be saved at once. Moreover, the tool highlights mistakes and can be synchronized with Grammarly, Hemingway, vocabularies, Reverso, and other assistants. One just needs a Google account to get access to Google Docs and other Google services.

Professional assistance

If you  wonder ‘who can write my essay for me‘ , remember that AdvancedWriters.com is probably the best site to hire an essay writing expert