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Guidelines on Format and Structure of a Classification Essay

Classification Essay
John Caius
June 02, 2022

Essay writing is presumed as a complex and time-consuming task. Students find it difficult because they are not aware of the format and structure of an essay. High school and college students are likely to encounter classification essays. Teachers usually give classification essays to test the ability of students how to categorize the data. It is perceived as hard to write, but it is pretty easy to write once you learn to write a classification essay.

What is a classification essay?

The easiest way to define a classification essay is to organize and divide things into categories. In a classification essay, a writer must divide things into groups and offer examples that fit into each group.

How to write an effective classification essay?

There are three steps to writing an effective classification essay

  1. Sort the things into functional categories
  2. There should be a single organizing principle for all categories
  3. Give the examples that best fit into the category

Steps and structure

For writing a classification essay, the following steps should be followed

Plan

Before starting your essay, brainstorm the ideas. You would have to take a group of things, people or anything which you choose as your topic or subject for the essay. Logically divide the group into a category. For example, if you choose to teach as a group, divide them into categories according to the subject they teach; for example, there would be one category for Physics teachers, one for chemistry and one for biology teachers.

Order

After dividing groups into categories, make an order of all the categories and examples. There should be relevant examples quoted in each category.

Thesis statement/Introduction

A thesis statement is the first paragraph of your essay. It gives the reader an idea about your essay and what you will describe in the essay. A thesis statement should define an essay as a classification and its idea. The definitions of classification are divide, separate, classify and sort.

The body of the essay

In the body of the essay, you describe in detail the idea. Classifications must be logical. Give a clear example and explain them in detail. Organize the body of an essay so that the most crucial paragraph should place at the start and the end. The structure of the paragraph should be the same as of essay, and it should start with an introduction, the body of the paragraph and the conclusion.

Conclusion

The conclusion should be short and summarizes your essay in a few sentences. Discuss the essential points of the body of an essay in conclusion.

Writing a classification essay is not a difficult task. All you have to do is understand the essay’s format, structure, and requirements. There are mainly three parts of a classification essay, introduction, body, and conclusion, like any other essay. The only difference is that you have to make different groups and categories based on similar properties.

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