What Is A Claim In An Essay? Types and How to Make One

February 16, 2023

claim in an essay

A claim in an essay is a statement of truth that’s ultimately debatable. You arrive here after investigating an issue and making the conclusion that a particular concept is arguably true.

Since it’s more or less a statement of an author, a claim puts readers or listeners in a position to agree or write off the statement as either true or false.

While claims show up in many different kinds of writing, they’re especially common in college level writing, and it can be persuasive or argumentative.

In persuasive essay writing, for example, author use claims to convince their readers to think, believe, or act in a certain way. In argumentative essay writing, claims arise when you’ve looked at both sides of an issue; you come up with findings, and make suggestions of what should happen next.

Claims aren’t conclusive and their expectations are different, as ultimately, you’re providing a piece of information that someone can agree or disagree with.

Rather than being biased, you’re informative and letting your audience choose whether to agree with you or completely write off your statement.

The overall goal of making a claim isn’t to inform your audience. Rather, it’s to persuade them to agree with you, without you or them being biased.

Arguable Claims vs Opinion 

An opinion claim requires another opinion for support, and ends up with weak points that can’t prove or disapprove the claim itself.

On the other hand, an arguable claim is more than just a debatable statement that you can challenge with concrete academic evidence.

It dives deeper into addressing the implication of something, clearly giving a clear picture of why you should care in the first place. Not to mention it even goes on to address the “so what?” question. 

Experts recommend staying far away from opinion claim, mostly because they’re subjective in form and stick to arguable claims instead.

Claims vary depending on the topic of the essay and the writer of the paper. So while it may be easily arguable, you need to make sure the claim you make is complex, focused, relevant, and specific.

Types of Claims in an Essay 

1. Definition

This claim argues about how you can define something or a situation.

Often, authors argue that one thing is another, even if some people would find the statement contradicting. 

An example is defining the mass shooting in New Zealand’s mass shooting at Christ Church as terrorist attack. 

2. Fact

Authors use claim of fact to make an assertion about something they can approve or disapprove using factual evidence.

A claim of fact must be debatable in form, and it shouldn’t merely consistent of proven facts or statistics.

Instead, it must be a statement that requires fact for backup, while still leaving room to debate the evidence.

3. Value 

When you want to argue about how good or bad a topic for your essay is, you’ll need to think more of a value claim.

Stay away from opinions when making a value claim, because the support you provide will all be based on opinion.

4. Solution 

A solution claim takes a value claim and expands on it even further. In a value claim, we state how one thing can be bad.

For example, climate change can become a geopolitical crisis in our lifetime. 

A solution claim takes this into account and tries to argue how we can fix the problem.

For instance, when we decriminalize drugs, the rate of drug abuse would be lower. 

5. Cause and Effect 

A cause and effect claim states that one event leads to another – or that one thing causes another.

Like a fact claim, a cause and effect claim should be easily debatable. 

How to Make a Claim in an Essay

The easiest way to write a claim is to start with a question.

Posing an issue as a question, instead of a statement, not only gives your audience something concrete to think about but also makes it easy for you to take a position to defend.

Stay far away from vague questions, as readers would end up losing the interest to debate the topic. 

For example, are cellphones bad?

This is a vague question that you can’t even convert into different stances. 

Instead, you want to ask something like “should I allow my 12 year old to bring their cell phone to school?

Such a question is clearly debatable, not to mention focused and specific. 

Such a question doesn’t only encourage continued debate but also allow you to take a very strong position that you can easily argue.

What Makes a Good Claim? 

There are a few rules you need to observe in order to make a good claim.

So make sure you’re careful to observe them because the last thing you want to happen is to tank both the claim and your essay altogether. 

The first rule of thumb when it comes to making a claim in an essay is to avoid opinions 100%. While there’s nothing wrong with opinion-based claims, the claims aren’t academic and therefore there’s no research to back them up.

Second, you want to keep your claim narrow in its scope. Instead of going broad with your focus, narrow your claim and be as specific with it as possible.

The third rule is make sure you support your claim. A claim without evidence isn’t as awful, but who’s going to take you seriously if you don’t have strong arguments to support it?

So unless you’ve done enough research on a claim, and you’re sure there’s enough evidence to support it, it won’t make sense to include it in your essay.

Conclusion

While making an arguable claim can take only a few minutes of your time, writing the essay can be somewhat a challenge and overall time consuming.

Get Writing Help

If you have less time to spare for the essay writing, or you prefer to get help from an established essay writing service, feel free to place your order with Help for Assessment.

About the author 

Antony W is a professional writer and coach at Help for Assessment. He spends countless hours every day researching and writing great content filled with expert advice on how to write engaging essays, research papers, and assignments.

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