Here’s the hard cold truth about essay writing:
The title is the most important part of the whole project.
Write it well, and you’ll grab the attention of your instructor so much that they gain the interest to read the rest of the copy. Get it wrong and you lose them completely.
So you can’t take chances with an essay’s title. It’s your opportunity to create an impression and you should give it your best shot.
In fact, the key to writing a good essay is to first master the art of writing compelling titles that gets instructors hooked on the spot.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to title an essay like an A-grade student. In particular, we’ll teach you everything you need to know to write appealing titles for any type of essay your instructor will ever ask you to write.
Whether your instructor asked you to write an argumentative essay, or you already have a TOK topic to work with, or you’re down to writing a college admission essay, this guide will get you started with writing irresistible titles.
What is a Title in Essay Writing?
A title is the most important element that makes the first impression while setting a tone for any kind of an essay.
More often than not, the title of an essay conveys a summary of an argument, method, or topic that you’ve developed.
In addition to informing, convincing, and capturing your instructor’s attention, a good essay title acts as a strong indicator that you’ve understood the question and the concept of the topic in question.
In other words:
The title part of the essay is more of a privilege section of the assignment, which you should properly utilize to express your idea and articulate your point of view.
What Makes a Good Title in Essay Writing?
A good essay title shouldn’t be hard to write. As long as you know that your title should reflect a clear understanding of the content of the essay, you’re good to go.
If anything, instructors consider a title for an essay to be good if it can properly describe the paper with just a few words.
It doesn’t matter if you write your title before or after completing the essay. As long as you know how to arrive at a good title for the document, you should have an easy time coming up with a title that fits perfectly.
Examples of Good and Bad Titles for an Essay
We’ll look at how to write a good title for any essay in a few. Before that, let’s look at the following chart to see some examples of good and bad titles that we often see in essays.
It’s clear from the comparison above that good titles are not only interesting to read but also they’re precise and informative.
Often, such titles tell a reader what the essay is about, making it easy for them to know what to expect to read in the body part of the essay.
Short, badly written titles, on the other hand, don’t communicate a clear message. They tend to make it very hard for readers to know what an essay is really about in the first place.
As you can see, the title comparison chart above gives you a clear picture of what you should aim to write down. If it helps, go ahead and make them even better than what you see on the image above.
To be clear, you can write your title before or after completing your essay. However, for the sake of the best output, we do recommend that you come up with a compelling and constructive title after completing your essay.
Here’s How to Title an Essay in 2021
Brainstorm
The consensus on what makes a good title for an essay is simple. The title should be interesting, relevant, and informative.
So how do you pick such a title?
Some students think about it randomly and write what they think is interesting. However, if you aren’t brainstorming your titles to identify the most appealing terms, you’re doing it wrong.
Here’s what to do instead:
Write down as many titles as you possibly can, and don’t deviate from the topic while you’re at it. If your instructor leaves the essay open ended, the better. You can come up with a topic of your own.
Don’t forget the goal of the essay’s title as you continue to brainstorm. Primarily, it should tell your instructor what the information in the body section of the essay is about, while still being as interesting as possible.
Once you have a list of titles on a checklist, read each careful and pick the ones that make the most sense.
Extract a Title from a Thesis Statement
Brainstorming as many ideas as you can to come up with what would be an appropriate title for an essay is great. But it can be time consuming.
If you want an easier way to come up with a good topic therefore, you should consider extracting it from the thesis statement of the essay.
As you already know, a thesis statement is usually the most important part of an essay after the title.
Usually in one or two sentences, a thesis statement indicates the primary idea of an essay.
Since a thesis statement reflects your judgment or opinion on a topic or personal experience, you should be able to get your essay’s title from here right away.
From experience helping students to understand and complete different types of essays at Help for Assessment, we’ve found out that using the thesis statement is the easiest way to come with a good title.
All you have to do is to pick some phrases from the statement and use them to write a catchy and relevant title.
Rewrite a Popular Quite or Cliché
Something undeniably unique about clichés and phrases is their popularity. Because they’re easily engaging, they can work great for your essay’s title.
You can also use a quote instead of a cliché, either as it is or by rewriting it to make it suit the kind of essay you’re working on.
Whether you choose a quote or a cliché to use as your essay title, make sure you choose only the most relevant ones. Otherwise the title you write may end up making a lot less sense.
Decide When to Write the Title
You can write the title for your essay before or after completing the paper. Only make sure that the title you choose matches the content of your essay.
Some students prefer to come up with a concrete title for their essay first. They then write their essay around the topic. In your case, this should be a good approach to use if you can stay on the topic as you write the paper.
If you find the title difficult to construct before the body part, focus on working on the essay and then work on the title last.
The advantage to this approach is that you can use the many ideas you brainstormed in the first step to create an appropriate title.
If you’re the kind of student who’s comfortable with writing a title after completing the essay, it’s best to focus on working on the essay first and the title afterwards.
The advantage you have here is you can use the many ideas you brainstormed in the first step and create appropriate titles. Only make sure you re-read the essay to make sure the title best fit the content of the page.
At the end of the day, the title that you choose should fit the essay straight out of the box, whether you pre-write the essay or do it after.
Some Tips to Help You Write Better Titles for Every Essay
Now that you can come up with a relevant title for your essay’s assignment, we want to give you some handy tips that you can use to make your titles read even better.
So, here we go:
Tip #1: Keep the Title Simple and Precise
You want your title to be easy to read and consume.
So using complex words in this section will only go a long way to ruin the effort you put to writing a comprehensive and compelling essay.
The last mistake you want to make is to leave your instructor scratching their heads in confusion. Also, make sure that the terms you use in the title are in line with your field of study.
Tip #2: Use the Right Words in Your Essay’s Title
A good essay title is the one that uses the terms according to your field of sturdy
Tip #3: Make Sure Your Title is Original
It doesn’t make sense to copy your fellow student’s essay title. Either of you could get penalized for doing so.
You can read as many titles as you want, but only for inspiration.
If it helps, you can rephrase the title while keeping the same meaning, otherwise only come up with a title completely unique to your essay.