Academic Writing Guidelines

The assignment content provides guidelines for writing an academic paper, specifically focusing on a 100-299 level course. The template includes sections for title, student name, course number, and due date. The introduction should avoid flat announcements of intention or topic, while headings should be in bold font and indented five to seven spaces. The essay should contain at least five paragraphs, including the introduction, body, and conclusion, with each paragraph containing at least three to five sentences. The reference page should begin on the next page after the conclusion.

1
Title of Paper
Student Name
Course/Number
Due Date
Faculty Name
Detailed expectations for a 100-299 Level Course (remove this line)

2
Title of Paper
Triple click your mouse anywhere in this paragraph to replace this text with your
introduction. Often the most important paragraph in the entire essay, the introduction grabs the
reader's attention—sometimes a difficult task for academic writing. When writing an
introduction, some approaches are best avoided. Avoid starting sentences with “The purpose of
this essay is . . .” or “In this essay I will . . .” or any similar flat announcement of your intention
or topic. Read more: Center for Writing Excellence>Tutorials and Guides>Essay
Development>Guidelines for Writing Academic Essays.
Level One Heading
Replace the level one heading with the words for your heading. The heading must be in
bold font. Headings help your audience track the sub-topics discussed in the body of the essay or
report. Begin a new heading for each sub-topic.
Be sure to indent the first line of each paragraph between five and seven spaces by
pressing the Tab key one time on the keyboard. In addition, remember to double space the entire
paper using the double space functionality in Word. This template is already formatted for
double spacing. Read more: Center for Writing Excellence>Tutorials and Guides>Software
Tutorials and Guides>Formatting Tutorial for APA.
In addition, keep in mind an academic essay should contain at least five paragraphs,
which includes the introduction (introductory paragraph), the body (which is generally at least 3
paragraphs), and the conclusion (generally one paragraph). Most well-developed paragraphs
contain at least 3-5 sentences, one of which is the topic sentence. Limit each body paragraph to
one main idea.

3
Conclusion
The closing paragraph is designed to bring the reader to your way of thinking if you are
writing a persuasive essay, to understand relationships if you are writing a comparison/contrast
essay, or simply to value the information you provide in an informational essay. The closing
paragraph summarizes the key points from the supporting paragraphs without introducing any
new information.

4
References
This is a hanging indent. To keep the hanging indent format, triple click your mouse on this line
of text and replace the information with your reference entry. You can use the Reference
and Citation Examples (Center for Writing Excellence>Tutorials and Guides>Reference
and Citation Examples) to help format your source information into a reference entry.
The reference page always begins on the top of the next page after the conclusion.