Structure and Flow

What is a good structure?

A good structure to your academic work is vital to make it understandable, easy to read and engaging. An essay or report tells a story, so as any good story does, it needs a beginning, a middle and an end. It's not just the work as a whole that needs structure but your paragraphs too. This section includes guidance on how to create a good overall essay structure. For more information about creating structure for your individual paragraphs see our paragraph structure guide.

Why do I need to learn structure?

To gain good marks and fulfil the learning outcomes of your assignments, you need to demonstrate that you understand the concepts and the work that you have used to form your argument. Structure also ensures that:

• you avoid repeating yourself
• you include information that leads from one concept to another
• you show understanding of your thought process
• you don't forget a piece of information along the way

How do I use structure?

The basic structure of any academic work looks something like this:

• Title/Question
• Introduction (approx. 10% of the word count)
• Main body - development of argument (approx. 80% of the word count)
• Conclusion (approx. 10% of the word count)
• References/Bibliography

Creating sections helps you to plan how much you need to write on each area. This breaks the task down into smaller chunks.

For example:

Essay word count - 3,000 words
Introduction - 300 words
Main body - 2,400 words
Conclusion - 300 words

If your subject has three major themes you can then break the main body down again:

Essay word count - 3,000 words
Introduction - 300 words
Main body - 2,400 words (theme 1 - 800 words; theme 2 - 800 words; theme 3 - 800 words)
Conclusion - 300 words

This is not a precise rule; you can adjust the word counts to accommodate where more emphasis is needed or not, but it can be used to break a large word count into manageable sections.