Having a clear overall structure

Importantly, the three main sections of your piece should connect logically and should match up. Always do a detailed plan before you start writing out in full - if you don’t, it’s very easy to end up with an assignment that is a bundle of mismatched pieces. For example, if you were writing the essay ‘Ageism is more disabling than ageing. Discuss’ and you spent most of the essay body giving evidence for how ageism is not a serious problem, it would then be odd to state in your conclusion that ageism is a significant problem and more disabling than natural ageing. For more advice on essay planning and structure, see Godwin (2014) Planning your essay in this series.