Exemplification Essay Writing Tips: Full Guide

An exemplification essay is one of the favorite professors’ tasks and sometimes students are really terrified with that assignment. And the reason for that is that professors really enjoy testing your knowledge. In fact, that type of writing isn’t that complicated as it may seem, though one of the rarest and most specific. It’s fair to say that it is a more accurate argumentative essay.

What Is an Exemplification Essay

More About an Exemplification Essay

The definition of an exemplification essay is pretty short and clear, while it requires you to prove your main argument or thesis, provide the reasons and support those arguments by examples. Some professors call it even an illustrative essay since the examples you provide illustrate your point of view. However, almost all argumentative essays are about examples to prove the thesis. So what’s the difference?

When creating your classic argumentative essay, you use the evidence to support your main argument or thesis. For that purpose, you use real-life examples, various data or statistics to support your thesis. You can cite various professors or scientists, for example, when writing your argumentative essay and it will be enough. However, it is not enough for an exemplification essay, while such shreds of evidence affirm the thesis but do not support it as a real-life example. So, exemplification essays can be truly considered more precise variations of the argumentative essays. Their aim is to show why a certain opinion is correct through an understandable life example.

It is a bit easier to write an exemplification essay than other types of essay, while you have to think of your reader first. Once you make a point, you should have evidence not supporting, but illustrating it.

Good evidence for an essay telling about the social media dangers on the young girls’ self-image, for example, could be telling about the girls who rank lower on self-esteem evaluation. This evidence would be very helpful. If you note that social media sometimes is addictive, the example won’t be understandable enough to support your thesis, as well as showing that there are higher amounts of disorders after using social media for pretty long timeframes among girls. It would be better to provide research showing that younger girls are more focused on their appearance as they spend more time on social media networks, for example. Why is this example better? If someone is focused on his or her appearance, it is one of the signs of a damaged self-image. Also, it is possible to provide an example showing how competitive girls are with each other on social media, which also shows their low self-image. In your exemplification essay, you should support the validity of the total thesis.

How to Create a Good Exemplification Essay: Step-By-Step Guide

In order to write a good exemplification essay, you should have a strong plan and outline. Try to have all the points in your mind and work them out to create a tight essay.

How to start:

Choose a position/argument.
Think of at least five reasons to prove the correctness of your position. Point out the strongest ones.
Do some research and find evidence (example) for three of the reasons. Your evidence has to be very specific.
Read the reasons and examples once again. Now use just once sentence to connect them to the bigger life picture.

Format

If you have written other types of essays previously, you won’t have any difficulties with your exemplification essay, while it has the same format as all other essays’ types. Introduction and conclusion are mandatory, as well as three body paragraphs. The only difference is about the content of the body paragraphs, while you will have to focus on the evidence and make each piece directly illustrating your point.

Outline

Introduction: Here you can discuss the social media appearance and some of its advantages. Then softly go to the discussion of its negative aspects.

For example: Using social media influences the self-image of young females in a negative way.

Young girls are taught to be more competitive by society and that sense of competition among young women is only increased by social media.

For example: According to research, young females more actively participate in the “compare and despair” aspects that develop in social media.

There are more accounts of girls having high followings rates in social media in the result of their beauty.

For example: according to the studies, when using social media, young females are inundated with unrealistic beauty standards. They claim that it influences negatively their self-image.

There are lots of promotions of make-up hacks, products, and tutorials for young ladies in social media. Females are all the time reminded that their appearance is crucial.

For example: according to research, young females feel pressured to buy cosmetic products on social media.

Conclusion: Social media brings a sense of comparison and competition all the time, it highlights unrealistic beauty standards, and thus, is being toxic for young females.

Outline Pattern

Introduction

A “hook” sentence that catches attention.
Three subject sentences.
The thesis statement in the argument.

Second paragraph

The first reason to support the thesis.
An example supporting the reason.
Discussion of that example’s importance.

Third paragraph

The second reason to support the argument.
An example supporting the reason.
Discussion of that example’s importance.

Fourth paragraph

The third reason to support the argument.
An example supporting the reason.
Discussion of that example’s importance.

Conclusion

State your thesis once again.
Summarize three main claims of yours.
Connect the thesis to the bigger picture of the future, life, history, society, etc.

Topics for Your Exemplification Essay

Easy Topics

Is it better for students to have rich parents who don’t participate much in his life?
Is it better for students to have poor parents who can participate actively in the life of their child?
Is it necessary to cancel the SAT exam?
Do most people reflect their friends they spend most of their time with?
Should smartphone usage be illegal for children under 18?

Good topics

Is college degree less important today than fifteen years ago?
Should population control be enforced by the government to ensure some of the species and planet survival?
Do modern technologies or social media cause more incidents of social anxiety?
Should children with obesity get mandatory nutritional assistance from the government dieticians?
Should smoking become illegal in all public places?
Is the young generation damaged by celebrity culture?

Topics for college students

Should the US army be sent abroad for foreign nations?
Should religious organizations pay taxes?
Should junk and fast food items be taxed at a higher rate?
Should political campaigns accept donations from big corporations?
Should the drugs be legalized to make the economy more stable?
Should immigration policies in the States be stricter?

Topics for high school students

Is it necessary to ban politicians from spending high amounts on their campaigns?
Should farm animals have more legal protections?
Is marriage institution becoming outdated?
Should social and religious cults be more regulated by the government?
Is spanking children acceptable as a punishment form?

Exemplification Essay Example

What is Friendship

Once two people establish a bond between them, friendship occurs. A healthy friendship includes mutual respect. Both people should care for each other’s fate, as well as physical and emotional well-being. Friendship contains some acts of kindness, for example, which do not require anything in return. People should act in the best interest of the other person.

As an example, I want to tell about a young man dumped by his girlfriend. They started relationships when they both were in school and in college already they started to live together. The friend of this man helped him to move out of the hours into a house of his family member, after he discovered his friend was moving out of the house he shared together with his girlfriend. He didn’t require anything in return.

A young woman saw her friend’s boyfriend flirt with other women very often. This woman decided not to tell her friend anything just because she didn’t want to harm their relationship. Instead of it, she talked to one of the girls this guy flirted with and asked her to show his girlfriend the text messages he sent her. Thus, her friend found out everything about her boyfriend but this didn’t damage the relationship between two girls.

Students in my college often are with their friends when they were ill or had times of grief and didn’t ask anything in return. They might never get the same support back (maybe because it was not necessary) but the friendship remained strong.

There are so many real-life examples of friendship in which people do various things without getting rewards in return. The acts of kindness or looking out for the interests of another person happen just because of friendship. The friendship itself is a reward, otherwise caring and kindness of people would be caused only by their self-interest.

Conclusion

Now you know that exemplification essays can be considered a more precise type of argumentative essay. It is more understandable to the reader while it contains the real-life examples illustrating the thesis or argument so well. Its aim is to show why a certain viewpoint is correct or not. Even an average reader can perceive the information well. But in case you have problems with writing your exemplification essay, our top writers are always ready to help. Our experts can cope with any task, can write an essay from scratch, edit your own essay, or give you fruitful recommendations to improve it and get your best mark!