AboutKari Lomanno Expertise I can answer a variety of questions on academic writing, essay writing, SAT prep, the research process, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and much more.
Experience I am a high school English teacher, and I am also endorsed in elementary education. I am a former award-winning journalist and college English instructor.
Organizations Virginia Education Association
Publications Virginian-Pilot newspaper, Inside Business magazine, Suite101.com
Education/Credentials I have a master's degree in English and nearly two decades of professional writing experience.
Awards and Honors Five Virginia Press Association awards for writing/journalism
Past/Present Clients I am a feature writer for the Academic Writing category at Suite101.com
Question I need help writing my classification essay. I am doing it on Herbal remedies but I don't know how to start it off.
Answer I would start by brainstorming all the information you want to include in the essay. Once all your thoughts are on paper, you can then organize the information into categories. If you are a visual person, you can literally cut out your ideas and arrange them on a page. Choose the main categories you want to use, and plug the information into the appropriate categories. At this point, you may have to narrow your focus or eliminate some details that don't seem to fit.
From here, you can start generating a good thesis statement, which is that one sentence that sums up your whole paper.
If it's the introductory paragraph giving you trouble, sometimes it helps to write the rest of the essay first. This way, you have information to draw upon when writing the introduction. In other words, it helps to know exactly what you're introducing!
