Essay words firstly

Of course, once you’ve done your plan and have your arguments laid out, you need to actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and begin your essay. You need to consider that your reader doesn’t have a clue about your topic or arguments, so your first sentence must summarise these.

First and firstly are both ordinal (or ordering) adverbs that English speakers and writers use to enumerate related points (e.g., first…second…third… or firstly…secondly…thirdly…. ). Because first, second, and third work perfectly well as both adjectives and adverbs, some people find that adding -ly is superfluous and even a little bit pretentious.

These essay phrases are useful to begin your essay. They help you pose your argument based on what other authors have said or a general concern about your research. They can also both be used when a piece of evidence sheds new light on an argument. Here’s an example:

1 Firstly,…/ Secondly,…/ Finally,… (note the comma after all these introductory words.) 2 As a final point… 3 On the one hand, …. on the other hand… 4 If on the one hand it can be said that… the same is not true for… 5 The first argument suggests that… whilst the second suggests that… 6 There are at least xxx points to highlight.