The research essay consists of several parts. There is no hard-and-fast rule about the order in which these sections should appear, with the exception of the Introduction, which appears at the beginning, and the Conclusion, which appears at the end. In addition, there is no rule as to how long each part should be, the amount of space that each should take up within the essay, or whether or not each needs to be in the text or merely included within the footnotes. These decisions will be governed by the topic and approach of each essay; part of what an historian does is figuring out how to weight and construct an historical essay to fit the topic he or she has chosen to address. A successful research essay will normally include all of the following items: Introduction, Statement of Thesis, Discussion of Historiography, Argument and Documentation, Discussion of Sources, and Conclusion.
