4 general kinds of essay
To succeed at school, you need to be able to write different types of essays. Your teachers will seldom tell you exactly which type of essay you should be writing , so you need to be able to figure it out from the question you have been asked. There are various opinions on how to categorize essays and how many types of essay there are. The simplest interpretation says that there are only four types of essays:. Narrative essays 2. Descriptive essays 3.
4 Types of Essays
Essays can be a complicated business even for a seasoned college student. If there is an essay in your future, take a look at these four types of essays and remind yourself of what the rules are for each. It will help you out when you sit down to write that essay. If you need more help with your essay writing, try an online course. An expository essay is a specific kind of essay that involves investigating an idea, evaluating the evidence, presenting the idea, and supporting the presentation with an argument.
Expository essays are usually written through comparison and contrast, definition, example, and the analysis of cause and effect.
There is a specific structure that expository essays follow. This is the most common essay written while in elementary school. It is usually considered the five-paragraph essay — one introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a single conclusion paragraph. However, as you enter later grades and college, you will come to realize that expository essays sometimes run a little longer than that. This format is usually just a way to begin introducing the idea of expository essays to students.
Expository essays are best thought of as conversations or debates with classmates. Just as your conversation will have a beginning, middle, and end, your essay should also.
If it is not complete, you will likely leave behind questions in your readers. The most important thing to remember is to state the intent of your essay in the introduction, back it up in the body, and summarize everything in the conclusion. If you need some help finding a topic, check out this list of expository writing prompts. Expository essays are commonly used on the SAT.
A descriptive essay is exactly what it sounds like. In this type of essay, you will be asked to describe something. For this type of essay, you might be better off taking a creative writing class as they will touch on description that will help you write this type of essay.
While there is no exact format for this essay, there are some guidelines you should consider following as they will help you write a better descriptive essay. Descriptive essays are common in elementary school and are usually used as warm-up journal prompts at the beginning of a language arts lesson. These kinds of essays are also very common in creative writing classes as they are used to build your descriptive skills. A narrative essay usually involves the telling of some kind of story.
There are two common types of narrative essays — short stories and book reports. If your narrative essay is going to be more of a story, you might want to consider a creative writing class. Narrative essays are similar to memoirs so many of the topics you might find regarding narrative essays are in that style.
A persuasive essay is also known as an argumentative essay. This type of essay will be similar to an expository essay in that you will be exploring a topic and collecting and evaluating evidence.
However, unlike an expository essay, you will be taking a stand for or against this topic. Consider taking a course in college writing essentials if you need more help with essays.
The format of the persuasive essay is similar to the expository essay from the thesis statement to the layout to the concluding paragraph. Like the expository essay, the persuasive essay can also use the five paragraph format, but there are also longer persuasive essays. Get a subscription to a library of online courses and digital learning tools for your organization with Udemy for Business.
Blog Home 4 Types of Essays. Natasha Quinonez. Share this article. Expository Essays An expository essay is a specific kind of essay that involves investigating an idea, evaluating the evidence, presenting the idea, and supporting the presentation with an argument. First, there should be a clear and expansive thesis statement somewhere within the first paragraph of the essay. This statement should be narrowed down to follow the guidelines of the assignment.
It should include something involving the topic of the essay as that is usually included in the guidelines. The transitions between the introduction paragraph, body paragraphs, and conclusion paragraph should make sense and be clear. Without these transitions, there is no logical path to follow throughout the essay, and the reader could end up lost in your essay.
Your argument would then be lost. Each paragraph of the body should include evidence that supports the thesis statement.
You should only discuss one sub idea of the thesis statement in each paragraph. Discussing a number of ideas in each paragraph can lead to confusion. Expand on it by discussing the evidence you revealed. Descriptive Essays A descriptive essay is exactly what it sounds like.
Brainstorm before you put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. Write down descriptive words in relation to the details that you will likely use in your essay. However, if you describe your cousin in more detail — using hair color, eye color, or even skin tone — will give your reader a better image. If you were describing a day at the beach, you would want to include more than what you saw.
Include things you smelled, what you touched, sounds you heard, and things you tasted. Emotions and feelings play a key role in description too. Tears flooded my eyes. In fact, they will likely connect with you on an emotional level as they read.
Keep your essay organized. If you just stuff your essay full of descriptive words, emotions, and senses, you might leave your reader thinking that you were describing one thing when in fact you were describing something completely different. Narrative Essays A narrative essay usually involves the telling of some kind of story. If it will be in story format, include all the parts of story. This includes characters, plot, setting, etc. Even narrative essays should have a point, just like the thesis statement of expository essays.
Choose a point of view for your essay and stick with it. The common point of view is first person, from the standpoint of the writer. Persuasive Essays A persuasive essay is also known as an argumentative essay. Empower your team. Lead the industry.
Effectively writing different types of essays has become critical to academic success. Essay writing is a common school assignment, a part of standardized tests. Use these tips to write various types of essays for college: front of your class as it helps to prove your major points.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. Learn more Got it! There are four main types of essays: narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative. Each has a unique purpose. Some tell a story, some are descriptive, and others attempt to alter opinions.
The three types of essay most commonly assigned in school — the narrative essay, the persuasive essay, and the expository essay — conveniently correspond to those writing forms most frequently published online and in print. Your experience with these prose forms is ideal preparation for writing for publication.
Essays can be a complicated business even for a seasoned college student. If there is an essay in your future, take a look at these four types of essays and remind yourself of what the rules are for each.
The Ultimate Guide to Writing 5 Types of Essays
To enable grammar checking plugins like Grammarly and Ginger, disable ours from the settings panel on the left. At some point in your life, you will be required to write an essay — whether for a school homework, college standardized tests or even for work-related purposes. There are several basic types of essays to choose from, the most common are expository, narrative, persuasive and analytical. Which one you choose really depends on your objectives. We'll explore each type in depth, and offer recommendations on the typical word counts for each essay type. Which of the 4 different essay types you should use depends largely on the assignment or desired outcome.
The Major Paragraph Types
An essay is a short academic composition. Presently, essay is part of every degree program. Each subject has specific requirements for the essays to be written. Some subjects need longer essays, while others need shorter ones, such as a five-paragraph essay. In composition, the start is made from a five-paragraph essay. Based on the requirements, there are seventeen types of essays. Generally, a simple a five-paragraph has five paragraphs including an introduction , three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. An argumentative essay, however, has an additional paragraph which presents counter argument or opposing arguments in the same sequence. However, at the end of this paragraph, both the arguments are weighed in the favor of stronger arguments presented earlier in three body paragraphs. An essay is a specific discussion or debate on a topic from a specific point of view.
Some students space paragraphs, trying to separate points when the process of writing is over.
So bookmark this page and come back to it whenever you need a refresher! A good place to start thinking about essays is to better understand the types of essays that most of your assignments in high-school, and college or university will fit into.
Types of Essay
Writing an academic essay means fashioning a coherent set of ideas into an argument. Because essays are essentially linear—they offer one idea at a time—they must present their ideas in the order that makes most sense to a reader. Successfully structuring an essay means attending to a reader's logic. The focus of such an essay predicts its structure. It dictates the information readers need to know and the order in which they need to receive it. Thus your essay's structure is necessarily unique to the main claim you're making. Although there are guidelines for constructing certain classic essay types e. A typical essay contains many different kinds of information, often located in specialized parts or sections. Even short essays perform several different operations: introducing the argument, analyzing data, raising counterarguments, concluding. Introductions and conclusions have fixed places, but other parts don't. Counterargument, for example, may appear within a paragraph, as a free-standing section, as part of the beginning, or before the ending. Background material historical context or biographical information, a summary of relevant theory or criticism, the definition of a key term often appears at the beginning of the essay, between the introduction and the first analytical section, but might also appear near the beginning of the specific section to which it's relevant. It's helpful to think of the different essay sections as answering a series of questions your reader might ask when encountering your thesis. Readers should have questions. If they don't, your thesis is most likely simply an observation of fact, not an arguable claim.
3 Types of Essays Are Models for Professional Writing Forms
A student may hate writing homework on particular subjects while writing specific types of essays might be fun. The main goal of each writing assignment is to meet the initial prompt. The article breaks the myth about numerous kinds of essays by offering the basic categorization of this writing assignment and corresponding examples. Being overwhelmed with multiple writing assignments makes students purchase custom essays online. Professional writers are able to write any essay within the timeframe without forcing a customer to waste a lot of money. It would be wise to start studying different types of essays from the most time-consuming one — an expository essay. Five main categories of academic essays exist. Those are:. An expository essay requires the greatest amount of time because the volume is large. It is possible to divide this essay into several categories.
