TYPES

OF
ESSAYS

FIVE TYPES OF ESSAYS

Narrative Essay
What is it?
A narrative essay achieves a certain purpose through
telling a story, which makes it interesting to the reader
and also results in getting some point across. For
example, you might write a story about meeting
someone special to you. The purpose may be to tell
how meeting this person affected your decision to
attend college or to entertain the reader with a funny
story about that person. The purposes of writing
narratives include the following: to create a sense of
shared history, to provide entertainment, to offer
instruction, and to provide insight. Some examples of
narrative essay topics include a special person, event,
or place. After choosing a topic, you should determine
the main point you want to make about that topic and
then concentrate on that throughout the rest of the
paper.
Guidelines for writing a narrative essay:
4 Make a specific point. Determine what the purpose
of your essay is. State that point in your thesis
statement, or controlling idea, and build upon it
throughout the essay by using examples, stories, and
other details that all relate back to the main idea.
4 Involve readers in the story and create a visual
picture by using dialogue and physical description,
which is achieved through telling events that happened
and presenting problems that arose. Also include
specific descriptive details so that the reader can easily
picture the scene in each of the events.
4 Sequence events. Often this is done chronologically
(the order in which events happened), but using
flashbacks (writing the story from one point in time but
then talking briefly about something that happened in
the past) and foreshadowing (briefly talking about
something that will happen in the future) can make the
story more interesting.
4 Decide which point of view, first-person (from the
author’s point of view, using “I”) or thirdperson (using
“he,” “she,” “them,” etc. instead of “I”), works best for
your essay, and tell the story from that viewpoint.

Descriptive Essay
What is it?
A descriptive essay tells about a certain topic or story,
using details to appeal to the five senses. It gives
readers the ability to vividly imagine the situation or
scene and feel as if they are experiencing it firsthand.
To write a descriptive essay, you could choose a
person, place, event, object, or experience and
describe it thoroughly using many sensory details.
Guidelines for writing a descriptive essay:
4 Use sensory details. Appeal to sight, sound, smell,
taste, and touch.
4 Use active verbs (in which the subject is doing the
acting instead of being acted upon by something or
someone else, such as “Cindy hit the ball.” instead of
“The ball was hit by Cindy.”). Also, use a variety of
sentence types, such as a simple sentence (“Tom went
to the store.”), compound sentence (“Tom went to the
store, and he bought a loaf of bread.”), complex
sentence (“While Tom was at the store, he bought a
loaf of bread.”), or compoundcomplex sentence
(“While Tom was at the store, he bought a loaf of
bread, but he forgot to buy a gallon of milk.”).
4 Avoid vague language, such as “pretty,” “really,” “a
lot,” and “very.”
 4 Create a dominant impression (overall attitude,
mood, or feeling about the subject), such as causing
the readers to sympathize with you about a sad event
that happened or to agree with you strongly on a
certain controversial topic. Choose the details and
descriptions that will help accomplish this impression.
4 Use comparisons. In order to help make the
descriptions even more vivid to the reader, use similes
(such as “His emotional state was like a roller
coaster.”), metaphors (such as “Her smile was a ray of
sunlight in the dark sea of unfamiliar faces.”),
personification (giving human characteristics to an
object, such as “The wind howled in my ears and
beckoned me to walk further into the forest.”), and
analogies (brief stories that relate to the topic).
Determine the method of organization that works best
for your essay: spatial (top to bottom, inside to
outside, near to far), chronological (the order in which
events happened), least-to-most, or most-to-least.

Comparison and/or Contrast Essay

What is it?
 A comparison and/or contrast essay tells about two
or more main subjects by pointing out similarities
and/or differences. One way to write this type of essay
would be to choose two or more objects, people,
places, events, experiences, or ideas and compare
and/or contrast them according to a few specific
points. Guidelines for writing a comparison and/or
contrast essay:
4 Have a clear purpose and a main point (to express
ideas, to inform, to persuade, etc.). Make sure
your subjects have something specific on which you
can base your comparison and/or contrast.
4 Decide the order that best suits your essay. The two
main ways you can choose to organize a comparison
and/or contrast essay are point-by-point organization
and subject-by-subject organization.
point-by-point:
switching back and forth between the subjects,
comparing/contrasting them according to several main
points
subject-by-subject:
writing about all the main points of one subject and
then
writing about all the main points of another subject,
and so on, referring back to the other
subject(s) in a comparing/contrasting way
4 In your thesis statement, or controlling idea, include
the subjects; identify whether you will be talking
about similarities, differences, or both; and state your
main point.
4 Have a sufficient number of significant
characteristics and details (which are the various points
you use to compare and/or contrast the subjects), and
give an equal amount to all sides.

Cause and Effect Essay (also called causal analysis)

What is it?
A cause and effect essay analyzes what causes certain
things to happen or why things are a certain way, the
results brought about by certain events, or both. For
example, you may want to write an essay about an
event that happened and then tell how it affected your
life. This would tell the cause (the event) and the
effect (how it affected your life). To begin writing a
cause and effect essay, you may want to first decide on
a topic, such as an event or a person, and then decide
what you will tell about that topic, such as what
happened to make that specific event take place or
what made the person have a certain attitude or
personality. You could also tell about a specific topic
and what effects it had on future events.
Guidelines for writing a cause and effect essay:
4 Decide whether you will focus on causes, effects, or
both.
4 There can be multiple causes of one effect. (For
example, because you saved your money, shopped
around for the best deal, and saw an ad in a
newspaper, you were able to buy the car of your
dreams.) There can also be one cause of multiple
effects. (For example, your decision to stay out late
one night may have caused you to miss an important
phone call, forget to study for a test, and made you
tired the next day.) There can also be a chain of events
in which each effect turns out to be the cause of
another effect. (For example, one event may have
affected your decision to travel to Europe, which
affected your decision to study a foreign language,
which helped you get a job as a travel agent.)
4 Have a clear purpose (to tell information, to
persuade readers, or both). This purpose is achieved
through a main idea, which should be included in the
thesis statement, or controlling idea.
 4 Choose a logical organization. For example, you may
want to use chronological (the order in which events
happened), most-to-least (such as most effective to
least effective or most difficult to least difficult), least-
to-most (such as least costly to most costly or least
obvious to most obvious), or order of importance (such
as a belief that is most important to you, then a belief
that is a little less important, and so on).
4 Explain cause and/or effect fully, using details to
support your explanations.

Argumentative Essay
What is it?
An argumentative essay makes a claim and then gives
examples and evidence to prove that point. You can
begin writing an argumentative essay by deciding on a
certain topic, such as something about a belief, idea, or
controversial issue. Then, do research to obtain
detailed information. The information can be statistics,
stories, examples, observances, and other facts. Use
the information throughout the essay to argue your
point and convince the reader.
Guidelines for writing an argumentative essay:
4 Choose a narrow issue.
 4 Tell your reader what you believe about the issue
very clearly and specifically in your thesis statement, or
controlling idea.
4 Be aware of your audience and anticipate the
reader’s views. This means that if you know your
readers will most likely not believe a certain statement
because it goes against traditional beliefs or their
personal viewpoints, make sure you give solid evidence
to back it up.
4 Use convincing details as evidence to support your
claim. These should be from believable and reliable
sources. For example, if you’re stating something that
has to do with human health, quote a doctor who
knows about that topic, or if you are talking about a
trend in society, include statistics from a well-known
organization.
4 Choose the most appropriate way of arguing your
point (inductive or deductive). inductive=start with
stating all the evidence and then move on to one
conclusion deductive=start with one basic statement
of belief and move on to the supporting
points of evidence
4 Acknowledge opposing viewpoints to prove you
have thought about the topic thoroughly yet still find
that your point is correct.
Classification or Division Essay
What is it?
A classification or division essay presents several
topics by organizing them in a clearly defined pattern.
A classification essay takes several topics that are
related in some way and sorts them into groups or
categories according to certain characteristics. Some
examples of this type of paper would be three objects,
people, or places that are each described separately,
but they are also categorized and presented in such a
way so that the connection among them is clear to the
reader.
A division essay begins with one topic and divides it
out into several parts in order to take a closer, more
detailed look at it. To write a division essay, you could
choose a topic about a person, place, object, or event
and then divide it into several aspects that analyze the
topic from different points.
Guidelines for writing a classification or division essay:

4 Decide either how to classify the topics or into what

parts to divide the topics, according to whatever
works best for your audience and is both exclusive
(meaning that it strictly allows only certain information
into each category) and comprehensive (meaning that
all information is included somewhere, in one category
or another) so that no topics overlap or are left out.
4 Make each category clear and understandable to the
reader by using descriptions of the categories and
topics and by including details.
4 Make sure the thesis statement, or controlling idea,
tells what the main subject of the paper is; it may also
mention the method you will use to classify or divide.