Daisy Randall

What Are the 5 Different Types of Essays? A Complete Guide
 

         An essay is a kind of literary composition that tackles its subject matter through analysis, interpretation, and criticism. An  essay writer , as a literary medium, is quite shorter than its other literary counterparts such as thesis and dissertation. The content that the essay discusses is done from a limited perspective and also contains the opinion of the authors. The term essay is derived from the French term essayer - which has the meaning of attempting or trying. Thus, the essay depicts the informed opinion of an individual on some topic - whether it be a general or a specific topic.

         There are 4 main types of essays which include an expository essay, descriptive essay, persuasive essay, and narrative essay. The aim of an expository essay is to investigate a topic of choice, provide supporting evidence to the topic, and formulate an argument based on the evidence that is provided. As is evident from the term, the expository essay tends to expose a given topic by providing relevant information and evidence. The aim of an expository essay is not to persuade the readers to a particular point of view but merely to provide information to the readers concerning the topic so that they can make their own informed decisions.

         The second main type of essay is a descriptive essay. The descriptive essay resembles the expository essay in the sense that it tends to describe something or some idea rather than providing arguments in favor of some claim made regarding the topic. The subject of description could include an idea, an event, a process, or an emotion. It mainly requires the essay writer to provide their experience regarding the subject matter, thus offering a great deal of freedom regarding the path that the essay can potentially take. As the essay is experiential-based, it requires that the writers use their senses to formulate the content of the essay.

         The third type of essay is a persuasive essay that tends to convince the readers of a particular claim that has been made. The essay makes a claim about a given topic based on evidence and then aims to employ persuasive techniques to help readers get to the topic. The persuasive technique that is employed includes ethos, logos, and pathos, where ethos refers to an appeal to authority or the writer’s credibility, logos refers to an appeal to logic and reasoning made through employing arguments and supporting evidence, while pathos refers to an appeal to emotion that is employed by inducing varied emotions in the reader.

         The final type of essay is a narrative essay. The narrative essay is written as though the writer is telling a story to the readers and carrying them through various experiences. This gives the writers an opportunity to express ideas about their anecdotes, experiences, and personal stories. The aim of the narrative essay is to take a personal story and to write it creatively so that a defined purpose is achieved.

         All four types of essays have a set basic structure that is followed. This includes, firstly, writing an introduction to the essay. The introduction of the essay should start with a catchy phrase, or an unknown statistic, or some visual imagery, which would hook the readers and make them read the entire written piece. After the introductory sentences, the introduction should provide some background to the essay so that the reader has the basic knowledge required to read the essay. This ensures that the writer does not find it difficult to fathom the details of the essay. The last part of the introduction is its thesis statement.

         The thesis statement is arguably the most important part of any essay as it gives a short summary of the entire subject matter and the entire picture of the way that the subject is going to be tackled. The thesis statement should be concise and pithy. It should not exceed two to three sentences in length. The thesis statement should also strive to allude to the topic sentences of the body paragraphs that are yet to come. If I were to have difficulty in writing the thesis statement of the essay, I could ask a professional writer to write my essay, so that I can get top-quality content for my essay.

         The next part of the argumentative essay is its body paragraphs. The body paragraphs should start with the topic sentence. The topic sentence should allude back to the thesis statement of the essay. There should be only one idea mentioned per paragraph and that idea should be clearly described in the topic sentence of each paragraph. The topic sentence of the body paragraph is followed by the evidence that is provided to back up the statement in the topic sentence. The evidence should be followed by an explanation of the provided evidence so that the readers can understand how the evidence relates to the context of the essay. The body paragraph should end with the concluding statement that sums up the discussion in the paragraph. Given the problems that arise while writing the body paragraphs, the assistance of a professional essay writing service  can be attained.

         The final part of the essay is its concluding paragraph, which should restate the thesis statement of the essay, and provide a brief summary of the arguments or ideas discussed. The concluding paragraph should end on a high note, such as with a call to action or a famous quote that resonated with people.