Students get assigned plenty of essays to write throughout their academic careers. Those essay types also differ, such as argumentative and analytical essays. Different skills are required for writing different kinds of essays, for example, using metaphorical language in a personal essay to make it sound vital, or, on the other hand, thinking critically about varied problems for concluding an analytical essay. The essays differ in format, structure, and length, too, with some being completed in just a few paragraphs and others stretching over a number of pages.
Learn about these types of essays before you get assigned them by your teacher. End your confusion between the different types by understanding how they differ from each other, how they are the same, and the various ways of writing them.
The Four Main Types of Writing
- Persuasive Essay
- Narrative Essay
- Descriptive Essay
- Expository Essay
The above-mentioned four types are not specific types but four definite techniques for communicating the theme of an essay. These are the four most frequently used methods among the other types, such as process analysis and classification.
Gaining knowledge and understanding of these four main types of essay writing will help you write the essay in a better way. While reading an essay, try to spot which kind of writing the writer uses in it by inspecting the tone, theme, and words used in the essay. By doing so, you can examine an essay more deeply and then later write down an excellent essay yourself that will be based on those insights.
Types of Essays
- Personal Essay: A personal essay is written by focusing on something that has personally affected you. It can be anything, such as a situation you are going through nowadays, circumstances that shaped you into the human being you are today, an event or consequence from the past, etc.
The personal essays are mostly written using narrative writing techniques. Although they can also be written using descriptive or expository techniques, it depends on the theme and the content of the essay.
- Political Essays:I hope that you remember the essays you read in your history classes. Those were some of the most prominent political essays. Those essays were pieces of writing written by renowned contemporary and historical thinkers who discussed society and how it should be governed. Some of the eminent political essayists you would have read about in your classes include Jawn Rawls, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
In a political essay, the writer comments about the prevailing circumstances or situations and then suggests solutions for the same by stating examples of related solutions or circumstances from history. A political essay mainly falls into the category of persuasive or expository writing.
- Compare and Contrast Essay:The students are most often asked to write essays of this type. In the compare and contrast essays, the writer reveals essential similarities and differences between the two subjects by comparing them.
The students might be asked to compare the historical figures you have studied about, two of your favorite novels, two concepts your professor covered, etc. You may even be asked to compare three or more subjects in some cases. But the compare and contrast essays mostly involve comparing two issues.
Compare and contrast essays are generally pieces of expository writing because the differentiation exposes the theme of the essay that the writer makes. Although they can also be pieces of persuasive writing if the differentiation between them is made to persuade the reader’s mind to take a determined position,.
- College/University Application Essays:The other name of the university application essay is a personal statement. It is called so because it highlights the experiences and personality traits that can make you justify that you are an appropriate candidate for the university or college you are applying to. These essays are judged beside the documentation of the high school for getting admission to the college.
These types of essays are mostly written in response to certain prompts. These prompts are formulated to help the students applying to universities write compelling and engaging personal essays by requesting that they answer numerous related points.
- Analytical Essays: This is a type of essay that teaches the fundamental components of the subject at hand and reaches a conclusion by rigorously operating across these components. The students may be asked to write an analytical essay about the presentation of ideas in a political essay or the theme of a novel. These essays are pieces of expository writing; they aim to showcase the facts of interpreting content.
In this essay, the writer does not convince the readers to take a certain position. Instead, the writer showcases a work, such as a short story or movie, and examines the theme of it by talking about the work in which the theme communicates. For example, you can write an analytical essay on how a film conveys its theme of love.
In a few of the analytical essays, the writer is even asked to analyze two or more works. And if it is done for comparing those works, then the essay can also be known as a compare and contrast essay.
- Argumentative Essays:As you can grasp from the name of this essay, it involves arguments or arguing. You specifically say in favor of or against a given topic.
Appropriately written argumentative essays do not depend on emotional appeal. Instead, it convinces the readers about their point of view by using specific facts, logic, and statistics. Most of the time, argumentative essays are pieces of persuasive writing.
- Humorous Essays:Another type of essay for which you are asked to write is the humorous essay. As can be seen from its name, this type of essay signifies entertaining the readers and prompting laughs. A humorous essay can be about a personal incident where you write about a funny event that occurred in your life. Still, it can also be written in the form of a political essay that uses sarcasm to comment on or explain current situations or events. If the essay that you wrote is humorous or funny, then it will be known as a humorous essay.
This essay also uses the same techniques that the other essays use; it is frequently written using narrative writing styles such as metaphors and descriptive language. A humorous essay is often a piece of descriptive writing that uses irrelevant, whimsical, or hyperbolic language to explain the funny points of the subject.
Now, if you are assigned any of the essays mentioned above, you will be able to easily complete them because, after going through this whole blog, you have become an expert essay typer. This blog helped you gain complete knowledge and understanding of the different types of essays.
