Types of Essays

Types of Essays

If you want to perform well academically, you need to have the ability to write well. In fact, essays are perhaps the most common assignment that teachers and professors use to assess the student’s abilities to think in a critical and organized manner. There are not only a limitless number of topics to choose from, but also there are several major types of essays with their own distinct purposes and structures. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the different types of essays. Fortunately, at Qualityessaypapers.com we provide you with the possibility to buy custom written essays at a cheap price that take the load off your shoulder. When you buy an essay from Qualityessaypapers.com, you are not only getting the highest quality essay paper, you are freeing yourself to spent time on the things that matter most to you. Whether you are looking for online essay writing help or wanting to buy an essay, we are at your service. With that in mind, here are some of the most common types of essay writings that you have encountered or will certain come across during your academic career, such as persuasive, review, literary, argumentative, expository, compare and contrast, cause and effect, research, and informal essays. Here is a closer look at these different types of essays courtesy of Qualityessaypapers.com.

Persuasive Essay

When you are looking to convince the reader to agree with your position on a topic, you have to persuade them with sound, factual information. With persuasive essays you are not simply demonstrating your knowledge you are giving the reader a compelling reason for why he/she should also support your view. To begin, you must choose an issue of contrasting viewpoints and choose a side. Then you must provide two or three reasons for supporting your position and rebut a potential counterpoint that would make the opposition viewpoint seem valid. Remember to be professional in your criticism of your opponents’ arguments. Merely calling them insulting names or dismissing their argument without a good explanation will not win over your reads. In general, you should choose the side that you believe in. However, you don’t always have this luxury; sometimes a professor (especially in a law class or debate course) will require you to take a side even if you don’t support that viewpoint. This can be useful because it compels you to keep an open mind.

Review

Reviews can be either formal or informal, depending on your professor’s intentions when assigning this type of essay. Its purpose is to critique a book, article, movie, or even a restaurant. With a lot of essays, being objective is necessary, but with a review, you are expected to make an assessment based on your own feelings. How, you need to be careful not to demonstrate too much objectivity. After all, your readers might not necessarily agree with your tastes. So, you’ll need to provide firm evidence to back up your claims. In this sense, you need to use persuasive skills much like the aforementioned essay.

Your professor might ask your review to be formal or informal depending on how much it is based on analysis, how much is a summarization, and how much is your personal reaction to what it is you are reviewing. A review that is more formal doesn’t merely report on the work, but places it in context. For example, newspapers and magazines often provide reviews based on whether it’s a good value to the customer. Critiques have the goal of determining whether or not a new movie or book provides something fresh and interesting to the audience. A quality review discusses this points and the significance of the given work.

Literary Essay

With this type of essay, the objective is to assess deeper significance and construction of a piece of literature. Although similar to a review, a literary essay is nonetheless more complex. With reviews you are evaluating the overall impact and legitimacy of a piece whereas a literary review requires that you pay more attention to specific elements. A literary essay considers such aspects as style, subtext, structure, and theme. You determine why the literature was written, considering the writer’s intent. You also need to develop an opinion about it. Finally, there is an element of research involved too. For example, you express your opinion and also include the critiques of other reviewers. Of course, if you decide to consider the work of other critics, you will need to read the literary work again and add notations before considering the opinion of others.

Argumentative Essay

The ability to make a good argument can be a difficult skill to acquire. It’s not merely enough to express a well-founded opinion. There will still be some who won’t necessarily be convinced even if you believe your points are logical. Much like the persuasive essay, you must be careful not to merely insult the other point of view. You are looking to win over the reader. In some cases, the reader has a set point of view that they’ve never considered challenging and as a result they assume their set of beliefs to be the only truth. Your job when writing this essay is to prove to them otherwise.

Expository Essay

The purpose of this type of essay is to inform and familiarize your reader about a topic/issue. It requires some background research so that you’ll have all the facts and info necessary to relay to the reader. Expository writing is meant to demonstrate to the reader (including your professor) that you have a firm understanding of the subject being written. Usually, these essays consist of about 5 paragraphs, although sometimes they can be bigger. Regardless of its size, the essay must definitely contain an introduction and a conclusion.

Compare and Contrast Essay

Naturally, the purpose of this essay is self-evident – it requires you to take two or more objects and discuss how they are the same and how they differ utilizing analysis. In order to accomplish this, you need to be a good observer; in fact, very little scholarly research is needed. These essays are typically subjective. While there is more than one way to go about a compare and contrast essay, structurally they remain consistent; it must include an intro, a body consisting of a few paragraphs, and then a conclusion. As you are writing this paper, remember to include transition and cue words like “on the other hand” and “however.” These words improve the flow of your paper, making them easier and clearer. For more information about this, feel free to check out our article that provides more detail about our compare/contrast essays!

Cause and Effect Essay

This essay is generally written in a more formal, professional way when compared to descriptive and narrative essays. For example, you need to maintain a tone that conveys reason and you need to present facts that the reader will believe. Research is necessary and the sources must be reliable. Also, remember not to write in the first-person on this cause and effect essays; you want to be objective and neutral.

Research Essay

This type of essay can be highly involved. You’ll need to do a lot of reading of other scholarly journals and incorporate their information into your paper. It requires you to use articles, experiments, and reports as a basis of support for your own ideas. Because you want to stay focused, make sure to narrow your topic to something specific rather than on something in general. Also, you want to ensure that you are not plagiarizing from the sources you use. Remember, you want to synthesize the articles/works but you certainly do not want to just copy it. If you are not citing the sources properly, it is cheating.

Informal Essay

These essays are most often written for pleasure. Of course, this doesn’t mean they have no value to the reader. They can certainly inform or be persuasive, but done in a casual manner that incorporates observations and humor. Also, a well-written informal essay still needs to be structured in an orderly manner, although not as rigidly as a formal paper. These papers are more personal than formal writings, although both can contain subjectivity. In addition, the writer of an informal essay uses a style in which they are communicating directly to the reader whereas a formal writer uses third person. Finally, while there is no need to sound overly bookish when writing an informal paper, you also don’t want to make it sound sloppy either.