What Are the 4 Different Types of Essays? A Complete Guide

    June 29, 2022

Whether you are in high school or college, writing essays is unavoidable. The worst scenario is where the teacher assigns you different types of essays throughout an academic year. However, once you master the different types of essays, you are on for great excellence.

This article by Homeworkmaven.com experts provides tools that you need to ace any time of the essay. It describes the 4 main types of essays and also additional ones to help you get through college with ease.

The article also provides examples of thesis statements and ways you can craft various parts of your essays. We wish you the best in your next essay and just in case you need a Unique written essay, please order HERE.

What are the 4 Different Types of Essays?

The four main types of essays are:

  • Expository essays
  • Argumentative essays
  • Persuasive essays
  • Descriptive essays

4 Main Types of College Essays

Expository Essays

An expository essay explains a topic in a straightforward and focused manner. It does not necessitate an innovative argument, but rather a balanced and well-organized understanding of the subject. Expository essays assess your knowledge of a subject as well as your ability to arrange and communicate information. Additionally, an expository essay’s introduction announces the topic and offers some broad background knowledge, the body contains the specifics, and the conclusion summarizes the material offered.

Argumentative Essays

In argumentative essays, you specifically argue for or against a particular position. Argumentative essays that are well written do not rely on emotional appeal. Rather, they use numbers, facts, and reasoning to persuade readers of the benefits of their ideas. Argumentative essays are often persuasive works of writing. The purpose of argumentative essays is to assess your abilities to conduct research and articulate your point of view on a given topic. Furthermore, the essay is divided into three parts, i.e.

  • The introduction part constitutes the topic and thesis statement.
  • The body part provides the argument information and evidence to back up the information.
  • A conclusion that gives a summary of all your arguments and how they relate to the thesis statement.

Persuasive Essays

A persuasive essay is a form of essay, which uses logical reasoning combined with an emotional plea to persuade readers to accept a specific point of view. Persuasive essays can be classified both as academic or personal writing. They usually start with a query that the author devotes the rest of the essay advocating for or against. Unlike argumentative essays, a persuasive essay is designed to involve arguments toward a single point of view to persuade the reader to agree while an argumentative essay is designed to involve research, evidence, and presentations

Descriptive Essays

A descriptive essay gives details on specific things. The goal of this type of essay is to describe something like an object, place, or person in detail. Fortunately, this type of essay allows you to be more creative but is more focused on the topic of discussion. Descriptive essays put your ability to utilize words creatively to portray a memorable image of what you are describing to the test. Moreover, a descriptive essay can be quite loosely organized, but it should normally start by explaining the topic of your description and conclude by sketching an overall view of it. The main thing is to produce an original description of your product by using careful word choice and metaphorical language.

Other Types of Essays

Opinion Essays

An opinion essay is a formal piece of writing in which the writer must express his/her ideas on a certain issue. In this essay, you should be explicit about your beliefs and the reasons behind them, offering facts and examples to back up anything that may appear irrational. The essay will include an introduction with a thesis statement, supporting paragraphs, and a final paragraph with an excellent conclusion. Additionally, unlike other sorts of essays, the opinion essay does not have to rely on facts; instead, it can focus only on the writer’s view, as long as the writer can back up his or her beliefs with persuasive arguments.

Nursing Essays

A nursing essay is an academic document about a nursing topic that is intended to demonstrate your knowledge throughout a nursing program or for the application process for a nursing school. This type of essay is extremely scholarly and written for a knowledgeable audience, distinguishing it from other types of essays. A nursing essay consists of an introduction, the body, and the conclusion.

Philosophy Essays

A philosophy essay is writing that involves presenting and defending a certain claim with supportive and rational facts throughout the paper. A philosophical essay should provide answers supported by clear, logically based arguments. A good philosophical argument should take the reader through unmistakable logical steps from obviously true premises to an unexpected conclusion. Most philosophy assignments will need you to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject by presenting arguments and theories, and many will test your ability to analyze these arguments and ideas by writing a critical review of them.

 

Literature Essays

A literary analysis paper examines and sometimes evaluates a piece of literature or an element of a work of literature. These essays entail closely researching a text, understanding its meanings, and delving into why the author chose particular decisions. It can be used to describe novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other type of literary writing. A literature essay is a form of an argumentative essay in which you must evaluate features of the text such as language, context, and organization, and explain how the author employs literary methods to create effects and express ideas. To keep your essay focused, you must attentively examine the text and develop a thesis statement. Additionally, a literature analysis essay is formatted using the standard structure of an academic essay.

Reflective Essays

A reflective essay is a style of writing in which you explain a specific event or experience from your life or offer your thoughts on a piece of literature. The experience should delve into your thoughts, emotions, and perspectives on the event and how it influenced you. For you to produce a powerful reflective essay, you should not only discuss the shift you went through but also back it up with facts and instances. Like other academic essays, reflective essays have three main parts namely;

  • An introduction where the speaker provides either directly or indirectly, what the focus of the reflection will be.
  • The reflective essay’s body describes how the writer has changed or what the writer has learned. It also discusses what drove the author to transform.
  • The conclusion where the writer summarizes how he or she has changed or the impact of those changes

Cause and Effect Essays

A cause-and-effect essay investigates the reason for something happening as well as the repercussions of the circumstance. This type of writing is similar to an argumentative essay in certain ways because the author must demonstrate the interdependence of the topics under consideration. For you to write this, one must conduct extensive research on the subject and comprehend the intricacies of the given occurrence.

Rhetorical Essays

A rhetorical analysis is an essay that divides a nonfiction work into sections and then discusses how the components work together to achieve a specific impact, such as convince, educate, or instruct. Rhetoric is the study of how writers and presenters use words to affect an audience. A rhetorical essay is structured similarly to other essays: an introduction that presents the thesis, a body that directly analyzes the text and a conclusion that officially ends.

Humorous Essays

This type of essay, as the name suggests, is intended to make the reader laugh and entertain them. Humorous essays are frequently descriptive works of writing that use exaggerated, irreverent, or whimsical language to communicate a humorous viewpoint on the subject explored.

Analytical Essays

Analytical essays are those that drill down to the subject’s basic components and reach conclusions by extensively working through these components. The author of an analytical essay does not attempt to convince the reader to accept a certain stance. Rather, the author provides a work, such as a film or a short novel, and examines its topic by addressing the many methods by which the work conveys its idea.

Application Essays

An application essay, also known as a personal statement, is a concise personal essay that highlights the personality qualities and experiences that make you an excellent fit for the college to which you are applying. They are mostly evaluated along with high school performance transcripts

Compare and Contrast Essays

In this type of essay, the author draws attention to major distinctions and similarities between two themes by comparing and contrasting them. Typically, compare-and-contrast essays are pieces of expository writing, as the topic of the essay is revealed via the author’s contrasts. They may also be persuasive writing when the parallels are used to encourage the reader to accept a particular stance.

Political Essays

Well-known historical and contemporary philosophers about society and how it should be administered write these kinds of essays. In a political essay, the author reflects on current events and provides remedies, often drawing on instances of comparable situations or solutions from history.

Personal Essays

The focus of a personal essay is on something that has directly influenced you. It might be a former occurrence, a present problem, or a larger look at how many events and situations formed you into the person you are today. Personal essays and other genres of essays, such as argumentative, humorous, and application essays, may coincide.

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