You are often asked to describe your understanding for a particular subject through essay writing. As a sensible student, you have to take in mind all the factors including the writing style, tone and the technique while transforming your thoughts into an essay.

Categorizing your essay writing into one of the different forms is a thoughtful task. It plays a key role in portraying your essay in a better perspective. You are supposed to know the difference between all forms of essays. Hope this article helps you improve your essay writing capabilities with a detailed description of some common types of essays.

Expository Essay

In an expository essay, more emphasis is laid on the views of other people without expressing your personal opinion. Expository writing involves a detailed study of the concerned subject. Such a form of essay writing is usually adopted to explain a difficult subject. So you have to dawn the mask of a teacher rather than a student while writing an expository essay. Such an essay demands a detailed analysis of the subject with following important points in mind:

1. Reading out the ideas developed in an article by clearly stating another thesis, outlining the facts supporting the thesis.
2. Putting the read articles into a larger context by relating the subject with another. This helps to put forward a clearer idea about the subject discussed.
3. Effectively and clearly communicating the information to the audience so that they know how you have arrived at your analyses and conclusions.

Persuasive Essay

Persuasive essay writing, also known as the argument essay, utilizes logic and reason to show the legitimacy of one idea over the other. The persuasive essay primarily aims to prove the authenticity of your argument. It further convinces the readers about the credibility of your ideas over others. Once an argument is developed, you should back it up with some unfeigned evidences and examples.

While writing persuasive essay the following steps should be taken into consideration:

1. Choose your position. Give convincing reasons to support your choice of position for the concerned subject.
2. Analyze your audience. Decide whether they will agree with you, will be neutral or will disagree with your position.
3. Research your topic. All arguments in persuasive essay should be backed up with reliable and trustworthy evidence.
4. Structure your essay. Try to design the order in which you will present your evidences. Remember to consider your purpose, audience, and you topic.

In order to produce an effective argument, take note of the following points:

1. Be well informed about your chosen topic. A thorough research on the topic backed up by reliable resources is essential.
2. Re-examine the thesis. Your thesis or argument, must have two sides. It must be debatable.
3. Understand the opposite view-point of your position and then counter it by providing contrasting evidences or by finding mistakes
4. Support your position with evidence. All your evidences  should be reliable, reasonable and authentic. You might include some statistical data  as well.
5. Include examples. They enhance the reader's credibility.

Informal Essay

Informal essay is a pleasure giving form of essay writing carried out to pen down some lighter and entertaining topics. Along being an enjoyable form of essay writing, Informal essay is also informative and persuasive at times. It enables you to write down your opinions in a relaxed mood with shades of humour unlike a formal statement. An informal essay is less rigid, far more personal as compared to formal essay. Still it manages to maintain a smooth structure throughout.

A formal essay makes the writer go silent and lets the words to communicate with the reading audience. Just opposite to formal version, an informal essay enables the writer to speak face to face with the reader through his writing.The style is therefore journalistic but aimed at a fairly sophisticated readership.

Review

Review is a writing assignment that needs a critical, well-argumentative evaluation of the fact or the event. You can write a formal as well as an informal review. The main aim is the critical evaluation of your research work . When writing a review essay, your main objective is to provide an overview of the most significant points that were raised by the author of a literary work. A review essay is not the same as a book report; A book report simply summarizes the work and provides a brief opinion on the story whereas the review essay tries to engage in a critical discussion of your paper.

Research Essay

Research essay is a popular writing assignment in the colleges and universities. This is a kind of persuasive essay where you assess your ideas with respect to another's. For this, due care is advisable while selecting your thesis. Try to come up with an original thesis or take an aspect of someone's thesis and develop it. Your thesis is the most critical aspect of your research essay. It not only organizes the material you are presenting, it also focuses your research efforts. Try to come up with facts to support your arguments and if someone comes up with things that do not support your argument, explain them why those statements are wrong and are not applicable in the circumstances. One can conclude by summarizing all the arguments or can also conclude with an example or a quote that sums up all your arguments.

Literary Essay

Literary essay lets you research the papers pertaining to the field of literature. It focuses on elements like subtext, structure and style. You are supposed to have a strong opinion for your work on literary essay as it explains how the elements of the written work support your point of view. Try to use other sources very cautiously to avoid plagiarism. Always remember to go through the original work before writing a critical article about it. To conclude, try to draw all the strands of your various points together. This should be the part of your essay, which answers the question most directly and forcefully.

Argumentative Essay

In an argumentative writing, we try to convince others to agree with our facts, share our values, accept our argument and conclusions, and adopt our way of thinking. An argumentative essay aims to show that your assertion (opinion, theory, and hypothesis) about some phenomenon is correct or more truthful than others. Argumentative writing is the act of forming reasons, making inductions, drawing conclusions, and applying them to the case in discussion. You do not have to completely prove your point; you only have to convince reasonable readers that your argument or position has merit.

The main objective of an argumentative essay paper is to "win" it - to sway the reader to accept their point of view. For this, you need to consider both sides of the topics and then decide your position. The act of arguing involves providing proof to support your claim. You are required to explore two sides of a topic and provide proof as to why one side or position is better than the other

Keep in mind the following tips while writing your essay:
1. Avoid emotional language
2. Know the difference between a logical conclusion and an emotional point of view
3. Don't make up evidence
4. Cite your sources
5. Try to defend yourselves by knowing the strongest arguments of the other side. You might be challenged by the teacher or by another student.

Cause and Effect Essay

The cause and effect essay explains the reasons of the event or interprets the consequences of the event. They are concerned with why things happen (causes) and what happens as a result (effects). It is a common method of organizing and discussing ideas.
Sometimes an event causes something to happen, and that situation leads to another event, and it causes another event to happen. This is called the causal chain or domino effect.e.g. Use of deodorants will bring an end to the world.

The preparatory stage of writing your cause and effect essay suggests your determining causes and effects. There may be too many causes for you to cover in your essay and you have to choose the main cause for the scope of your writing. You must also decide the purpose of writing, if it is to inform or to persuade the reader. Using supporting information will strengthen your essay. Feel free to provide the reader with facts, give examples. You may finish your cause and effect essay with a call for action.

Comparison and Contrast Essay

In comparison and contrast essay you compare two or more things, problems, events or ideas and evaluate their resemblances and differences. This type of essay advances and develops your critical thinking. It also increases your argumentation and understanding capabilities related to some events or things that you compare. It is much easier to discuss ONLY the similarities or ONLY the differences, but you can also do both. The most important thing to remember is structure.

One way to arrange your material for a comparison and contrast essay is to use the block arrangement which is to write about event X in one paragraph and event Y in the next. If you mention a particular point in the event X, you must mention the same point in the event Y in the same order.
The second way to organize this material is to discuss a particular point about event X and then immediately to discuss the same point about event Y. This is called point-by-point or alternating arrangement.

Classification Essay

Classification essays rank the groups of objects according to a common standard. In this, a writer organizes, or sorts, things into categories. Classification is a convenient method of arranging data and simplifying complex notions. To organize a classification essay, the writer should:
1. Categorize each group.
2. Describe or define each category. List down the general characteristics and discuss them.
3. Provide enough illustrative examples. An example should be a typical representative of the group.
4. Point out similarities or differences of each category, using comparison-contrast techniques.