16 Different Types Of Essay

16 Different Types Of Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which represents the ideas, emotions or arguments of the author. All of us has come across a situation where we needed to write an essay. Writing an essay was an important part of the homework or assignments. In earlier times, students used to reference books to get data to write an essay.

Nowadays, the internet has taken the place of books. Students search for the given topic online and form an essay on it. Even if they have the all required information to write an essay, they sometimes fail to write a well-organized essay.

Because in most of the schools, students are asked to write an essay on various topics but they are not taught about the different types of essays and how to form them. In this article, you will learn about various types of essays and how to write each of them.

1) Narrative essay :

Narrative essay writing is an important part of the curriculum of schools and colleges. Because it enhances the creativity and imagination of students. As the famous writer correctly said that imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to the evolution.

In narrative essay writing, you tell a story either from your own imagination or a real story from the outer world. narrative essays are written as a short novel. It includes various characters, dialogues, and anecdotes. There should be a proper beginning, interval, and ending of the story.

An average narrative essay is written in at least 1000 words. One should use plenty of adverbs and adjectives to narrate the story. Narrative essays are written in the first-person style, in this way, readers feel connected with the story. It is important to plan your story before start writing.


2) Descriptive :

A descriptive essay is quite similar to a narrative essay. Many people find it difficult to differentiate between these two types of essays. A writer describes a character, place or event with in-depth details. A descriptive essay is written in such a way that it simulates the picture in the readers’ mind. a descriptive essay is written with respect to all senses. A reader should be able to smell, feel, see, and hear what he is reading.

It requires a lot of skills to achieve such essay writing skills. One should read descriptive essays by different writers to learn their method of writing and practice a lot to develop his/her own style of writing. One can read the novels of Haruki Murakami to learn to describe events and characters. His descriptive writing is so good that he actually paints a picture with his words.

3) Expository :

Writing these types of essays consume a lot of time. In expository essays, one explains an idea, process, literature, article or events from his own point of view. Therefore, one should do a lot of research and read everything available about the topic and present it from your own perspective.

These types of essays are very common at the university level when students write their thesis. They are expected to do a lot of research and reach a conclusion in the end. The beauty of these types of essays is that one can never be wrong about them. While writing such essays writers are expected to cite all the articles, websites, and books from where they took the information.

A writer should begin the essay with a clear statement or research question. The whole point of writing an expository essay is to answer that question, also, provide facts and reasoning with appropriate examples to support your saying. Make your essay concise (usually, the length of the expository essay is between 600-800 words). Never leave your essay without reaching a conclusion and your conclusion must be in accord with your statement that you have mentioned at the beginning of the essay.

4) Persuasive :

In persuasive essays, the writer writes about their own opinion about an event, idea, or an issue. Persuasive essays and argumentative essays are considered similar, but they are not quite the same. In an argumentative essay, a writer will prove his points with facts and information. However, in persuasive essays, writers use a soft tone and they try to convince his/her readers using emotions and moral values. Before writing this type of essays, the writer should research a lot and prepare his/her definite point of view.

Know your readers and formulate of essay accordingly. Give appropriate reasons to convince your readers and don’t repeat your point again and again otherwise your readers might lose interest. Instead, use solid evidence with passionate intensity. Follow the rule of stating one point per paragraph and mention your strongest shreds of evidence first and progress accordingly. In the write your conclusion in clear wordings.

5) Argumentative :

Argumentative essays straight forward and more formal than persuasive essays. in this type of essays, you prove your opinion, theory or hypothesis with strong facts and information. A writer should be well versed with the topic that he is writing about. That requires a lot of research and reading. A writer can also state some counter-arguments and give reasons to state why those arguments are wrong.

In argumentative essays, the writer convinces readers with his/her point of view by providing truth, not by his/her own emotional sentiments. A writer should choose a topic that he/she can prove with strong shreds of evidence. In addition to this, the topic of the essay is focused and vivid otherwise, readers cannot relate to it.

Mention various approaches sequence vise and support them with all pros followed by its counter approach and all its cons and also give reasons for why this approach is refuted. In the end, write a strong conclusion.

6) Analytical :

In analytical essays, a writer analyzes a book, event, movie, poem, play or any work of art from his own point of view. This type of essays is written in a soft and simple tone.  Analyzing does not mean that you have to re-tell the story. A writer should focus on analyzing the text and tell what the writer wants us to see and feel. A writer can also give his/her own opinion about the text or about any particular event. It is important to structure your essay properly. A poorly structured essay can lose its whole point of writing. Plan your essay before starting to write an essay.

In the introduction mention what part you are going to discuss. In the next section analyze the text. This section is usually the longest part of the essay. After that the writer should write his/her personal response. Personal response of the candidate can be either positive or negative. And in the end, write a precise conclusion which establishes a relationship between analyzed text and your argument. Be objective and avoid using and slang and “etc.”.

7) Comparison and contrast :

In comparison and contrast essays, two similar yet different things are compared. A writer should determine their purpose of writing an essay and highlight the similarities between two or more objects and also contrasting two or more different objects. To write this type of essays writers should prepare carefully and understand which information they want to include.  Write a thesis statement, make a comparison between the decided objects and arranged them sequentially and reach a conclusion.

8) Cause and effect :

This type of essays explains why things are the way they are, how did that happen and what will happen next. A writer should find out the logical relation between different cause and effects. There are two ways of writing a cause and effect essay. First, you can connect cause and effect together and second, cause and effect can be written separately. This type of essays is considered the most difficult type of essay. One should read thoroughly about the topic in hand and narrow down all the possible causes and effects of a particular event or happening. Cause and effect essays can be used to write about ecological and political topics.

9) Critical :

Critical essays are a little similar to expository and analytical essays. A writer evaluates things like books, movies, and work of arts and criticizes them if he/she finds something in it to criticize about. Through this type of essay, a writer provides informative content to his/her readers.

10) Explicatory :

This type of essays is a short type of essays and they are usually written on a single page. They are similar to analytical essays. In explicatory essays, the writer explains a piece of literature, a book, a play, a poem or a novel. Unlike critical essay writing explicatory essay writing only focuses on the particular part of the text and explain it as he perceives it in his own language. Two people can write two essays with a different point of views on the same piece of literature.

11) Review :

A review essay is written about books, novels, poems, and movies. A writer should watch or read the work that he/she is going to write about thoroughly. While writing a review essay a writer should provide information about the writer, director and producers and also mention if it is a sequel of any prior work. A writer should write about the plot and character of the stories and also give his/her reviews about how well they have been developed throughout the story. There is no harm to mention anything that you didn’t like about the work. In review essays, a writer can also give his/her opinion about the work.

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12) Simple :

A simple essay is the most common type of essay. this type of essays is given to students to write on in the beginning years of primary school. This type of essays does not have any particular structure. The purpose of writing such an essay is to teach students to make meaningful sentences. Students are asked to describe things that they see in their surroundings. In this way, they develop their language and learn to elaborate on things.

13) Research :

Research essays are very common in high schools, college, and universities. Writing a research essay gives nightmares to students. The first step to write a research essay is to find a topic to do research on. It is one of the most important tasks and 90% success of your research paper depends on the right choice of the topic. Do thorough research about the topic that you have chosen and also find sources and review them. You can refer to various sources like research papers, books, an online encyclopedia, and expert interviews.

14) Process :

This type of essays is used to explain the procedure of something. Process essay can be of types such as how to do something and how something works. Write step- by- step procedure in concise and easy wordings. The whole process should lead to the expected outcome. Process essays which tell about the step – by – step procedure are called directional processes and process essays which tell how something works are called informational process essays. the essay should be written in chronological order and each stage should be written in separate paragraphs.

This type of essays should be written in the second person.


15) Definition :

A definition essay is a piece of writing which defines a term. Somethings have a definite meaning like books, car, paper etc. and some things are abstract in nature such as feelings, love, honesty. There are three steps to write a definition essay

I) The term that you will define in the essay.





ii) Vivid and basic information related to the term being defined.



iii) Facts, anecdotes, and examples that readers can understand.

Don’t forget to cite the references of the sources you referred, while writing the essay.

16) Reflective :

This is an unusual type of essays in academics. Because the focus of reflective essays is on the writer itself. To write a reflective essay, a writer should choose experience or event form his/her own life that he/she wants to share with the readers. While writing such essays, the writer should explain the event in detail and then also explain what he/she felt before and after the event took place. In conclusion, the writer should mention what they have learned from that particular event.

Let’s also learn a few tips for writing different types of essays.

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a) Gather information

To write an effective essay, one should gather data about the latest trends and new events whether it is about politics, technology, sports, education or fashion. The content of an essay is equally important as its structuring.

b) Read different genre

It has been said that a successful writer is the one who reads a lot. Read books of different genre and a different writer. Pay attention to their writing style. By doing this you will learn how to structure different types of essays.

c) Carry a journal

A successful writer always keeps a diary or journal with him/her. Many famous writers have left their personal diary in which they used to write about their day-to-day life. Writing a journal or diary helps a writer to covert his/her thoughts into words and it also improves one’s language.

d) Write a draft

 No word will pour out of your mind if you directly hit the paper to write down your final essay. One should jot down all the information and phrases that come in mind and then read that information again and again. Finally, collect all the information that you have jotted down earlier and put it in the structure of the particular type of essay.

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