Writing Tips

The persuasive essay and the argumentative essay are often mentioned in conjunction because they share a similar goal: to bring a reader around to a particular point of view. However, a persuasive essay differs slightly from an argumentative essay both in tone and intention. An argumentative essay will often—but not always—try to convince a reader that one of two or more opposing views is best. The emphasis, as a result, often falls on opposition. Although a persuasive essay writer also...

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When thinking of a topic and a thesis for a cause and effect essay, it's important to keep in mind that every effect is also a cause of another effect. For example, the tilt of the earth is thought to come from early collisions, but the tilt of the earth itself also causes seasonal effects on earth. For this reason, you might be assigned an essay explaining either the causes of one effect or the effects of one cause. For...

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Some of the basic problems that turn up in papers written by English as a Second Language (ESL) students are surprisingly uniform. This is both good news and bad news for ESL writers. The bad news is that these problems become ingrained over time, and it's difficult to break out of old writing habits. The good news is that we can focus on relatively few trouble spots in order to show quick improvements in writing. The most universal ESL trouble...

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The personal essay, for many students, is the most difficult essay to write. It is somewhat like its cousin the narrative essay, in the sense that it asks the writer to speak from his or her own point of view about persons, places, and events. The primary difference between the personal essay and the narrative essay, though, is that the personal essay asks writers to explain what experience has taught them about themselves. The narrative essay, by contrast, emphasizes what...

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In many ways, the definition essay is the most fundamental essay type, since it requires the student to examine in detail the characteristics of a given thing or concept. Essentially all writing emerges from the mental habit of analyzing things according to their constituent parts that the definition essay helps you to practice. Even a literature essay, for example, examines the definitive characteristics of a given work and is therefore a kind of definition essay in its own way. "What...

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