FOUR TYPES OF WRITING

TYPES OF WRITING

There are four types of writing or four writing styles that are generally used. Knowing all these four different types of writing and their usages are important for any writer. A writer’s style is a reflection of his personality, his unique style, his voice and his way to approach his audience and readers.

Generally there are four different types or styles of writing. Following are their names and details:

1.  Expository Writing:

A. Description

Expository writing is a subject-oriented writing style, in which the main focus of the author is to tell you about a given topic or subject, and leave out his personal opinions. He furnishes you with relevant facts and figures and does not include his opinions. This is one of the most common type of writing styles, which you always see in text books and usually “How – to” articles, in which the author tells you about a given subject, as how to do something.

B. Example

Sample Expository Paragraph—Nonfiction

The use of wedding rings has evolved as the latest of all the bridal traditions. From the earliest times, kings used initial rings to sign documents because they were unable to write. Since the initial, or signet, ring had the potency of the king’s signature, anyone possessing a facsimile was put to death immediately. Later, during Greek times, when Alexander the Great died, his vast kingdom was, according to his instructions, divided among his generals. They also got copies of his signet ring. They used these themselves and even allowed trusted advisors to use them when they served as the generals’ proxies. Eventually, rulers even allowed their courtiers to wear copies of their royal signets. Finally, the custom spread among the common people, and nearly everybody who couldn’t write signed official documents with a signet ring. Rings thus became a sign of contractual agreement, which meaning was eventually applied to wedding rings.

Sample Expository Paragraph—Fiction

Many of the Jews of Iberian origin had long ago been robbed of the knowledge of their rituals, forced, during the time of the Inquisition, to convert to the Catholic faith. These so-called New Christians were sometimes sincere in their conversions, while others had continued to practice their religion in secret, but after a generation or two they often forgot why they secretly observed these now-obscure rituals. When these secret Jews fled Iberia for the Dutch states, as they began to do in the sixteenth century, many sought to regain Jewish knowledge. My father’s grandfather had been such a man, and he schooled himself in the Jewish traditions—even studying with the great Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel—and he raised his children to honor the Jewish traditions.
—from A Conspiracy of Paper, by David Liss (Random House, 2000)

C. Key Points:

• Expository writing usually explains something in a process
• Expository writing is often equipped with facts and figures
• Expository writing is usually in a logical order and sequence

2. Descriptive writing:

A. Definition

Descriptive writing is a style of writing which focuses on describing a character, an event or a place in great details. It is sometimes poetic in nature in which the author is specifying the details of the event rather than just the information of that event happened.

B. Sample Descriptive Paragraph

It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. If Hagrid hadn’t pointed it out, Harry wouldn’t have noticed it was there. The people hurrying by didn’t glance at it. Their eyes slid from the big book shop on one side to the record shop on the other as if they couldn’t see the Leaky Cauldron at all. In fact, Harry had the most peculiar feeling that only he and Hagrid could see it. Before he could mention this, Hagrid had steered him inside. For a famous place, it was dark and shabby. A few old women were sitting in a corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry. One of them was smoking a long pipe. A little man in a top hat was talking to the old bartender, who was quite bald and looked like a toothless walnut. The low buzz of chatter stopped when they walked in.
—from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling (Scholastic, 1999)

C. Key Points:

• It is often poetic in nature
• It describes places, people, events, situations or locations in a highly-detailed manner.
• The author visualizes you what he sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels.

3. Persuasive Writing:

A. Description

Persuasive writing, unlike ‘Expository Writing’, contains the opinions, biasness and justification of the author. Persuasive writing is a type of writing which contains justifications and reasons to make someone believe on the point the writer is talking about. Persuasive writing is for persuading and convincing on your point of view. It is often used in complain letters, when you provide reasons and justifications for your complaint; other copywriting texts, T.V commercials, affiliate marketing pitches, speech ,etc. are all different types of persuasive writing, where author is persuading and convincing you on something he wants you to do and/or believe.

B. Example :

-  An essay example;

 As a senior at Patrick Henry High School, I’ve noticed that the greatest problem facing public schools is large class size. For the past three years, certain circumstances have allowed me to attend smaller classes in English and history. Now the pilot program is over, and I am once again enrolled in regular-size classes. Comparing the former experience with my current situation, in which my English class is comprised of more than 40 students, the advantages of smaller classes become readily apparent. In my current English class, effective teaching and learning have been sacrificed to the administrative advantage of fewer classes holding greater numbers of students. Although in terms of test scores the class has been deemed successful, student participation in such a large class is limited to a select few; individual conferences with the teacher are hard to get due to the sheer number of students; and papers take weeks to get graded. In smaller classes, however, it has been my experience that all students participate, classes are more focused and on task, and the teacher develops a closer relationship to the students. These factors allow students to learn and develop their abilities. They also allow teachers to effectively critique their students' work. Moreover, in small classes, students can develop working relationships with one another—a camaraderie nonexistent in larger classes. If the public school system were to cut class size in half, to approximately 15 to 20 students each, the benefits would manifest themselves immediately. If we wish to improve the level of education in public schools today, we must reduce class size.

C. Key Points:

• Persuasive writing is equipped with reasons, arguments and justifications
• In persuasive writing, the author takes a stand and asks you to believe his point of view.
• If often asks for a call or an action from the readers.

4. Narrative Writing:

A. Description

Narrative writing is a type of writing in which the author places himself as the character and narrates you to the story. Novels, short stories, novellas, poetry, biographies can all fall in the narrative writing style. Simply, narrative writing is an art to describe a story. It answers the question: “What happened then?”

B. Examples:

Sample Narrative Paragraph—Nonfiction

During the final years of his life, [Franz] Kafka’s health deteriorated rapidly. In 1923 he fell in love with Dora Dymant and settled in with her in Berlin; he asked Dora’s father for permission to marry her but was refused. In the winter of 1923-24 he moved into a series of clinics and sanitariums. He died, Dora at his side, on June 3, 1924, at a sanitarium in Kierling, near Vienna. His surviving family, including his sisters, all perished several years later in Nazi concentration camps.
—from “The Modern Period” of Literature of the Western World, Vol. II, 3rd edition. Eds. Brian Wilkie and James Hunt (Macmillan, 1992)

Sample Narrative Paragraph—Fiction

None of it came up until my early thirties, when I got involved with a woman. Her name was Jeanne. We had been classmates at Cornell, both pre-med, both of us seeing someone else. Years afterward I was working for a drug company in N— that was coming under fire for manufacturing an anti-depressant that had bad side effects. We were trying to gather some support for the drug from the medical community, and I met Jeanne again at a conference. She had become a shrink. Excuse me, a psychiatrist. And yes, she had done a lot of research on posttraumatic psychosis and even had a healthy share of Holocaust survivors and incest victims and Vietnam veterans among her clients.
—from Pink Slip, by Rita Ciresi (Delta Publishing, 1999)

C.  Key Points:

• In narrative writing, a person, being a narrative, tells a story or event.
• Narrative writing has characters and dialogues in it.
• Narrative writing has definite and logical beginnings, intervals and endings.
• Narrative writing often has situations like disputes, conflicts, actions, motivational events, problems and their solutions.

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