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 attempts to bring readers around to a point of view, she or he is much more likely to do so...

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 caused by a number of gravitational effects, 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 the sake of brevity and focus, you'll end up ignoring most of the complex web of events that make...

Some of the basic problems that turn up in papers written by English as a Second Language 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 spots arise from fundamental differences between English and other languages. Since most Asian languages, for example, do not contain the same...

After the personal essay, the argumentative essay may be the most popular essay type for professors to assign. As a result, tons of argumentative essays are produced every semester. Many of them could be much better if students approached this essay type with a correct conception of the purpose of writing an argument. Your purpose is not, when you sit down to write your argumentative essay, to boil a complicated question down to a blunt and obvious answer. Instead, your purpose in writing an argumentative essay should be to seriously consider and address the strongest possible opposition to the point...

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 experience has taught the writer about an issue, or about the world and other people. The operative question for the...