Essay

An essay is a written artifact, usually a few hundred to several thousand words, that develops a focused exploration of one or a few topics.

Essays take different forms depending on their purpose:

• Argumentative essays argue a truth about a thing. See argumentative essay.
• Expository essays inform the reader about a concept or topic.
• Descriptive essays describe a thing, often focusing on one quality or set of qualities.
• Narrative essays tell a story to develop an idea.
• Analytical essays examine how a concept or topic relates to events or information.
• Comparative essays identify what is similar and different between two or more things.
• Critical essays apply a concept or synthesis of concepts to events or information.
• Reflective essays explore the writer’s relationship to a thing.

The essay writing discipline covers the craft of essay composition in depth — methods, key texts, and the essay’s history from Montaigne to contemporary practice.

Related terms

• Argumentative essay — the subtype focused on defending a claim
• Poem — another written artifact, distinguished from the essay by its attention to the material qualities of language
• writer-based prose — the failure mode where essays are organized around the writer’s discovery rather than the reader’s need
• revision — the process through which discovery drafts become finished essays
• audience — the reader the essay addresses shapes its register, evidence, and assumptions