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What is an Essay?

Hello, dear readers of the Coolessay.net blog. If you want to know what an essay is, then probably nobody can explain that better than professional essay writers.


What is essay

So, what is an essay? It is a prose writing genre of a small volume and free composition. To say simpler, it is a discourse creative writing text.  

An essay as a small form of literature first appeared in France. In French, the word “essay” means “a probe, an attempt, a sketch”.

It is a chain of various impressions, observations, thoughts the author reminds because of this or that reason.

After you found out what essay is, you should know how it is written. To try what the writing process looks like, imagine that they tell you to think about the word “waltz”. Associations appear in your mind at once (dancing, Vienna, school waltz, your own memories, quotes from classic texts, etc).

While working on the text, you will understand that such listings connect those associations into one complete chain of thoughts. You finish writing only after the flow of memories stops going.

What is an Essay and How Did it Start?

First people to tell what essay is and to start writing them were journalists. Short notes gradually moved from newspapers and magazines to pages of fictional literature books. 

Great French thinkers D. Diderot and F. M. Voltaire turned this kind of text into the original philosophy genre. The well-known book by M. Montaigne “Essays” became the example of what the essay is. And at that time, the French culture dominated Europe, and the whole Old World found out what essay is.

The writer tells the reader about the problems that worry him or her or shares personal experience through using the free form of the text.

What is an Essay Writing?

Every student should know what essay is and how to write it. These short texts help them learn to answer questions, develop their analytical skills, reveal hidden creative potential and demonstrate their ability to think by themselves.

What Essay Kinds Exist?

It is a kind of literature supposing that its structure is determined by the topic and goal. Depending on them, an essay can be:

  1. Critical;
  2. Historical;
  3. Philosophic;
  4. Religious.

In its shape, this small writing genre is close to the one’s diary, letter, or review.

What is an Essay Plan and Structure?

Let’s review features which show that the text you read is an essay and not an article or a sketch.

  1. Small volume. An author writes in a concise manner, and a reader can go through the text quickly.
  2. Free structure (composition). Pure essay texts don’t have a precise structure. It’s fine to begin with arguments and then to state the problem, or to make a conclusion in the beginning and then discuss the reason.

Still, at schools, colleges and universities, they recommend keeping to the certain structure to make lives of students and professors easier. It looks next: the intro with the problem – the main body with arguments (1st, 2nd, 3rd) – conclusions.

  1. Problem relevance. Despite the fact that an essay writing plan has a free composition, the author’s thoughts should spin and develop around one problem stated at the beginning of the text. Arguments used in the main body should illustrate it and lead the reader to the solution. In a conclusion, the author should state his or her thoughts directly or indirectly.
  2. Individual style. No matter what essay you write: historical, philosophical, critical, etc. The bright and rich language and the original style are its obligatory features. The origins of this tradition come back to journalism.

The author of a newspaper article risks to be forgotten by the reader right after they complete reading. That is why journalists try to make their language remarkable and remembered. Every experienced newspaper writer has a featured trick they use in the text.

So, when writing an essay, you should try to “turn on” your personal charisma and make your text be outstanding, not similar to other ones.

  1. Imagery and aphoristic features. It takes the best features of fictional and publicist styles. They both are known for imagery and metaphors. On the edge of these two styles, there most frequently appear aphorisms, new non-standard expressions (neologisms) and curious “language tricks”.

When writing an essay, you don’t only may use them all, but you should do that! There are numerous expressions able to decorate your language in English.

  1. Close to regular speech. Don’t make your text too “dry”. Scientific expressions, complicated sentences, stamps and templates are not for essays.

The simpler the text language is and the shorter sentences are, the easier is for the reader to perceive contents. Still, it is not good to use slang, jargon or offensive language expressions in an essay.

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