Essay Zone
Welcome to the Essay Zone!
In college writing, you'll encounter a wide variety of essay genres and styles, but your essay assignments will be either narrative (telling a story or relating events) or expository (point-by-point support for a thesis). Most of us are quite familiar with a narrative structure but may struggle more with expository structure, and, since even narrative essays will sometimes require an expository structure, it's important to think about what an expository essay is.
Expository writing will require you to investigate an idea, find and evaluate evidence or source material, develop your idea, and establish a clear and concise argument appropriate for your intended audience and purpose. This can be accomplished through the rhetorical styles you'll learn about here, such as compare and contrast, definition, and description.
Of course, in addition to thinking about the structure of each of these types of essays, you will not want to forget a good writing process that goes along with creating an effective essay. Detailed information on thinking about your assignment, developing ideas, narrowing a topic, gathering information, writing and ordering information, and revision and editing can be found in the Writing Process and Locating Information & Writing with Sources areas of the OWL.
And, while it might be nice to learn about every possible assignment you'll come across in college in advance, this isn't possible given the many different assignments and expectations you'll have. However, you can learn to be flexible as a writer and be prepared for the expository essay assignments you're likely to encounter by learning about the basic rhetorical styles or methods of development.
In the Essay Zone area of the Excelsior College Online Writing Lab, you'll learn about different rhetorical styles or, essentially, different strategies for developing your essays and other writing assignments. These basic strategies are not all encompassing but will provide you with a foundation and a flexibility to help you as you engage in writing assignments in your introductory writing classes and beyond.
In the following pages, you'll find more information on the rhetorical styles. You may find yourself writing within these styles for whole projects or just using one of them as a strategy within a project. In each section of the Essay Zone, you will find examples of both as well as an emphasis on how these styles or methods can help you even after you finish your introductory writing classes and approach writing projects across the disciplines.
It's also important to remember that there are certain features that all of these styles or methods have in common:
- A clear thesis statement usually provided at the beginning of the essay
- Clear and logical transitions
- Focused body paragraphs with evidence and support
- Appropriate format and style if you use source material
- A conclusion that expands upon your thesis and summarizes evidence
- Clear writing that follows standard conventions for things like grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
As you explore the Essay Zone, think about the key features of each type of essay as well as the features that all effective essays have in common. For each rhetorical style, you'll find introductory material, sample outlines, and sample essays to help you, whether you're learning about one style in particular or here to overview each one.