In writing, purpose refers to the specific outcome you want your writing to achieve. It’s what you want your writing to do.
Purpose is different from your subject (what you’re writing about), and it will vary depending on the given writing situation (such as assignment instructions).
Having a clear sense of purpose when you write will help you decide what you want to say about the topic and how best to say it.
To Inform
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- Informative purpose is explanatory. It seeks to share knowledge or to educate your reader in a fact-based, objective, and neutral way.
- Words that indicate informative purpose in an assignment prompt might ask you to explain, analyze, report, present, summarize, define, describe, or apply.
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To Persuade
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- Persuasive purpose is an argument. It seeks to assert your view or position and to convince your reader to agree with you or to take some kind of action.
- Words that indicate persuasive purpose in an assignment prompt might ask you to argue, take a position, offer an opinion, convince, sway, persuade, defend, challenge, or evaluate.
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To Entertain
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Entertainment purpose is about creating or sharing experience. It seeks to evoke emotional response in your reader.
Note: The word “entertainment” does not necessarily mean happy or positive. Though writing to entertain certainly might be joyful or funny, entertainment writing also might be somber or suspenseful or dramatic in tone.
- Words that indicate entertainment purpose in an assignment prompt might ask you to tell a story, share a personal experience, narrate, or be creative.
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In writing, audience refers to your reader(s).
When you write for school, imagine an audience beyond your teacher. Some assignments will give you an audience to whom your writing will be addressed, and others may be open assignments that would be fitting for a more general public.
Try to imagine that you want to publish the finished piece outside of class. Where would you send it? What kinds of people would be most interested in reading it? Are you writing for people in your peer group, or professionals in a particular field, or people in positions of authority? What kind of impression do you want to make?
The answers to these kinds of questions will help you style your writing in a way most likely to appeal to your audience and achieve your purpose.
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Academic and Professional Audiences
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- Most of your writing for school will fall into this category of academic audience, as will much of the writing that you do for college and later in your professional work life.
- Writing for academic and professional audiences most often requires a neutral tone and standard or formal language.
- Some examples in the school setting would include composition assignments like essays or research papers.
- Some examples in the work setting could include data reports, memos or cover letters, and professional communications, such as emails or letters of request.
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Social and Peer Audiences
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- Writing for social and peer audiences mostly will fall into the categories of private messages, public (or only somewhat restricted) social media postings, and creative projects.
- Writing for social and peer audiences most often will involve personal or artistic communications.
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Target Audiences
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- Writing for a target audience will involve special circumstances (such as writing a college essay for a particular university you’re applying to) or for assignments that designate a specific audience for you (such as “write a letter to your local school board…”).
- Target audiences will determine whether you write in a formal or informal style, and they should guide your choices for details and supporting evidence that would most appeal to that specific type of reader.
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In writing, organization refers to the order in which you present your ideas.
Every sentence, paragraph, and essay should have a clear beginning, middle, and end, and being intentional about which information and ideas come first, second, third (and so forth), will help your reader follow along.
Which organizational structure you choose will depend largely on your purpose for writing, and it should demonstrate the most logical framework to connect one point to the next.
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Chronological order
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- Chronological order means presenting events in the order in which they happened: first to last.
- Chronological order works best for narrative writing (i.e. telling a story) and for essays in which you are tasked to summarize or analyze a complete work of literature or to explain a process.
An essay about the play A Raisin in the Sun detailing the events of Walter Lee Younger’s life that shaped his dreams -- from early childhood to the present day -- would demonstrate chronological order.
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Order of importance
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- Order of importance builds from least to most important, so that your writing ends with the strongest point you want to make.
- Order of importance works best for persuasive arguments and for reports in which research findings should build as a matter of significance, so that the final conclusion has the most impact or carries the most weight.
An essay demonstrating order of importance might evaluate the layers of social and financial discrimination that the Younger family faces, building from the microaggressions of casual racism in everyday life toward the direct threats of retribution against the Younger family if they attempt to challenge segregated housing.
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Spatial order
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- Spatial order organizes information according to location or proximity.
- Spatial order works best for descriptive writing and for analyzing the relationship or effect of things in a physical space.
An essay analyzing the play’s set by beginning at the front, center of the stage and then spanning out to the wings and upstage to the backdrop would demonstrate spatial order.
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Cause-and-effect
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- Cause-and-effect organization discusses or describes an action or event that is the direct result of another action or event. It gives the reasons why something happened.
- Cause-and-effect organization can mirror chronological organization, but it involves more than sequence (i.e. what came first and what followed). Cause-and-effect order builds according to relationships. There may be one cause with several effects, or several causes leading to a single effect. The framework will build according to how those relationships connect.
An essay evaluating how the insurance money that the Youngers inherit will change the trajectory of their lives would demonstrate cause-and-effect organization.
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Comparison/contrast
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- Comparison/contrast organization explains how two (or more) subjects are meaningfully alike and/or meaningfully different.
- Comparison/contrast writing can build one subject at a time, or it can build by focusing first on points of similarity and then on points of difference.
- When organizing comparison/contrast writing, check that there is equal balance in the amount of discussion and detail for each subject you’re comparing.
An essay examining how Ruth Younger (a mature wife and mother) and Beneatha Younger (a young, single woman with career ambitions) are alike and different in ways that demonstrate generational change for women would demonstrate comparison/contrast organization.
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In writing, voice refers to matters of tone, sentence style, and word choices that determine the overall impression your writing will make on your audience.
Voice encompasses everything from whether you choose to write in formal or informal style to which ideas or details you choose to emphasize or amplify.
Use syntax (the formation and presentation of your sentences) deliberately to gain control over where you want the emphasis to fall.
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Parallelism
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- Parallelism uses matching grammatical forms to create emphasis. It sounds almost like an echo.
Beneatha Younger wished to celebrate her identity, to become a doctor, and eventually, to fall in love.
Mama Younger neither tolerated disrespect nor suffered fools.
Walter Lee Younger battled rage; his wife battled despair.
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Loose sentences
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- Loose sentences are arranged so that the main idea comes first, then adds extra information in phrases or clauses that follow.
Walter Lee Younger felt like a failure, at least by the metrics of capitalistic society and the mythology of the American Dream.
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Periodic sentences
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- Periodic sentences are arranged so that the main idea appears at the end. The sentence builds toward its most important point, giving it a bit more dramatic flair.
By any metric of capitalistic society and the mythology of the American Dream, Walter Lee Younger felt like a failure.
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Sentence Variety
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- When you edit for voice, aim to create a mixture of long and short sentences, loose and periodic sentences, and parallelism for emphasis and effect.
- No single type of sentence is necessarily “correct” or “incorrect” to use in any given moment. What you want to avoid is the monotonous sound of the same type of sentence over and over again. So if you find that you’ve used several loose sentences in a row, change it up with a periodic sentence or try combining some of the ideas through parallelism.
Series of loose sentences:
Beneatha Younger dreamed of being a doctor. Walter Lee Younger was an entrepreneur at heart. Mama wanted a house of her own.
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Sentence variety:
Beneatha and Walter Lee Younger pursued dreams of personal ambition as an aspiring doctor and an aspiring entrepreneur. Watching her children struggle through failures and triumphs, however, Mama Younger simply wanted a home.
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