Writing by definition is “The activity or skill of marking coherent words on paper and composing text.” It can be used as a source of entertainment, a way to cope, or even to spread news around. There are four different styles of writing expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative. While all four of these can be used together to create greater writing they can also be good individually. 

Expository is the most common form of writing. All the author is trying to do is explain a concept, imparting information from themselves to a wider audience. They do not use opinions and or their own thoughts in this piece. Textbooks and recipe books are where you will find these examples. While some articles do this as well most of them tend to add in opinions here and there. By definition expository writing is “writing that seeks to explain, illuminate or ‘expose’.” We don’t want to confuse this as opinions because in this type of writing we are simply stating facts that have been proven by many reliable sources. 

Descriptive writing is the fictional book that most young adults and teenagers read. While sometimes it can make appearances in non fiction books it’s mostly uncommon. Think of descriptive writing as the author painting a picture in words of a person, place and or thing. Metaphors are used often while writing in the descriptive style along with the five senses. Examples of descriptive writing are poetry, fictional books and diary writing. By definition  descriptive writing “is to describe a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in the reader’s mind.” 

Persuasive writing is the same type of writing that you see when writing a paper for your school or in most opinionated articles today. In this form of writing the author is trying to persuade you to think one way by stating opinions of their own rather than facts. Some examples of persuasive writing are cover letters, op-eds, editorial newspaper articles, reviews of items, letters of complaint, advertisements and letters of recommendations. 

Narrative writing is the most used in novels, poetry, short stories, anecdotes. Narrative writing is writing that has a story being told, characters, conflict, and other essential parts of a story. It can be fictional and or a true story. Personally this is my favorite type of writing just because you are telling a story with characters and you have control over what you are saying and what the characters are saying. Some important factors of narrative writing are plot, setting, character, conflict, point of view, theme. 

As an author it’s good to know the differences between the narratives and styles in which you are writing. As stated previously you can use multiple to add more of a perspective to your writing. But you don’t want to overdo it as well by combining so many of the aspects that your page suddenly becomes something people will not want to read because they don’t understand the purpose behind the writing.