Yes, the idea of writing an essay sounds dull and boring to many people (and sometimes even yours truly) but if you master the skills needed to write a truly great essay, such as analysing data and information, persuasion, and expressing yourself concisely, while at school they’ll serve you for a lifetime. So bookmark this page and come back to it whenever you need a refresher!

A good place to start thinking about essays is to better understand the types of essays that most of your assignments in high-school, and college or university will fit into. The following are the four main categories of essays that are generally the norm in academia (thank you, Purdue Online Writing Lab):

Expository Essays;
Descriptive Essays;
Narrative Essays; and
Argumentative Essays.

Most of the essays you will ever have to write in your life will fall loosely under these four categories.

The Expository Essay
These are probably the most common types of essays you will come across and are a common format of essay required in exams. If you’re writing an expository essay you will find yourself digging into a theme or topic and then coming up with an idea, you’ll also be analysing evidence, and then structuring an "exposition" (hence the name) about the idea.

The templates include the structures required for a typical expository essay which include an introduction where your thesis statement lives, body paragraphs each of which address a singular point to support your thesis statement, and a conclusion which summarises your points and supports your original idea. This might sound a little rigid but once you get a hang of how to structure your essays well, you can begin to add a dash of creativity to your writing.

The Descriptive Essay
As the name suggests, this essay is all about the language - adjectives, similes, and metaphors. These kinds of essays are about describing as vividly as possible anything you are asked to write about. An example assignment would be to write an essay about your most recent holiday experience. This would be an ideal time to use a descriptive essay.

But structure here, is just as important as any other essay because you are still in charge of leading the reader into, through and then back out of your world of description without waffling on too much. So, similar to an expository essay, you will require an introduction, body, and a conclusion.

But what makes it different? A descriptive essay is more like a creative writing assignment where you describe something in detail. Description may be a part of the other types of essays, but generally, they need a little bit more - an argument - while a descriptive essay merely describes something in detail and the thing being described is the central focus, rather than an argument about something.

The Narrative Essay
Again, as the title suggests, a narrative essay is a more personal piece of writing with your point of view being made clear for your reader. These essays can be stories or sometimes called "creative non-fiction." The use of the first person pronoun ‘I’ is not uncommon in these essays.

Narrative essays also require a clear structure introduction, body, and conclusion populated with concise language. We are working on developing some custom templates for narrative writing, where you can clearly build up the suspense in your introduction, bring your reader to the crux or climax of the story in your body, and then bring them back down again in the conclusion.