A writer’s style reflects their unique voice, personality, and method of approaching and engaging with readers. It is the medium through which the narrative emerges and the sentence structure, syntax, and voice come together to create the overall mood or tone of a piece of writing.
While there are as many styles of writing as there are writers, there can be only four broad purposes that drive a piece of writing and these are known as the four styles of writing. They differ in their intended purpose and structure as well as in the level of emotional appeal they call for. An in-depth understanding of each type helps a writer express themselves with greater eloquence and get their point across more skillfully.
Below is a detailed explanation of each writing style and its usage.
1. Expository Style of Writing
Expository writing is commonly used in textbooks, news stories, how-to articles, recipes as well as in business, technical, and scientific writing. It works to inform, explain, describe, or answer questions the reader might have.
Literary flourishes or storytelling have no place in expository writing. It cannot be used as a platform to express the author’s opinions; instead, it is focused on facts, statistics, or other concrete evidence about a subject, without trying to persuade or convince the reader, or change their mind about something. A reader looking for information about Jupiter’s moons, the three stages of frostbite, or how to cook a mouth-watering Cheddar vegetable au gratin, for instance, will probably find the answer in a piece of expository writing.
Example of Expository Writing:
There are many different kinds of coronaviruses, but only some cause disease. SARS-CoV-2 is a newly identified coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, a respiratory illness that has turned into a pandemic of worldwide proportions. When an infected person sneezes or coughs, the droplets released into the air can spread the coronavirus. These droplets travel only a few feet, and it takes a few seconds for them to fall onto surfaces – physical distancing, therefore, can effectively prevent the spread of the disease.
2. Descriptive Style of Writing
Descriptive writing is commonly used for writing poetry, fiction (plays and novels), descriptions of nature, and journal/diary writing. Despite being poetic in nature, it is also used in non-fiction writing such as travel guides, memoirs, and first-hand accounts of events. It engages the reader with a story full of vivid characters, settings, and events and uses literary devices such as similes, metaphors, adjectives, and other kinds of figurative language that stimulate readers’ senses and immerse them in the writing.
Unlike expository writing, descriptive writing does not seek to inform or explain. All it aims to do is paint pictures with words and convey the writer’s impressions of a person, place, thing, or event for the enjoyment of readers. On its own, descriptive writing is usually brief, but it often appears as a part of more diffuse writing styles such as narrative writing.
Example of Descriptive Writing:
“My brother Allie had this left-handed fielder’s mitt. He was left-handed. The thing that was descriptive about it, though, was that he had poems written all over the fingers and the pocket and everywhere. In green ink. He wrote them on it so that he’d have something to read when he was in the field and nobody was up to bat. He’s dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. He was terrifically intelligent. His teachers were always writing letters to my mother, telling her what a pleasure it was having a boy like Allie in their class. And they weren’t just shooting the crap. They really meant it. But it wasn’t just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair. I’ll tell you what kind of red hair he had. I started playing golf when I was only ten years old. I remember once, the summer I was around twelve, teeing off and all, and having a hunch that all of a sudden, I’d see Allie. So I did, and sure enough, he was sitting on his bike outside the fence – there was this fence that went all around the course – and he was sitting there, about a hundred and fifty yards behind me, watching me tee off. That’s the kind of red hair he had.”
– Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
3. Narrative Style of Writing
Narrative writing is commonly used in poetry (epic sagas), fiction (novels/novellas, short stories, anecdotes), screenplays, biographies, autobiographies, and oral histories. Its main purpose is to tell a story – complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Narrative writing has a clear plot and storyline and often incorporates literary techniques such as flashbacks and foreshadowing to engage the reader.
Unlike expository writing, narrative writing does not seek to impart information, nor does it limit itself, like descriptive writing, to painting pictures with words in poetic language. The goal of narrative writing is to build a cohesive story with characters and settings and sometimes a central conflict.
Example of Narrative Writing:
“Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the popholes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.”
– Animal Farm, George Orwell
4. Persuasive Style of Writing
The persuasive style of writing is commonly used in argumentative essays, opinion pieces, editorial columns of newspapers, cover letters, letters of complaint, advertisements, affiliate marketing pitches, product reviews, letters of recommendation, political speeches, and reviews (of books, movies, restaurants, etc.).
As the name suggests, persuasive writing uses a combination of logical reasoning, research, and emotional appeal to convince the reader to adopt the writer’s position on a topic or their personal beliefs or opinions. A piece of persuasive writing highlights its author’s opinions and biases as well as reasons and justifications for the correctness of their position.
Persuasive writing may sometimes also include elements of other writing styles. A political speech, for instance, can include anecdotes from the speaker’s own life or stories of people affected by a specific issue. Like expository writing, persuasive writing also seeks to inform the reader but, unlike the former, it builds its case with a highly selective use of facts and figures.
Example of Persuasive Writing:
“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day, this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
– I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King
All good writers eventually learn to recognize and use these different writing styles and also understand what a piece of writing hopes to accomplish with the chosen writing style.
