Types of Nonfiction Essay
Among the most common types of nonfiction are
autobiography and memoir, biography, and essay. An essay is a short nonfiction work that makes a
point about a single subject. The point that the
writer is making is the thesis. For example, in an
essay about school uniforms, the thesis might be
that uniforms prevent personal expression.
Autobiography and Memoir
Writing is described as “autobiographical” when the
writer presents parts or the whole of his or her own
life. There are many types of autobiographical
writing, including autobiographies, memoirs, diaries,
journals, and letters.
An autobiography is told from the first-person
point of view and is the story of a person’s life
written by that person. It typically covers the whole
of a person’s life up to the time of writing. A more
focused type of autobiography is the memoir,
which usually deals with a specific period of a
person’s life. Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood
(page 257) is a memoir about her childhood.
The suggestions of adults were uncertain and
incoherent. They gave you Nancy drew with
one hand and Little Women with the other.
They mixed good and bad books together
because they could not distinguish between
them. Any book which contained children, or
short adults, or animals, was felt to be a
children’s book.
Biography
A biography is the story of a person’s life told by
another person. Milton Meltzer’s “Elizabeth I” (page
265) is a biography about one of England’s greatest
rulers.
Elizabeth I came to the throne of England in
1558 at the age of twenty-five. It was not a
happy time for a young woman to take the
responsibility for ruling a kingdom.
Biographies are told from the third-person point of
view, although writers of biography may also
include autobiographical materials, such as letters,
diaries, or journals, so that the reader may gain
some firsthand knowledge about the person whose
life story is being told.
There are many types of essays. A personal essay
is a short nonfiction work on a single topic related
to the life of the writer. The author of a personal
essay may tell a story or an anecdote or reflect on
and share thoughts and feelings about something
in his or her life.
In an argumentative essay, the writer’s goal is to
persuade the reader to accept a point of view. For
example, in “The Eternal Frontier” (page 291), Louis
L’Amour tries to make his readers understand the
importance of space exploration.
One might ask—why outer space, when so
much remains to be done here? If that had
been the spirit of man we would still be
hunters and food gatherers, growling over the
bones of carrion in a cave somewhere.
Newspaper editorials and petitions are common
examples of argumentative writing. Writers of
argumentative essays use a variety of techniques to
make an argument, including appealing to both
logic and emotion, using parallel construction to
add force to their statements, and asking rhetorical
questions. Parallelism is the use of the same
grammatical constructions to express ideas of equal
importance. A rhetorical question is a question
asked by an author to reinforce an idea.
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