Thursday, February 4, 2010
what IS an essay?
when I hear or think of an essay I think of another paper assignment that i will not enjoy. When it comes to defining what an essay is, my definition of an essay is trying to prove your argument to an audience. To declare where you stand in a well constructed paper. After some research on the word itself, it states in Dictionary.com that an essay is "a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject" as a noun. Upon further research, I found another definition of essay in a verb stance from the same source which defined the word as "to try; attempt". It was surprising, to me, to know that essay is also known as a verb
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Thanks for bringing in the idea of argument -- I think you're right; every essay, even a "personal" essay or an "analytical" essay, has some sort of argument at its core. And, as you pointed out, it's not just the writer doing stuff -- there's an audience involved in the process.
ReplyDeleteSo true! An essay always contains something you are trying to convey to the reader, I never really thought about that until I read this. :)
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