Menace to Society

What is Explaining Writing?

Explaining essays inform the reader about something they don't know.These are essays that teach, so you will often find this sort of writing in textbooks, instruction manuals and any information source online.Your purpose in this essay is to inform your readers about an aspect of a concept they may not know about or have thought about before. These sorts of essays may explain and event, explain a cause, or explain what or who. See my other hubs for information on event and cause essays. In addtion, you may want to look at how to cite sources.

Why do I need to learn Explaining Writing?

Explaining writing is probably the most important type of writing you will ever learn.Most people will spend their careers doing more explaining writing than any other type.We also read more of this sort of writing than other types.Newspapers, magazines and online sources like Hubpages are full of explaining writing.So is any online information source like Wikipedia.Moreover, almost every profession requires that you use this sort of writing.In a business, a salesman might have to explain to the head of your company the results of a sales campaign.A health professional reports the symptoms and proposed treatment for a patient on reports.An engineer who has designed a part has to carefully explain how that part needs to be made to the factory workers.As I've explained my work to many of my husband's scientist friends (many of whom are heads of businesses, scientific research groups or engineering divisions), they almost always tell me that they use the information they gained from this sort of essay more than anything else they learned in college because they are always having to write explanations for other people.In fact, the higher you move up in a company, the more you will often need to use this sort of writing.So if pays to learn how to do it well.

How do I Write an Excellent Explaining Essay?

1.Make sure that your essay appeals to the reader. Everyone has read plenty of boring explanations in textbooks.How do you make it interesting? Use humor, stories, analogies and vivid description to make the reader want to keep on reading.If you relate this concept to something the reader already knows about, you can help them remember and learn it.Of course you also need to draw the reader in with title and opening paragraph.

2. Tell the reader something he doesn't already know about this concept. Go beyond "common knowledge."It helps to ask several people what they know about your concept before you begin writing.Make sure that you go beyond that information.Do research if you don't already know more than other people.

3. Give a clear definition.State your concept clearly in one sentence and then break the concept down into parts and explain each of these.Don't forget to include the definition of any specialized vocabulary or words used in unfamiliar ways.

4. Focus on one aspect of the concept--you don't have to tell everything about it.Narrowing your topic to something very specific makes you automatically have a more interesting essay.It also helps you to give a clear definition and make sure you tell your reader something new.For example, don't write about "football games."Instead, choose a topic like "How to throw a pass" or "fans at our school's football games."To narrow this further, you may want to make it even more specific: "fans at Texas high school football games."You can also do a comparison to help your definition come through: "fans at Texas high school football games as compared to fans at Texas college games."

5.Describe your concept clearly and in a logical sequence.This is where the preparation for your essay is needed.Often explaining essays need to be very carefully organized.Have someone read through your explanation carefully to see if you have put things in a logical order and not left anything important out.If you know a lot about something, you may tend to leave out steps or parts of things that a reader who is unfamiliar with the concept may not know.That can be very confusing (ever been confused reading instructions to put something together?).One way to help your reader is to be careful to use transition words (see my hub on sentence starters) which will help your reader know how parts of your explanation are related.

6. Use reliable and accurate sources.If you know a lot about a concept, you can certainly use your own knowledge and experience.However, it also helps to look up the concept online and also use interviews and surveys to help pinpoint what your audience knows and what they need to know.If you know someone who knows more about this concept than you, you can interview them to get information.Moreover, if this person (or you) has special credentials which show they are an expert on this subject, be sure to include that in your essay so that your reader knows your explanation is authoritative.

What are some Organizing Strategies?

Here are some of the most effective organizing strategies for this sort of essay.You can use these to organize the whole essay or to organize different paragraphs within essay. Most subjects could be handled by any one of these strategies depending what sort of an explanation you want to give. Note: you can look up the sample essays--most of them are online)Here I use the example of the topic "Love"