Writing is the perfect way to express human emotions and knowledge. However, each piece of writing requires a different style and tone.
They serve different purposes and target a unique audience. This article discusses 10 types of writing styles. Each style requires a unique set of skills and conveys a different message.
1. Narrative Writing
Narrative writing involves describing, portraying a story or a series of events in written form. The story is usually told in chronological order.
The rationale behind this type of writing is to grab the reader’s attention and captivate him through informing, motivating, or educating. A plot, characters, sequential events, conflict, and theme are the five major components of narrative writing.
During the story, descriptive language is preferred. Descriptive language helps the writer to evoke feelings in the reader and figures of speeches like simile, metaphors, onomatopoeia, and personification make the writing exciting and memorable. Some of the common examples of narrative writing are movies, fairy tales, essays, and jokes.
2. Persuasive writing
Persuasive writing is a form of non-fiction writing that aims to influence the reader’s thought process through a careful selection of words. It guides them to a specific series of actions.
Logic and emotional appeal are the two components of persuasive writing. The author usually presents his point of view and develops strong opinions against or supporting something through arguments, reasoning, and justifications.
However, to influence the audience, the author must have strong knowledge of the subject under discussion. Product reviews, editorials, advertisements, business proposals, and brochures are the perfect examples of persuasive writing.
3. Expository Writing
Expository writing is all about exposing the facts. This writing style aims to clearly define, explain, state, or report some information. Hence, this type of writing is also referred to as information writing.
Unlike persuasive writing, expository writing does not target the emotions of the reader and is often written from the view of the third person.
Talking about the language, as expository writing has to convey information it uses simple and easy-to-understand language. In addition, to support the ideas images and flowcharts are often added. Newspapers, essays, articles, tutorials, and user manuals are written in expository writing style.
4. Creative Writing
With the boom of digital media and social websites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram the demand for creative writers is increasing day by day.
Among all other types of writing, creative writing has been a well-paid profession. It is considered to be a combination of descriptive and narrative writing. Creative writers try to arrange the words in an artistic way to fascinate the readers.
The idea, presentation, word choice, and fluency are some of the important components of creative writing. Playwriting, fiction, non-fiction, crime stories, horror all are originated from the imagination of the writer. Hence, are perfect examples of creative writing.
5. Analytical Writing
Analytical writing is often synonymous with academic writing. It combines descriptive writing ability and skill to organize the facts, stats, and other relevant details. The analytical writer chooses a topic and explains it from all the possible angles using theories or referring to certain frameworks.
Comparison, contrast, cause-and-effect, relation, and analysis are the core components of this type of writing. Besides, color coding, flow charts, images, tables, and tree diagrams are extensively used in analytical writing. Literature review and thesis are examples of analytical writing.
6. Descriptive Writing
Descriptive writing is the art of painting a picture in the minds of the readers about places, events, or characters in history. The author tries to connect the reader with the world through words. He uses all five senses to describe something.
For instance, how it looks like, how it sounds like, how it feels like, how it tastes like or how it smells. This writing style is easy to understand but difficult to write. It includes a lot of adverbs and adjectives to perfectly paint the picture.
In addition, descriptive writing is done from the perspective of the first person. It targets both the personal and emotional aspects of the reader. Poetry, poems on nature, historic journals, stories, and biographies are written in descriptive form.
7. Objective writing
Objective writing is a form of formal, fact-driven writing. However, the tone is conversational depicting the perspective of the first person.
The writer writes each and everything to the point after extensive research and supports with statistical and scientific evidence only.
However, it is crucial to ensure the writing is neutral and unbiased. It should readers let decide about their opinion.
In addition, the writer should not intensify the narrative (exaggerate the facts) by using words like always, never, every time, or very. Textbooks and reports reflect objective writing.
8. Subjective Writing
Subjective writing originates from the personal experience of the writer. Unlike objective writing, the author just presents his point of view, feelings, perspective, and opinion about something. In simpler words, there can be a bias in his writings.
Phrases like in my opinion, I feel or I believe are more common. Subjective writing style can be used to write about anything.
For instance, fashion, parenting, technology, etc. In addition, ensuring the correctness of the presented information is not the writer’s primary concern. Essay writing, diary writing fall under this category.
9. Review Writing
Reviewing writing is also in trend these days. The customers always buy things based on the reviews others have given for a particular product or service including movies, food, laptops, and cosmetics.
Hence, companies to boost their sales and attract buyers pay to write reviews on their products. A review writer requires both descriptive and persuasive writing skills for effective reviews. Generally, he aims to inform the potential user about the pros and cons of the product.
The writer also comprehensively compares the product with some of its biggest rivals to give buyers better choices. However, the writing should be smooth enough and does not sound biased.
10. Business Writing
Business writing is used in a professional setting but the easiest form of writing among all. It does not need any charm, flair, jokes, creativity, imagination, or metaphors. The beauty of business writing is in its simplicity and consciousness.
The business writers avoid using jargon and slang as well. The rationale behind business writing is to convey all the information clearly and effectively by using the least number of words. The shorter it is, the better it sounds.
However, being clear as well as conscious at the same time are considered the hardest skills in the writing world. Email, memos, business proposals, and notices are written in business writing style.