Characteristics of Various Types of Writing

A piece of writing is fundamentally an architectural blueprint. If an engineer’s primary reason for creating a schematic—the purpose of a piece of writing—is to build a suspension bridge, they do not use the design language of a cathedral. Form follows function. In the linguistic universe, persuading the reader, informing the reader, and entertaining the reader are the primary purposes for writing. We categorize these efforts into the four traditional modes of discourse: narration, description, exposition, and argumentation. As an educator preparing students for complex literacy, your mastery of how these texts operate structurally allows you to diagnose student writing, parse complex reading passages, and demystify the mechanics of the English language.

Before a single word is drafted, writers must calibrate their instruments. A blueprint is useless if the builder cannot read it; thus, the audience is the specific group of readers for whom a text is intended. To communicate effectively, an author must adapt the vocabulary of a piece of writing to suit the intended audience and adapt the tone of a piece of writing to suit the intended audience.

What exactly is tone? Simply put, tone is the author's attitude toward the subject matter of a text, and concurrently, tone is the author's attitude toward the audience of a text. Contrast this with mood: if tone is the author's voice, mood is the emotional atmosphere a piece of writing creates for the reader.

Let us examine the specific structural characteristics of the text types you will teach and analyze in your classroom.