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Module: The Writing Process

Understanding the Four Major Purposes for Writing

Purpose is the goal or aim of a piece of writing: to express oneself, to provide information, to persuade, or to create a literary
work. There are four purposes writers use for writing. When someone communicates ideas in writing, they usually do so to
express themselves, inform their reader, to persuade a reader or to create a literary work. In college, we mostly rely on two
purposes for composition style writing, and those are to inform or to persuade the audience.

• Expressive Writing - used to • Informative Writing - used to

“express” our opinions educate or explain something
• Email, Facebook, Twitter, to the audience
blogs or other social • Essays
networking sites • Research papers
• Presentations

Its main purpose is to

make connections to
This type of writing is
others and to
clear, accurate,
contribute to human
organized, thorough
thought and culture
and above all fair
and to establish and
deepen human contact.

The writer’s goal is to

change the minds of
A form of writng that is
the readers or at least
not a composistion
to get the readers to
sytle writing, but with
question their position
the purpose to enterain
on a debate and
more than inform
consider the writer's
• Persuasive Writing - a more
point of view.
• Literary Work - a form of
serious form of writing on a creative writing as in fiction
debatable topic or nonficiton.
• Essay • Novels
• Research paper • Plays
• Presentations • Poems