Purpose for Writing

Every essay has a specific purpose. Sometimes the primary purpose of an essay is to entertain--to make people laugh, cry, remember the past--to stir the emotions. Sometimes the primary purpose of an essay is to explain something. Sometimes the purpose is to change people's minds or behavior--to make them choose one path over another. The purpose behind an essay--its reason for being--controls the essay's approach to a topic and profoundly affects the way the essay is organized. Essays with a specific purpose and organization are said to conform to a particular rhetorical mode.