If you are sitting down to write an essay for the next hour or so, a lot of questions come to mind. Questions such as the topic, the audience, the kind of language, the facts, the overall content etc; they’re all their to let you rack your brain for a good 15 minutes till you figure out just which one to do first. However, no matter what you decide to tackle first, you’re bound to miss out on one of the most important aspects that’ll eventually determine the success or failure of your essay. Once of these aspects is the actual purpose of the essay.

The first thing that you’ll need to do before writing an essay is to determine just what exactly your essay’s purpose is. In other words, just what purpose do you wish to express in your essay. This is actually very important for writing the essay. The purpose of the essay is the natural aim or plan of the essay itself. As the writer, it is your sole responsibility to judge just what exactly you wish to accomplish with your essay once you’re done with it. A common misconception among students is that the essay’s purpose is to simply impress their high school teachers or professors who’ve requested them to write an informative or persuasive essay. This is not just harmful, but frowned upon, as professors are genuinely disappointed in such efforts by their students who don’t see the wider perspective of the essay (i.e. the actual target audience).

Having decided on a strong purpose of your essay is a mandatory requirement. This purpose is to be expressed to every single reader that’ll come across your essay and not just limited to your professor or teacher. If your essay doesn't meet the purpose, then sadly nothing else matters. It’ll turn your valuable efforts of researching and writing to waste if none of the content or facts matches the purpose that you thought out for the essay in the first place.

Here’s a classic example just to clarify what all of this means. For instance: If you were to write an informative essay on say a historical figure; lets say you choose Abraham Lincoln, you may try to be persuasive and insinuate that Lincoln was not an effective president. This is where you’ll realize that your purpose cannot be fulfilled. You must fit your purpose based on facts. Such essays are usually informative rather than persuasive.