Can you write an essay? This is a question with two options. An essay could be any work which is part of an unpublished or published work. A composition is, generally speaking, a piece of writing that presents an argument of the author. However the definition has become so ambiguous that it is similar to the definitions of personal letter or essay, pamphlets , or even short stories. Essays have been formal and academic informal, as well as personal in their nature for centuries.
In the early part of the 20th century essays were written as academic papers. In the decade that followed, there was a trend towards proofreading and editing essays prior to publication. Essays in English major courses–aural and analytical–were composed in a highly well-organized, highly-prescribed manner. Software programs that were customized for each student were utilized to enhance essay writing skills. These programs monitored and analysed the style and formatting of each essay as well as corrected punctuation, grammar mistakes and sentences, typos, sentence structure and format, and other common errors in academic writing.
Essay writing was no longer a series of random assignments. Instead the essay writer needed to integrate his or her knowledge of the background into their argument. The basic rules that governed the writing of essays was further refined and altered due to the introduction of new software for writing. In the 1970s, a new set rules for essay writing was established. These rules stressed the importance of personal experience to back up the main points of an essay. Students had to explain how their personal experiences directly related to the main ideas of their essays. Essay examples were a good source of this type of personal experience and evidence.
The multiple-choice method, also known as the multiple choice test was a different way to write essays. The essayist was asked to answer a set of questions, sometimes phrased as an answer and question. The multiple-choice part of the writing exam was described by a particular illustration:
