Nonfiction Notes

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Nonfiction Notes

• The essay is difficult to define because essays
  address so many different topics and cover a wide
  range of styles.
• The printing press helped to bring about an
  increase in literacy as a result, essays could
  reach a much wider audience than before.
• Authors can put a personal stamp on an essay by
  revealing their own personality and feelings.
• Nonfiction deals with real people.
• The purpose of nonfiction is to entertain, to
  inform, to explain or to persuade.
• Essays are classified as formal or informal.
• The formal essay is serious in tone, tightly
  organized, and generally objective.
• The informal, or familiar, essay may range freely
  over the subject we are interested in the
  writers personality and point of view as in what
  her or she has to say.
• Writing strategies often overlap in fact, a
  single piece of writing may contain all four of
  the forms in varying degrees.