An essay
is a typically short piece of writing, from an author's personal point of view.

Essays are non-fiction but often subjective; while expository, they can also include narrative. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author.

The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of an article and a short story. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays

The word essay derives from the French infinitive essayer, 'to try' or 'to attempt'.

In English essay first meant 'a trial' or 'an attempt', and this is still an alternative meaning.

It is very difficult to define the genre into which essays fall. The following remarks by Aldous Huxley, a leading essayist, may help:

"Like the novel, the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything. By tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece, and it is therefore impossible to give all things full play within the limits of a single essay. But a collection of essays can cover almost as much ground, and cover it almost as thoroughly, as can a long novel.

Essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference:

There is the pole of the personal and the autobiographical;

There is the pole of the objective, the factual, the concrete- particular;

And there is the pole of the abstract-universal.

Expository writing is a mode of writing in which the purpose of the author is to inform, explain, describe, or define his or her subject to the reader. Expository text is meant to ‘expose’ information and is the most frequently used type of writing by students in colleges and universities. A well-written exposition remains focused on its topic and listing events in chronological order. Examples of this type of writing are cooking instructions, driving directions, and instructions on performing a task. Key words such as first, after, next, then and last usually signal sequential writing. Personal pronouns may be used in such writing, if needed.

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