Essay Formats

                There are various different types of essay formats that serve various purposes, from the rhetorical analysis essay to the IMRaD paper.  Each one serves its own purpose, being tailored to the liking of each field.  Rhetorical analyses are typically used in literature to discuss the purpose and value of various works whereas the IMRaD format allows quick and concise documentation of research for posterity.  Both formats can act as starting points for future essays to further develop their topics, albeit in a different way.

                The rhetorical analysis (in my experience) is a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of various rhetorical appeals on the selected audience.  They dig deep, delving through the surface in an attempt to discover some hidden meaning behind an author’s seemingly harmless words.  Sometimes this hidden meaning is more conspicuous than others, such as “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift (written in 1729).  This form of rhetoric (while not an analysis on the surface) is called a satire, which is defined to be “the use of wit to criticize faults in order to enact a change”.  The subheading of “A Modest Proposal” is “For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland; From Being a burden to Their Parents or Country, and; For Making Them Beneficial to The Public” after which it describes (in a very logical manner) an argument (which makes perfect sense) to sell the children of Ireland as food.  This proposal was written in a pamphlet which addressed the worsening conditions in Ireland at the time.

                To the casual reader, the idea of engaging in cannibalism in order to make the children of Ireland beneficial to the public (indeed, the idea of engaging in cannibalism at all) is simply disgusting.  Why would a man such as Jonathan Swift suggest that people eat other humans to better the living conditions of Ireland?  THIS is where the rhetorical analysis comes into play.  A cursory look over the essay in question reveals nothing but a recommendation for engaging in cannibalism.  But a more in depth look at it reveals Swift’s true purpose: to express his “disgust with the state of the nation” (www.sparknotes.com).  Without an analysis, Swift may have been seen as a madman condoning cannibalism in ‘civilized’ society.  Instead, the essay was viewed as good rhetoric.

                The IMRaD paper, the name standing for the structure of the paper itself (IntroductionàMethodsàResults à(and) Discussion), is a linear way of reporting results in a research paper.  This format flows smoothly from one section to another to report the findings in research and is thus often used as the format for the sciences.  This allows future researchers (who are doing research in the same area) to quickly determine whether or not that specific paper will be of use to them or not.

                I much prefer to use the IMRaD format, if purely for the reason that that’s the type of writing that I’m good at.  Select a topic, do the research, and report the findings in a coherent format optimized for future reference.  This kind of writing fits my mindset better than the rhetorical analysis because I’m a numbers kind of person rather than the kind of person who sits down with a book and begins to annotate it purely out of habit.  That would be the engineer in me talking, I suppose.