When it comes to writing, it involves many types of tasks like reports, journals, magazines, articles, and essays. Among all, the article and essay are the most common writing tasks. Newbies often lack in finding the differences between the two. There is a very thin line of difference between the article and essay writing skills. Getting awareness about the differences can help students write effectively. This article will discuss how article writing skills are different from essay writing skills. This difference will further help us know what writing skills students need to write essay and articles.
What is an essay? Which skills do you need to draft it like a pro?
An essay is a piece of information that presents ideas, creates arguments, expresses emotions, and tells events. It is a way to present ideas in a non-fictional manner. In other words, essays are formal and literary pieces of information. But some of the most common skills. No matter if the writer is individual or belong to an affordable essay writing service, he must possess these skills:
Critical thinking and brainstorming
In essay writing skills, brainstorming, and critical thinking skills come side by side. This is true as the first step in the very type of essay writing is outlining. The effective outline never let a writer stuck anywhere. More, without brainstorming, no one can outline a perfect essay. In conclusion, brainstorming and critical thinking skills help writers choose the best possible structure for an essay.
Exceptional research
Research is the toughest but most practical solution to all writing problems in all academic writing, including essay writing skills. The research helps writers check the credibility of the information to be stated in an essay. Sadly, not all writers are efficient enough to conduct good research. As a whole, an essay writer cannot compromise on research skills because the quality of an essay specifically depends on research.
Creativity
Most of the time, the facts, surveys and problems in essays seem boring to readers. Remember, a good writer never lets his reader get bored. Hence, to improve the readability or engagement of your essay’s content, creativity is the only solution. Creativity brings a new soul to even a dull essay.
Good command of language
Language is the reflection of your thoughts. Mostly, the reader does not know anything about you. It is your words that leave a deep impression of your thoughts. So, good command of language will help a writer improve his words selection. Further, appropriate words, good grammar, and clear concepts are essential for essay writing. Conclusively, an essay writer must have a good command of language to attract the readers.
What is an article?
An article is a piece of writing that contains information for publication. It can be in digital and printed form in newspapers, websites, journals and magazines. In other words, articles are meant for causing public awareness about facts, surveys, news, debates and events.
Formal vs informal article writing:
Article writers can use stories news and give opinions to make writing fascinating. In general, articles are of two types: informal or formal articles. The formal articles include scientific research papers and reports. Hence, formal or scientific articles need writers to conduct deep research. But informal articles include debates, speeches, and even web content (blogs). The structure, format, language and skills required to draft formal or informal articles vary greatly.
Skills necessary for formal articles:
Formal articles writing skills are more like essays. In simple words, the sole purpose of this type of essay is to be published in a research journal. So the necessary skills to draft a formal article are almost similar to the skills required to draft an essay. In short, creativity, extensive research abilities, good communication (verbal or written), brainstorming and critical thinking skills are equally important for article writing as well.
Skills necessary for informal articles:
Factually, you must have a little different set of skills to write these articles. Like, research, creativity, and communication are still important. But the adaptability, persuasive language and good SEO knowledge are a few that differentiate article writing skills from essay writing skills.
Adaptability:
An informal article writing, adaptability is a necessary skill as you have to change the writing style in different projects. Repetition of words, dull phrases and lengthy sentences decrease the article’s impact on readers. In-depth, the main purpose of such conversational articles is to increase traffic or business. Hence, the more adaptable a writer is, the more versatile are the articles.
Persuasive language:
An article writer needs to be more persuasive than an essay writer. This is true for many reasons, but the most common one appeals to the readers. In reality, persuasive skills vary from writer to writer. But some ways can help you improve these skills in the shortest possible time. First, you can ask questions to make an article engaging. Second, you can address your audience directly. Last, you can validate your point by examples. In short, persuasive skills are also necessary, especially for an article writer.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) knowledge:
In this era of digitalization, gathering an audience differs greatly from the past. Now, a writer must also have search engine optimization (SEO) knowledge. This skill is not as necessary for the essay writer. These skills allow you to get more appropriate keywords and inform you about the people’s interests. All in all, it will help to produce original, unique and search engine friendly content.
A student having the majority of the above skills can undoubtedly construct a good essay and an article. But as they both have different purposes, the essay writing skills are slightly different from the article writing. For informal article writing, you can use less formal languages. But essay writing skills need a person to use more formal language. Critical or analytical thinking skills are of prime importance in essay writing and formal article writing skills. But in informal articles, you can sketch a scenario. Hence, a writer can write a good informal article with good creative writing skills than research skills. As a whole, narrative, persuasive, editorial and outlining skills can improve the quality of both types of manuscripts. Likewise, proofreading must be the last step before submitting the final copy of each document.
