Stories and descriptions let readers experience something. Expository writing explains or informs: how a volcano forms, what a word means, why leaves change color. It builds on everything you know about paragraphs, from topic sentences to concluding sentences.
Key idea
Expository writing explains or informs with facts, definitions, examples and clear steps, in a neutral voice. Its job is for the reader to understand, not to agree.
Why it works
Readers of expository writing want to learn, and they trust a writer who sticks to what can be shown. Opinions slipped into an explanation make the reader wonder which parts are facts, so the whole piece becomes less useful.
Worked example: Neutral or not?
Which sentence belongs in an expository report on recycling? (a) “Aluminum cans can be recycled and made into new cans.” (b) “Everyone who doesn’t recycle is lazy.”
- (a) states a fact a reader can check.
- (b) is a judgment, and an unfair one: it doesn’t explain anything.
- Expository writing keeps to facts and explanations.
Answer: (a).
Worked example: Revise to inform
Revise for a report: “Volcanoes are super scary and totally awesome.”
- “Scary” and “awesome” are the writer’s feelings.
- Replace them with information: what a volcano is or does.
Answer: “A volcano is an opening in Earth’s crust where melted rock, gas and ash escape.”
- Facts that can be checked: dates, sizes, amounts.
- Definitions of terms the reader may not know.
- Examples that make an idea concrete.
- Steps in order, for how something works.
- A neutral voice: no “amazing,” “terrible” or “you should.”
Common mistake
Slipping your own opinions into writing meant to inform (“the amazing,” “the worst,” “obviously”). Check every adjective and adverb: does it describe the subject, or your feelings about it? Keep the first kind; cut the second.