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Explanation Articles

While a description article answers the “what” of something, the explanation articles’ purpose is to answer the “how” and/or “why” something is or will be. It could also be used for justification purposes. Perhaps you want your reader to know why you, or somebody else, believe what you, or they, believe.

The explanation should come with context, causes and consequences.

Context

You will need to provide some context for the theme of your article. You will want to answer questions like:

Who does this affect?

Where is this taking place?

Why should I, the reader, care?

Etc…

Answering questions like these for your reader, even if your reader doesn’t know they have these questions, is important to engaging your audience and convincing them to care about knowing more.

You will want to do this with some style. Simply stating, “You should care because…” is not going to do the trick. Provide some context that your readers will be able to identify with.

Causes

Here you need to answer more questions for the reader. What prompted this article?

Most subjects you right your explanation articles about will have some sort of cause/effect relationship. It is important for your reader to know what those causes are, so they can develop a full understanding of your theme. Presumably, that is what you are writing the article for.

If your explanation article is not about something that has a cause and effect relationship, simply explain the necessity of writing about this subject. Again you need to use up some of those style points.

Consequences

The consequences are not necessarily negative. Many authors do write this form of article, often combing it with arguments, in order to evoke some kind of change and would explain the negative impacts of the cause here. However, it would be an injustice to use this structure solely for that purpose. This structure can be used to show positive changes, as well as provide a platform for a strictly informative article.

Next we will cover the DISCUSSION ARTICLE.

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