Ten Pointers for
Writing Good
Illustration Essays
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• 1. Illustration compositions are those
that contain examples to illustrate an
idea. Examples make abstract ideas
more concrete, down to earth, and
easier to understand. Examples will
make your writing more interesting
and attention-grabbing. Whenever
you introduce an idea, you should
ideally provide your readers with a
number of examples to clarify that
idea.
• 2. You should use specific examples in
your paper. These are examples
taken from your own life or the lives
of people you know. They are unique
examples shared by no other people.
• For example, if you want to explain a vague
and abstract concept, such as loyalty,
kindness, generosity, embarrassment, fear,
courage, joy, curiosity, or industriousness,
you can provide a unique, illustrative
incident from your own life to explain the
concept. You can write a whole narrative
that is, in effect, one big example, or you
can provide different examples from your
life -- a catalogue of examples -- one for
each paragraph of your essay that will
illustrate the one concept you are trying
to explain.
• 3. You should use typical examples in
your paper as well. These are
examples of events that are common
in the lives of most people. These
examples represent the experience
of many people. For instance, if you
wanted to illustrate the concept of
bravery in one paragraph, you could
mention a series of typical examples
that everyone would be familiar with:
firemen saving children from a house
• 4. You should use hypothetical examples in
your essays if you can think of no specific
or typical examples or if those examples
are not powerful enough to illustrate the
point you are trying to make. If you want
to give an example of, say, a tragedy, you
may wish to exercise your imagination and
come up with a tragedy that beats all
tragedies. However, you should always
make it clear to your readers that you are
actually using hypothetical (made-up)
• You can do this by opening your essay’s
body with something like this: “Let’s
imagine a forty-one-year-old woman named
Louise standing on the window ledge of an
office building some twenty stories up.
She has lost her job as an executive
assistant.” Such a beginning will set up a
fictional scenario that will hold a reader’s
interest and can well provide you with a
perfect example that you may not
otherwise have at your disposal.
• 5. You are permitted to use mixed
examples in your composition, that is,
combinations of specific, typical, and
hypothetical examples.
• 6. An entire essay may be one long example
of an abstract idea, or an essay may have
five or six paragraphs, each providing a
different example of one single idea. You
can even have examples at the sentence
level. In other words, a single sentence can
contain a series or list of examples. In this
case, you can use exemplifiers to introduce
those examples. Do you remember what
the seven exemplifiers in English are?
Here are the seven: for example, for
instance, namely, that is, including, such as,
and like.
• a. Brenda brought snacks to the
party, for example, chips, pretzels,
and popcorn.
• b. Brenda bought some decorations
for the party, for instance, balloons,
and flowers.
• c. Brenda likes only one party game,
namely, blind man’s bluff.
• d. Brenda told everyone to bring a
French cadeau, that is, a gift.
• e. Brenda selected theme colors for
the party, including red, white, and
green.
• f. Brenda needed different flavors of
ice cream for the party, such as
vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate.
• g. Brenda invited only her relatives to
the party, like her cousin, her aunt,
and her grandmother.
• 7. When writing an illustrative essay,
you have the opportunity of using not
only exemplifiers (with their
respective commas), but you can
replace those with colons.
• a. Brenda brought snacks to the
party: chips, pretzels, and popcorn.
• b. Brenda bought some decorations
for the party: balloons, and flowers.
• c. Brenda likes only one party game:
blind man’s bluff.
• d. Brenda told everyone to bring a
French cadeau: a gift.
• e. Brenda selected theme colors for
the party: red, white, and green.
• f. Brenda needed different flavors of
ice cream for the party: vanilla,
strawberry, and chocolate.
• g. Brenda invited only her relatives to
the party: her cousin, her aunt, and
her grandmother.
• 8. You can organize your essay in any
number of ways. For example, if you
wish to illustrate the idea of
philanthropy, you could write about a
famous philanthropist, like Andrew
Carnegie, and in a series of
paragraphs, give five or six examples
from his life of his spending his
fortune to help other people.
• You may wish to mention his greatest
contribution as your last example: his
giving America thousands of free,
public libraries. On the other hand,
you can approach the topic quite
differently. You can illustrate the
idea of philanthropy by mentioning
four or five famous philanthropists in
four or five paragraphs and what the
major contribution of each was.
• However, it is always better to give
examples from your own life. You could say
in your introduction that we all know the
names of famous philanthropists, like
Andrew Carnegie, Paul Mellon, John
Rockefeller, Bill Gates, and John Paul
Getty. However, the philanthropist that
has had the most direct influence on your
life is good, old Aunt Frieda, who left you
ten thousand dollars when she died. Then
you could go on to explain all the ways her
philanthropy helped you. Personalization is
the key to interesting essays!
• 9. Do not trivialize your illustrative
essay by using examples that are too
trite, too obvious, or too
commonplace. Of the hundreds of
examples you could possibly use,
choose only those that are most
fitting and most interesting.
• 10. Finally, you should use examples in
all your essays, not just illustrative
essays. Just as you can use deep
description in a narrative essay or
little stories in illustrative essays,
you can use examples in any essay
regardless of the major rhetorical
strategy that essay is focusing on.