Ten Pointers for Writing
Good Illustration Essays
• 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 attentiongrabbing. 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 fire,
• 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) examples.
• You can do this by opening your essay’s body
with something like this: “Let’s imagine a fortyone-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.