Section C

In the humanities, authors write to inform you in many ways. These methods can be classified into three types of informational writing: factual, descriptive and process.

Factual writing provides background information on an author, composer or artist, or on a type of music, literature or art. Examples of factual writing include notes on a book jacket, or album cover and longer pieces, such as an article describing a style of music, which you might read in a music appreciation course. This kind of writing provides a context for your study of the humanities.

As its name implies, descriptive writing simply describes, or provides an image of a piece of music, art or literature. For example, descriptive writing might list the colors an artist used in the painting, or the instruments a composer included in a musical composition, so as to make pictures or sound in the readers’ mind, by calling up specific details of the work. Descriptive writing in the humanities, particularly in literature, is often mixed with critical writing.

Process writing explains a series of actions that bring about result. It tells the reader how to do something. For example, explaining the technique used to shoot a film. This kind of writing is often found in art, where understanding how an art has created a certain effect is important. Authors may actually use more than one type of technique in a given piece of informational writing.