Cause and Effect Essay

Cause and effect essay is the most common of all written essay types when a writer has to write about the cause and effect relationship of a phenomena/phenomenon. So basically cause and effect essays are related with why things happen or simply what was the cause of its happening and what happens or happened as a result or what outcomes it actually brings or is expected to bring. Cause and effect is a common way of organizing and discussing ideas whose causes certainly result in a positive, negative or neutral effect. It is conducted in the following manners:

1. Distinguish between cause and effect. A cause can be determined by asking or answering to the question “why did it happen? Similarly an effect can be determined by asking or answering to the question “what happened because of this?”

2. Develop a thesis statement by clearly stating what the discussion is about and whether it is a discussion of causes, effects or both. This step requires introduction of the main idea, using the terms cause and/or effect.

3. Next step is to do literature of and for the main idea to back up thesis statement with relevant, sufficient and supportive details. The details can be organized in any of the following ways:

a)      Categorical    b) order of importance   c) chronological.

4. Write the essay in an appropriate manner clearly adding the evidence of the literature i.e. blend details smoothly in an effective manner. A writer can seek support by the use of transitional words like because due to, since, for, first, second etc for cause and the words like consequently, as a result, thus, therefore, resulted in etc for effects.

One of the key point in writing a cause and effect essay is that a writer must not deviate from his/her purpose at any stage of writing i.e. whether the stage is of defining the phenomenon/phenomena, developing the thesis statement, searching and organizing for the literature or a write-up. Purpose can be either to inform or to persuade the readers by giving evidence of causes and effects to the idea under discussion.