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 phenomenon/phenomenon. So basically cause and effect essays are related to why things happen or simply what was the cause of its happening and what happens or happened as a result of 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:

Cause and Effect Essay

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 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 an introduction of the main idea, using the terms cause and/or effect.

3. Next step is to do the literature and for the main idea to back up the 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 points 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. The purpose can be either to inform or to persuade the readers by giving evidence of the causes and effects of the idea under discussion.