PaperDue

Essay Topic Hub

Explanation
Essays

4,031+ paper examples, study guides & outlines

4,031 papers

1 subject area

UG & Grad levels

Free to browse

About This Topic

Explanation as a mode of academic writing appears across virtually every discipline, from biology and economics to history, theology, and technology. Rather than arguing a position or narrating events, explanatory writing prioritizes clarity — breaking down complex systems, processes, or phenomena so that a reader can genuinely understand them. This makes it a foundational skill in English composition courses, where students learn to present information in structured, accessible ways regardless of subject matter.

The papers collected here reflect the broad range of contexts in which explanation is required. Some take a scientific or technical approach, such as examining how LASIK surgery works or identifying the symptoms caused by exposure to mercury and arsenic. Others explain organizational structures, business strategies, or economic paradoxes like the diamond-water problem studied in microeconomics. Still others address social, legal, or cultural subjects — from reciprocity within the Iroquois Confederacy to the traditions of the Catholic faith — demonstrating that explanation adapts to whatever situation or subject demands it.

A strong explanatory essay begins with a clear sense of scope: identify precisely what needs to be understood and why it matters to the reader. Evidence carries weight when it is specific and well-sourced — definitions, data, examples, and step-by-step reasoning all serve the goal of genuine understanding. The most common pitfall is confusing explanation with argument; an explanatory thesis states what something is or how it works, not what the writer believes about it. Keeping that distinction sharp ensures the writing stays focused on illuminating rather than persuading.

4,031 papers

Sort by:

Paper Undergraduate

Compare and Contrast the Spartan and Athenian Constitutional and Political Systems

This essay presents a comparison of the Spartan and Athenian constitutional and political systems. In the first part, an introduction of Athens and Sparta has been given. In the second part, both the forms of governments in Spartan and Athenian lands have been discussed. In the final part, a summary of the differences and similarities between the political systems of the two poleis have been included.

Essay Doctorate

Driver license policies for undocumented immigrants

There are a number of important political and social issues facing the United States in this year of presidential politics, and immigration is among those key issues. Getting a driver's license is one particularly…

Essay Doctorate

Death Penalty Debate on Ethics and Morality

This paper discusses the death penalty. The main argument focuses on finding research that explains why the death penalty still exists in the U.S. For this reason, the paper examines three articles, chosen due to the fact that they come from reputable sources. These articles are analyzed individually, as well as collectively following a ranking criteria.

Research Paper Doctorate

The influence of Chinese culture on foreign companies in China

China has become more amenable to the operation of foreign companies in recent years, part of the effort on the part of the country to gain a more prominent position in world trade and so to enhance its own balance of…

Research Paper Doctorate

Simile -- a Common Device in Poetry

Simile -- A common device in poetry is the use of comparisons, often comparing something unusual or uncommon with something that is more familiar to the reader or audience. One kind of comparison is the simile, which…

Paper High School

Red Dog a Modern Application

Introduction Genre classification has been a persistent problem for literary critics ever since the concept of literary criticism emerged, and arguably even before then. When the forms of literary expression were more regular and more limited in number—due in part, no doubt, to the limited number of individuals who could write and even read such works of literature—the problem was somewhat simpler, but in the modern era of multi-faceted works from a diverse array of personages it can be all but impossible to say what type or genre a given work belongs to. A coming of age novel or "bildungsroman" might also

Essay Undergraduate

American Psycho in His Seminal Work American

This essay compares the novel American Psycho with the story of John Wayne Gacy in order to understand the public perception of serial killers. Noting the similarities between the two killers allows one to understand how their success is dependent upon the society in which they find themselves. In turn, this allows one to better appreciate the social critique of the novel, which focuses on the way in which serial killers are essentially the natural progression of the dominant social ideals of American society.

Essay Doctorate

Hiring Strategy for a Strategic HR Director Position

Strategic Human Resources Director -- Hiring Strategy

Paper Undergraduate

Research paper on major topics

The discipline of accounting has come a long way, as the following essay, shows. From its simple roots in the backwoods of Assyria 7000 years ago where traders haggled with one another over their goods and recorded them in cuneiform on rocks and wax tablets, accounting has ballooned into a growing morass of rules, regulations and controls in order to check corruption. Need to check corruption, in turn came about, as the world itself grew more complex and traders developed into simple businesses that then became firms with various investors, before gradually merging into the international corporations that we have today. Accountancy developed to reflect synchronous business complexity and evolved in a field that became extraordinarily complex and is still growing

Research Paper Undergraduate

Additional specifications and requirements

Science is a varied and dynamic issue and term, within it there is a sense of many definitions and variations on a theme of mans' unique ability to reason in a manner that is at least limitedly influenced by emotion.

← Prev 1 2 3 … 145 404 Next →