Cause and Effect Essays

Post Published On: 23 April, 2018

This essay type focuses on relationships between different events. Such essays may be about an important event that occurred once (for example, the election of Donald Trump) or a chain of events that form a certain trend (like a growing addiction to mobile devices).

As the name implies, such essays are about causes of a certain event or phenomena as well as about its effects. They also illustrate chains of events end links between them. However, you don’t need to write about events only — trends, decisions, or situations also work well.

Common Types of Essays

• Effect essays are mostly focused on the results. Usually, such essays begin with a description of a certain important event and then investigate its impact. Once you’ve written an introduction, you need to provide evidence to support your point. In a conclusion, you can assume what effects this event may have in the future.
• Cause essays are somewhat opposite to the previous type as they are focused on causes. A typical introduction describes effects of a certain event. After this, a body of an essay provides readers with information on everything that could cause the event, supporting every suggestion with pieces of evidence. We also suggest choosing the most important cause and arguing mostly for it. The conclusion may restate your idea of what the most important cause is, or offer your readers to make a decision.
• Cause argument essays are aimed to support a certain idea. For example, most people believe that global warming is caused by cars but you think that the main reason is cattle ranching. In this case, your introduction must describe effects (global warming) and present the common opinion on this issue. After this, the body part explains your own opinion and supports it with facts. Here you also need to refute other points. In the conclusion, you have to explain to your readers why they should accept your point.
• Speculating about causes essays differ from the previous type because they don’t choose a certain opinion but provide as many opinions as possible. The introduction considers effects, the body section describes various causes, and the conclusion asks the audience to decide or reveals your own opinion.

Thesis

A common approach implies ending the introduction with a question. Thus, the first sentence of the body must answer this question. Your answer to the question is your thesis statement. You shouldn’t necessarily present it in the body of your essay. Many people agree that the thesis must be presented in the introduction. The truth is, both approaches are right, and you’re free to choose the one that fits you best, unless you’ve been given particular instructions.

Organizing

The body is a backbone of your essay, and this is a part where you often explain why your opinion on causes and effects is better than others. You have to convince readers that you’re right. To do it, you have to present a set of arguments supported by evidence. To do it well, follow a few rules:

• Present your arguments in a logical order. You can sort them in a climactic order (starting from less important ones and moving to the most important), or start from the key cause and then describe underlying causes that are not so important.
• Understand the difference between effects and causes. It’s an obvious yet important advice: causes are what happened before, effects are what happens after.
• Surprise your audience. Any event may have less or more obvious causes. Of course, you need to mention predictable points, but don’t focus on them. A good approach is mentioning expected reasons at the beginning, and then explaining why these things are actually not the main reasons.
• Provide more evidence. Support your point by using everything that you have: examples, historical evidence, statistics, quotes, anecdotes, expert opinions, etc.

Conclusion

This part of your essay offers you more opportunities to demonstrate your creativity because here you don’t need to be dogmatic. Take a look at your issue from a different angle and explain why your opinion is the right one. If you don’t know how to approach the conclusion, let us help you with a few ideas:

1. Ask your readers what they think about the topic of the essay.
2. Think of causes or effects that may not have been discovered yet.
3. Present your unique idea and explain why your readers must reject other ideas.
4. Present the most popular opinion about the most important cause and explain why you think it’s wrong. You can also explain why you agree with this point as well.
5. Imagine how a similar situation would happen in the future. If you’re writing about causes of some tragic event, you can make suggestions on how to prevent such cases in the future.