What is a cause-effect essay?
The cause-effect essay is written to show that one thing made another thing happened. It can be in 2 forms: (1) a focus on causes or (2) a focus on effects. Consider a topic such as smoking cigarettes. We can ask “Why do people smoke cigarettes?” or we might ask, “What happens when people smoke cigarettes?” The first question is asking for the causes of smoking, and the second question is asking for the effects of smoking. A cause-effect essay generally will focus on either causes or effects and usually not on both. CAUSE 1 CAUSE 2 EFFECT (Focus on causes essay) CAUSE 3 OR EFFECT 1 CAUSE EFFECT 2 (Focus on effects) EFFECT 3 Sample Essay “Excuse me, do you have a light?” The rain fell in buckets, filling my boot-prints with reddish-brown mud, soaking through my army-issue raincoat like it were paper, and washing away all sense of humanity. I felt like a rat drowning in the sewers, unable to move or my masters would have me jailed for leaving my post. I tried to ignore the raindrops boun
