prose and essay difference

• Literary Terms
• Definition & Examples
• When & How to Write a Prose

I. What is a Prose?

Prose is just non-verse writing. Pretty much anything other than poetry counts as prose: this article, that textbook in your backpack, the U.S. Constitution, Harry Potter – it’s all prose. The basic defining feature of prose is its lack of line breaks:

In verse, the line ends

when the writer wants it to, but in prose

you just write until you run out of room and then start a new line.

Unlike most other literary devices , prose has a negative definition : in other words, it’s defined by what it isn’t rather than by what it is . (It isn’t verse.) As a result, we have to look pretty closely at verse in order to understand what prose is.

II. Types of Prose

Prose usually appears in one of these three forms.

You’re probably familiar with essays . An essay makes some kind of argument about a specific question or topic. Essays are written in prose because it’s what modern readers are accustomed to.

b. Novels/short stories

When you set out to tell a story in prose, it’s called a novel or short story (depending on length). Stories can also be told through verse, but it’s less common nowadays. Books like Harry Potter and the Fault in Our Stars are written in prose.

c. Nonfiction books

If it’s true, it’s nonfiction. Essays are a kind of nonfiction, but not the only kind. Sometimes, a nonfiction book is just written for entertainment (e.g. David Sedaris’s nonfiction comedy books), or to inform (e.g. a textbook), but not to argue. Again, there’s plenty of nonfiction verse, too, but most nonfiction is written in prose.

III. Examples of Prose

The Bible is usually printed in prose form, unlike the Islamic Qur’an, which is printed in verse. This difference suggests one of the differences between the two ancient cultures that produced these texts: the classical Arabs who first wrote down the Qur’an were a community of poets, and their literature was much more focused on verse than on stories. The ancient Hebrews, by contrast, were more a community of storytellers than poets, so their holy book was written in a more narrative prose form.

Although poetry is almost always written in verse, there is such a thing as “prose poetry.” Prose poetry lacks line breaks, but still has the rhythms of verse poetry and focuses on the sound of the words as well as their meaning. It’s the same as other kinds of poetry except for its lack of line breaks.

IV. The Importance of Prose

Prose is ever-present in our lives, and we pretty much always take it for granted. It seems like the most obvious, natural way to write. But if you stop and think, it’s not totally obvious. After all, people often speak in short phrases with pauses in between – more like lines of poetry than the long, unbroken lines of prose. It’s also easier to read verse, since it’s easier for the eye to follow a short line than a long, unbroken one.

For all of these reasons, it might seem like verse is actually a more natural way of writing! And indeed, we know from archaeological digs that early cultures usually wrote in verse rather than prose. The dominance of prose is a relatively modern trend.

So why do we moderns prefer prose? The answer is probably just that it’s more efficient! Without line breaks, you can fill the entire page with words, meaning it takes less paper to write the same number of words. Before the industrial revolution, paper was very expensive, and early writers may have given up on poetry because it was cheaper to write prose.

V. Examples of Prose in Literature

Although Shakespeare was a poet, his plays are primarily written in prose. He loved to play around with the difference between prose and verse, and if you look closely you can see the purpose behind it: the “regular people” in his plays usually speak in prose – their words are “prosaic” and therefore don’t need to be elevated. Heroic and noble characters , by contrast, speak in verse to highlight the beauty and importance of what they have to say.

Flip open Moby-Dick to a random page, and you’ll probably find a lot of prose. But there are a few exceptions: short sections written in verse. There are many theories as to why Herman Melville chose to write his book this way, but it probably was due in large part to Shakespeare. Melville was very interested in Shakespeare and other classic authors who used verse more extensively, and he may have decided to imitate them by including a few verse sections in his prose novel.

VI. Examples of Prose in Pop Culture

Philosophy has been written in prose since the time of Plato and Aristotle. If you look at a standard philosophy book, you’ll find that it has a regular paragraph structure, but no creative line breaks like you’d see in poetry. No one is exactly sure why this should be true – after all, couldn’t you write a philosophical argument with line breaks in it? Some philosophers, like Nietzsche, have actually experimented with this. But it hasn’t really caught on, and the vast majority of philosophy is still written in prose form.

In the Internet age, we’re very familiar with prose – nearly all blogs and emails are written in prose form. In fact, it would look pretty strange if this were not the case!

Imagine if you had a professor

who wrote class emails

in verse form, with odd

            line breaks in the middle

of the email.

VII. Related Terms

Verse is the opposite of prose: it’s the style of writing

that has line breaks.

Most commonly used in poetry, it tends to have rhythm and rhyme but doesn’t necessarily have these features. Anything with artistic line breaks counts as verse.

18 th -century authors saw poetry as a more elevated form of writing – it was a way of reaching for the mysterious and the heavenly. In contrast, prose was for writing about ordinary, everyday topics. As a result, the adjective “prosaic” (meaning prose-like) came to mean “ordinary, unremarkable.”

Prosody is the pleasing sound of words when they come together. Verse and prose can both benefit from having better prosody, since this makes the writing more enjoyable to a reader.

List of Terms

• Alliteration
• Amplification
• Anachronism
• Anthropomorphism
• Antonomasia
• APA Citation
• Aposiopesis
• Autobiography
• Bildungsroman
• Characterization
• Circumlocution
• Cliffhanger
• Comic Relief
• Connotation
• Deus ex machina
• Deuteragonist
• Doppelganger
• Double Entendre
• Dramatic irony
• Equivocation
• Extended Metaphor
• Figures of Speech
• Flash-forward
• Foreshadowing
• Intertextuality
• Juxtaposition
• Literary Device
• Malapropism
• Onomatopoeia
• Parallelism
• Pathetic Fallacy
• Personification
• Point of View
• Polysyndeton
• Protagonist
• Red Herring
• Rhetorical Device
• Rhetorical Question
• Science Fiction
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
• Synesthesia
• Turning Point
• Understatement
• Urban Legend
• Verisimilitude
• Essay Guide
• Cite This Website

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, writing a prose essay.

I've got an assignment to write a prose essay, but I'm not exactly sure what that means. Can any of you help me understand the definition of a prose essay and maybe some tips on how to write one?

A prose essay is a type of essay written in prose, which is a natural, flowing form of language, as opposed to verse or poetry. Essentially, when you're asked to write a prose essay, you're being asked to write an essay in complete sentences, organized into paragraphs, that clearly communicates your thoughts and ideas.

To write a prose essay, follow these steps:

1. Understand the prompt: Read the essay prompt or question carefully and make sure you fully comprehend what is being asked of you. Ask your teacher if you're unclear about what the point of the question is.

2. Brainstorm and outline: Jot down your thoughts and ideas related to the prompt and begin organizing them into a logical structure. Create an outline to serve as the framework for your essay, with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.

3. Introduction: Start with an engaging opening line that grabs the reader's attention and introduces the topic. Provide some background information and outline the main points you plan to cover in the essay.

4. Body paragraphs: Each paragraph should focus on a single main point that supports your overall argument. Use evidence, examples, and analysis to back up your claims and explain how they connect to the essay's central theme.

5. Transitions: Smoothly transition between paragraphs and ideas with appropriate phrases and sentences. This will help improve the readability and flow of your essay.

6. Conclusion: Summarize the most important points made in the body paragraphs and restate the thesis or main argument. Offer some insight or thoughts about the implications of your analysis.

7. Edit and revise: Carefully review your essay for clarity, coherence, grammar, and spelling errors—even small typos may give your reader the impression that you don't care all that much about what you're writing about. Make necessary changes to improve readability and ensure that your essay effectively addresses the prompt. Reading your essay out loud can sometimes be a good way of identifying snag points.

Finally, remember to keep your language clear and concise, while still using a variety of sentence structures and vocabulary to make your essay more engaging. Good luck with your prose essay assignment!

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Definition of Prose

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

Common Examples of First Prose Lines in Well-Known Novels

Examples of famous lines of prose, types of prose, difference between prose and poetry, writing a prose poem, prose edda vs. poetic edda, examples of prose in literature, example 1: the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck.

A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.

Example 2: This Is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

Example 3: Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Synonyms of Prose

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The difference between prose and poetry seems easy to explain: one has blocks of text and fully-fleshed characters, the other has line breaks and pretty words. That’s it, right?

Despite their visual quirks, prose and poetry share many similarities: prose can be musical, poetry can have plots and characters, and both are millennia-old traditions. As such, it would be wrong to prescribe a rigid decision tree for writing prose vs. poetry—many writers have both in their toolkits, relying on each form to communicate different truths.

“Poetry creates the myth, the prose writer draws its portrait.” —Jean-Paul Sartre

So what is the difference between poetry and prose? And which should you write for which occasions? Again, we won’t give hard-and-fast rules, but we can explore their differences in depth and discuss their possibilities.

First, we’ll discuss the features of prose and poetry independently, then we’ll loop back to examine both their differences and their areas of overlap.

Prose Vs. Poetry: Contents

Prose Versus Verse: Line Breaks

Prose is more functional than poetry, how to read prose, further readings in fiction and nonfiction, artistic definitions of poetry vary, poetry uses language richly, how to read poetry, further readings in poetry, poetry vs. prose: a clear example of each, 5 similar features of prose and poetry, 10 differences between prose and poetry, poetry vs. prose venn diagram, prose vs. poetry: a final note on literary binaries, prose vs. poetry: defining prose.

Prose is the more common writing form that everyone is comfortable reading and writing. This article relies on prose—as do most ( but not all! ) novels, and just about all news stories, instruction manuals, scientific papers, and so on.

The most straightforward rule of thumb for knowing that you’re reading prose (as opposed to its counterpart, verse ) is that there are no defined line breaks : words go all the way to the edge of the page without “turning back” early.

A rule of thumb for prose (as opposed to its counterpart, verse ) is that there are no defined line breaks.

Again, that’s how this blog article works, along with most other writing, from tweets to short stories to scientific papers.

So why would you stop writing prose, and move over to the with-line-breaks type of writing known as verse? The line breaks aren’t arbitrary, but reflect an underlying difference in how prose and verse tend to be structured. To quote the always-helpful Wikipedia:

“Where the common unit of verse is based on meter or rhyme, the common unit of prose is purely grammatical, such as a sentence or paragraph.”

So is verse (writing with line breaks) always poetry? While two are often used synonymously, defining poetry requires more than just scanning for line breaks: as we’ll discuss below, poetry is also about the rich and musical use of language.

Prose is not the counterpart of poetry, but the counterpart of verse.

So prose is not the counterpart of poetry, but rather the counterpart of verse. So verse is not what strictly defines poetry. In fact, not all poetry is in verse—specifically, prose poetry isn’t. In other words, prose and poetry do overlap, whereas prose and verse don’t.

Most poetry is in verse, but some poetry is in prose.

We go into more detail on line breaks, stanzas, and the use of page space in the sections below.

A helpful pattern in understanding prose vs. poetry is as follows: prose tends to work in clearer meanings, and to be less musical (that is, working with the inherent rhythms and sonic properties of language) and less densely packed with meanings, literary devices , and associations, than poetry.

As such, prose writing tends to be linear: while a prosaic sentence can twist and turn, it tends to share clear information, generally in a logical order.

Prose tends to work in clearer meanings, and to be less musical and dense, than poetry.

Again, exceptions exist, notably prose poetry : prose writing—writing with no line endings or defined rhythmic meter—that is highly musical and dense, and that is generally more impressionistic and multifaceted than most prose in the meanings it conveys.

And then there’s prose writing that is enigmatic and dreamlike rather than clear and orderly, such as the stream-of-consciousness prose writing in James Joyce’s Ulysses .

These exceptions prove the rule, though: most other prose, from this blog article your friend’s next Facebook post to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein , tends to follow the delineation described here.

We’ll allow Hemingway a last word with a slightly macho, not-applicable-to-every-prose-work, but still helpful description of prose: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.”

Sound good? To get a stronger feel for prose and further acquaint yourself with prose writing, take a look at the readings below.

This article gives close reading strategies for prose writing.

How to Read Prose: Close Reading Strategies for Prose Writers

The articles below outline helpful practices for numerous kinds of prose writing, from flash fiction to the novel, focusing especially on the common ingredients of storytelling .

• Crafting a Story Outline
• Freytag’s Pyramid
• Literary Devices in Prose
• Writing Flash Fiction
• Writing the Short Story
• Writing the Novella
• Writing the Novel

Prose vs. Poetry: Defining Poetry

Poetry is the oldest literary form, predating the written word (and therefore, prose) by several millennia. Up until the printing press revolutionized the distribution of literature, poetry was the main form for storytellers, who used meter and rhythm to perform oral retellings of their work.

So, what is poetry? As we’ve seen in our introduction to prose above, most—but not all—poetry is written in verse: writing with line breaks, organized around rhythm or meter rather than grammar. Still, we’ve also seen that verse is not what defines poetry, nor is all poetry based in verse.

So it’s not simply another word for verse. Is there an agreed-upon artistic definition of poetry as a literary form? (Spoiler: No.)

Artistic definitions of poetry change from poetic movement to poetic movement—and from poet to poet.

For example, William Wordsworth said that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings… recollected in tranquility.” This sentiment—largely reflective of the Romantic era—certainly rings true for some poetry. However, New Formalist poets work with poetry to distill and reflect emotion through form and meter: in other words, structure over emotion.

The point is, there’s no singular way to define or understand the artistic aims of poetry. Rather, all poets must define these aims for themselves and write accordingly.

Poets must define the artistic aims of poetry for themselves and write accordingly.

Learning about poetry requires familiarizing yourself with what other poets have already done. This list of poetry movements can jumpstart your understanding of poetry’s complex and various histories.

Good poetry, from any tradition, sings and resonates beyond the merely “prosaic.”

Whatever literary tradition you ascribe to, poetry has a clear job to be rich, musical, evocative. Good poetry, from any tradition, sings and resonates in a way that goes beyond the merely “prosaic,” as in the following poem excerpt by Derek Walcott:

You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.

So poetry, in any tradition, is the “cheesecake of language”: packed to the brim with sonic and expressive power. In poetry, it’s not enough to make a rational point straightforwardly, like the prosaic sentence you’re reading is doing.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said this beautifully, and we can give him the last word in defining poetry.

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Cool, right? If you’d like to learn more, check out our guides for reading and understanding poetry.

This article gives close reading strategies for poetry writing.

How to Read Poetry Like a Poet

The articles below outline helpful practices poetry writing, including deep dives on common literary devices in poetry and established poetry forms.

• What is Poetry
• Poetry Forms
• Writing and Publishing a Poetry Book

Let’s cap the definitions of poetry and prose above by simply giving a clear example of each.

Here is some beautiful fiction writing that is definitely prose:

They were nearly born on a bus, Estha and Rahel. The car in which Baba, their father, was taking Ammu, their mother, to hospital in Shillong to have them, broke down on the winding tea-estate road in Assam. They abandoned the car and flagged down a crowded State Transport bus. With the queer compassion of the very poor for the comparatively well off, or perhaps only because they saw how hugely pregnant Ammu was, seated passengers made room for the couple, and for the rest of the journey Estha and Rahel’s father had to hold their mother’s stomach (with them in it) to prevent it from wobbling. That was before they were divorced and Ammu came back to live in Kerala.

—Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

And here is some writing that is definitely poetry:

We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

—Shakespeare, The Tempest

Having defined prose and poetry above, the reality is that they can be more similar than you might imagine. We’ll discuss their differences in a moment, but first, it’s important to understand the shared potential that each form holds:

• Musicality and rhythm
• Use of colloquial speech
• Use of literary devices
• Ability to tell stories
• Show, don’t tell

1. Musicality and Rhythm

It’s a common misconception that only poetry can be musical. While rhythm and meter are important aspects of a poem’s construction, musicality begins with language, not with structure.

An immediate example of “musical prose” is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Susan Bell, writer of The Artful Edit , argues that Gatsby finds its success precisely because of the story’s musical, elegant storytelling—certainly, the book has a charged poeticism that feels just as decadent and tasteful as the high society of the Roaring Twenties. Below is some undeniably musical prose:

2. Use of Literary Devices

Things are like other things, which is the essence of literary devices. While some devices are unique to each form—poems have enjambment, prose can begin in media res —a successful piece of writing requires literary devices .

3. Use of Colloquial Speech

Yes, some writing uses lofty and erudite language. However, contemporary prose and poetry writers, from all eras, recognize the importance of speaking to their audience.

Colloquial speech is one way of speaking to your audience. A colloquialism is a turn of phrase with a specific social and temporal context. For example, “groovy” belongs to the American 1970s, Victorian Brits called a brave person “bricky,” and Gen Z’ers “stan” on Twitter.

In literature, Jay Gatsby’s “old sport” is just as colloquial as the poem “A Study of Reading Habits ,” which uses phrases like “right hook” and “load of crap.”

4. Storytelling

Another common misconception is that poetry doesn’t tell stories. While fiction and nonfiction are the genres of prose, poetry also possesses a powerful narrative voice.

Singular poems can tell grand stories, especially poetry in antiquity. The Epic of Gilgamesh , The Odyssey , and Beowulf are all stories in verse, as are novel-poems like Autobiography of Red .

Additionally, contemporary poetry collections often tell stories, just with less linearity. Louise Gluck’s collection Wild Iris is told from the perspective of a flower, and as the seasons change, the flower observes the infinite singularity of mankind, God, and the Universe.

5. Show, Don’t Tell Writing

It’s important for storytellers to demonstrate their ideas without spoon feeding the reader. In other words, writers should Show instead of Tell.

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. —Anton Chekhov

We consider “Show, Don’t Tell” a golden rule of writing. Brush up on it here !

We’ve discussed their similarities, but the difference between poetry and prose is usually fairly clear in practice. The following ten items distinguish the two. To help demonstrate our point, we represent each form with a well known piece of literature. Poetry examples were pulled from Dylan Thomas’ “ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night ,” and prose examples come from “ The Cask of Amontillado ” by Edgar Allan Poe.

1. Prose vs. Poetry: Use of Page Space

In prose, a line of text begins and ends at the margins of the page. In poetry, the author uses shorter lines, broken before the page margins to introduce multiple meanings. Line breaks are an enduring feature of what differentiates prose and poetry, adding extra emphasis to certain words and sounds.

You’ll notice in prose that a partial line occurs only before a new paragraph.

In poetry, the line breaks mean something more intentional. The ending words can help uphold meter and rhyme schemes, and it also emphasizes important words: “night” and “light” are repeatedly pit against each other in Thomas’ villanelle .

2. Prose vs. Poetry: Paragraphs vs. Stanzas

Prose passages divide single ideas into sentences, and those sentences go on to form paragraphs. A new paragraph signifies the introduction of new ideas or the continuation of relevant information.

The equivalent of a paragraph in poetry is the stanza. Stanzas are groupings of lines which act as units of meaning, with different stanzas containing different ideas and images.

3. Prose vs. Poetry: Single vs. Multiple Meanings

In prose, the meaning of each word is usually straightforward, with double meanings (like puns and irony) clearly expressed. Most prose relies on clear meanings to deliver clear, linear messages.

By contrast, the language of poetry contains multitudes. One word can hold many different meanings, and ideas can be broken into both sentences and lines.

Take the line “old age should burn and rave at close of day.” The word rave can mean multiple things: it can mean to rant and rave as old people (stereotypically) do, or it can mean to rage and fight against. The pun here is intended to energize the reader,

4. Prose vs. Poetry: Noun-Verb Placements

In Standard English , which is the common (but not default) language of prose, nouns and verbs are found close to each other. This is a facet of “clear communication”—it’s important to know who is doing what as efficiently as possible.

We have bolded the noun-verb pairs in an excerpt from both the poem and prose piece.

Notice how the noun-verb pairs can stray from each other much more easily in poetry. Dylan Thomas inserts a noun-verb pair between a noun-verb pair in each stanza—which is much harder to use effectively in prose.

Notice that, in prose, a noun can have multiple verbs attached to it, but the first verb is almost always next to the noun.

5. Prose vs. Poetry: Rhyme (Sometimes)

There are two types of rhyme: internal and external rhyme. External rhyme occurs at the ends of lines, such as the many “-ight” words in Thomas’ poem.

Internal rhyme refers to words that rhyme with each other inside the same beat. These rhymes are not always intentional or charged with meaning, but they occur, such as in this sentence from Poe’s story:

“We had passed through walls of piled bones , with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs.”

Bones and catacombs aptly rhyme with each other. Note, rhyme is not a necessary feature of any prose and many poems. Though some poetry forms do require rhyme schemes, contemporary poets tend to eschew rhyming.

6. Prose vs. Poetry: Meter (Sometimes)

Like rhyme, meter is an (often) optional component of poetry writing. Meter refers to the stress patterns of syllables and the number of syllables per line. Well-executed meter can give poetry a certain musical quality.

Thomas’ poem is written in iambic pentameter, a requirement of the traditional villanelle form. This means there are 10 syllables in each line, following an unstressed-stressed pattern. To understand syllable stress, read Thomas’ poem out loud, and note how every second syllable is emphasized harder than the first.

Prose does not rely on meter to tell a story.

Prose does not have any metrical requirements, and thank goodness for that. Meter can be extraordinarily tough to impose on a poem, but it also affects how the reader interprets the piece. However, prose does not rely on meter to tell a story, as these poetry devices often instill multiple meanings in a piece.

7. Prose vs. Poetry: Pragmatic vs. Imaginative Focus

On a macro-level, the vision of poets and prose writers tends to differ. Prose has a pragmatic focus, meaning that each word should clearly advance a specific idea or narrative. The focus of prose is storytelling, so the author has a duty to use words diligently.

While poetry can tell stories, a poem rarely focuses on plot points, settings, and characters.

While poetry can tell stories, a poem rarely focuses on plot points, settings, and characters. Rather, poetry has an imaginative focus. Words are allowed to break their conventional bounds in the goal of expressing emotions, and ideas can stack upon each other like grains of sand in a sand castle.

So, what’s pragmatic about Poe, and what’s imaginative about Thomas? Every word in Poe’s piece describes details and events that push the reader towards the climax. At no point does the reader jump out of the narrative to speculate or stargaze.

In Thomas’ poem, the words don’t point the reader towards a specific event, but they do encourage the reader to think deeply about abstract ideas. Old or young, the reader will contend with ideas of life, death, justice, goodness, and the judgment against our souls. In 19 lines of mostly concrete images, the poet asks us to read imaginatively—and in the process, to learn what we believe.

8. Prose vs. Poetry: Paraphrasability

A piece of prose can be summarized. If you ask “what is ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ about?”, it is possible to paraphrase the story and get the gist of its deeper meaning. In short, Poe’s story observes a man desperate for revenge, only to find that revenge often hurts both the punisher and the punished.

Poetry is generally harder to summarize than prose, because it tends to include greater multiplicities of meaning.

Poetry is generally harder to summarize than prose, because it tends to include greater multiplicities of meaning. No one can tell you what a certain poem means. They can tell you what it isn’t —for example, “Do Not Go Gentle” is not about heartbreak, war, or the summertime—but deciding what a poem means requires a reader’s own attention.

For example, one could summarize Thomas’ poem as “an ode to Thomas’ dying father, with a vengeful bent against mankind’s eventual death.” But, does saying that invoke Thomas’ juxtaposition of light and dark? His use of rhyme to draw a conceit? His need to believe in the transience of the soul? By the time you’ve summarized the poem, you’ve written something as long as the poem itself. Poetry cannot be paraphrased.

9. Prose vs. Poetry: Point of View

Prose and poetry treat “point of view” in very different ways. A point of view (POV) refers to who is telling the story. The storyteller doesn’t always have a name or a face, but they do inevitably change how a story is read.

In prose, there are 4 main POVs:

• First Person (I): The story is told in the first person, from a character who is either the protagonist or adjacent to the protagonist. The Cask of Amontillado uses the first person POV.
• Second Person (You): The story is told in the second person. Often, the writer will substitute “the protagonist” for “you,” making the story’s actions feel more intimate and personal. Second Person storytelling is rare, but not unheard of.
• Third Person Limited (He/She/They): The story is told in the third person, and it focuses on the perspective of the protagonist. We have access to most of their thoughts and feelings, but our access to other people is limited by the protagonist’s perspective. Sometimes, writers combine this with the intimacy of 1st person narration, in a technique called free indirect discourse .
• Third Person Omniscient (He/She/They): The story is told in the third person, and the narrator has access to everyone’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. We can jump from person to person with ease, interweaving webs of complex narratives together.

Some stories will also take a Third Person Mixed approach, meaning the meat of the story is told from the protagonist’s perspective, but the reader occasionally jumps to someone else’s POV or to a historical time period.

While poetry can use the same pronouns (I/You/He/She/They), it uses POV differently. A poem is always told from the perspective of “the speaker.” The speaker can be the poet themselves—Dylan Thomas is certainly the voice behind his poem, and he is certainly talking to his father. However, the correct approach is to always call the poem’s POV “the speaker,” as a poem can inhibit many different voices at once. Finally, poetry is much easier to apply to yourself when the speaker isn’t anyone in particular.

10. Prose vs. Poetry: Concision

Prose and poetry writers should both write concisely. Concise writing eschews redundancies and makes every word count. However, concision means something different for the two forms.

In prose, concision generally means that not a word is wasted in conveying information. Concise prose expresses its meaning clearly.

Concise prose expresses its meaning clearly.

Of course, good prose can still be long-winded, as long as this heightens the effect of the work. Take this sentence from Poe’s story:

“It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I given Fortunato cause to doubt my good-will. I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation.”

These sentences are 19 and 27 words long, respectively. They can also be summarized as follows: “Fortunato thought my smile bore good-will, not the desire to immolate him.”

What does Poe’s long-windedness afford him? Despite being easily paraphrased, every word does count in these two sentences, because they are a part of the narrator’s characterization. He is a long-winded schemer, and that affects how the story must be told, since Poe has chosen the first person to make us intimate with the narrator’s internal conflict.

Poetry is a different situation. Because poetry has line breaks, stanzas, and (sometimes) rhyme and meter, its concision takes a different form. In a poem, it’s great if every word contains heavy meaning; it’s even greater when words contain multiplicities and challenge the reader’s ideas. Economy in poetry is maximizing its impact, musicality, and richness—not necessarily its clear, single meaning.

Economy in poetry is maximizing its impact, musicality, and richness—not necessarily its clear, single meaning.

If you stretched a poem into prose, it would read like a terrible short story, because the concision afforded to poetry is different than that of prose. Concise prose focuses more on clarity of meaning, and poetry more on maximizing the richness and impact of every syllable.

Any article like this risks making literature seem binary, as though prose and poetry were totally discrete entities; so in closing, it’s good to note again that writers, especially contemporary writers, often work at the intersection of prose and poetry, resulting in genres like the prose poem , the lyrical essay or the poetry novel . (And we haven’t even touched on scriptwriting, which is a different form of communication altogether.)

There is much to explore outside of poetry and prose; this article simply covers the basics. As you advance on your writing journey, don’t be afraid to experiment with words outside of the traditional “prose vs. poetry” binary. You might be shocked by what you can accomplish!

Explore both Prose and Poetry at Writers.com

Whether you’re experimenting with poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction, Writers.com has the classes to help you succeed. Take a look at our upcoming courses —and gain valuable insights from our instructors and writing community .

Sean Glatch

Great summary. I write poetry, prose poems, flash fiction and short stories so I’m using the grab bag of everything you said here! Never taught about line breaks, though. I see some poets going willy nilly all over the page. Maybe there just aren’t any rules where this is concerned…

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Understanding Prose in Literature: A Comprehensive Guide

Defining prose, types of prose, prose vs. verse, prose styles, narrative style, descriptive style, expository style, argumentative style, literary devices in prose, foreshadowing, analyzing prose, close reading, theme and message, notable authors and their prose, jane austen, ernest hemingway, toni morrison, prose in different cultures, greek prose, indian prose, japanese prose.

Prose in literature is a fascinating topic that has captured the attention of readers and writers for centuries. In this comprehensive guide, we will explore the different aspects of prose and how it shapes the world of literature. By understanding prose, you will be able to appreciate the beauty of written language and enhance your own writing skills. So, let's dive into the captivating world of prose in literature!

Prose is a form of written language that follows a natural, everyday speech pattern. It is the way we communicate in writing without adhering to the strict rules of poetry or verse. In literature, prose encompasses a wide range of written works, from novels and short stories to essays and articles. To better understand prose in literature, let's look at the different types of prose and how it compares to verse.

There are several types of prose in literature, each serving a unique purpose and offering a different reading experience:

• Fiction: Imaginative works, such as novels and short stories, that tell a story.
• Non-fiction: Informative works, such as essays, articles, and biographies, that present facts and real-life experiences.
• Drama: Plays and scripts written in prose form, often featuring dialogue and stage directions.
• Prose poetry: A hybrid form that combines elements of prose and poetry, creating a more fluid and expressive style.

By exploring these types of prose, you can better appreciate the versatility and depth of prose in literature.

Prose and verse are two distinct forms of written language, each with its own characteristics and purposes. Here's a quick comparison:

• Prose: Written in a natural, conversational style, prose uses sentences and paragraphs to convey meaning. It is the most common form of writing and can be found in novels, essays, articles, and other forms of literature.
• Verse: Written in a structured, rhythmic pattern, verse often uses stanzas, rhyme, and meter to create a more musical quality. It is most commonly found in poetry and song lyrics.

Understanding the differences between prose and verse can help you appreciate the unique qualities of each form and how they contribute to the richness of literature.

Just as there are different types of prose, there are also various prose styles that authors use to convey their ideas and stories. These styles can be categorized into four main groups:

The narrative style tells a story by presenting events in a sequence, typically involving characters and a plot. This style is commonly used in novels, short stories, and biographies. Some key features of the narrative style include:

• Chronological or non-chronological structure
• Use of dialogue and description
• Focus on characters, their actions, and motivations
• Development of a plot, consisting of a beginning, middle, and end

By using the narrative style, authors can create engaging stories that draw readers in and make them feel a part of the experience.

The descriptive style focuses on painting a vivid picture of a person, place, or thing. This style is used to provide detailed information and create a strong sensory experience for the reader. Some key features of the descriptive style include:

• Use of sensory language, such as sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch
• Adjectives and adverbs to enhance descriptions
• Figurative language, such as similes and metaphors, to create vivid imagery
• Attention to detail and setting

By mastering the descriptive style, authors can transport readers to new worlds and enrich their understanding of the subject matter.

The expository style is used to explain, inform, or describe a topic. This style is commonly found in textbooks, essays, and articles. Some key features of the expository style include:

• Clear, concise language
• Logical organization of information
• Use of examples, facts, and statistics to support the main idea
• An objective, unbiased tone

By employing the expository style, authors can effectively convey information and help readers gain a deeper understanding of a subject.

The argumentative style is used to persuade or convince the reader of a certain viewpoint. This style is often found in opinion pieces, essays, and debates. Some key features of the argumentative style include:

• A clear, well-defined thesis statement
• Logical organization of arguments and evidence
• Use of facts, statistics, and examples to support the thesis
• Addressing and refuting opposing viewpoints
• A persuasive, confident tone

By mastering the argumentative style, authors can effectively present their opinions and persuade readers to consider their perspective.

Understanding these different prose styles can help you appreciate the diverse ways authors use language to convey their ideas and enhance your own writing abilities.

Authors use various literary devices to enrich their prose and make it more engaging for the reader. These devices help create an emotional connection, build suspense, or bring out deeper meanings in the text. Let's explore some of the most commonly used literary devices in prose:

Imagery is the use of vivid and descriptive language to create a picture in the reader's mind. This technique appeals to the five senses and can make a piece of writing more immersive and memorable. Some examples of imagery include:

• Visual imagery: describing the appearance of a character or setting
• Auditory imagery: describing sounds, such as the rustling of leaves or the roar of a crowd
• Olfactory imagery: describing smells, such as the scent of fresh-baked cookies or the aroma of a garden
• Gustatory imagery: describing tastes, such as the sweetness of a ripe fruit or the bitterness of a cup of coffee
• Tactile imagery: describing textures and physical sensations, such as the softness of a blanket or the warmth of the sun

By using imagery, authors can create a richer, more engaging experience for the reader.

Foreshadowing is a technique used to hint at events that will occur later in the story. This can create suspense, build anticipation, and keep the reader engaged. Foreshadowing can be subtle or more direct and can take various forms, such as:

• Character dialogue or thoughts
• Symbolism or motifs
• Setting or atmosphere
• Actions or events that mirror or prefigure future events

By incorporating foreshadowing, authors can create a sense of mystery and intrigue that keeps readers turning the pages.

Allusion is a reference to a well-known person, event, or work of art, literature, or music. This technique allows authors to make connections and add depth to their writing without explicitly stating the reference. Allusions can serve various purposes, such as:

• Creating a shared understanding between the author and the reader
• Establishing a cultural, historical, or literary context
• Adding layers of meaning or symbolism
• Providing a subtle commentary or critique

By using allusion, authors can enhance their prose and engage readers with shared knowledge and cultural references.

These are just a few examples of the many literary devices that authors use to enrich their prose in literature. By understanding and recognizing these techniques, you can deepen your appreciation of the written word and perhaps even add some of these tools to your own writing repertoire.

Analyzing prose in literature involves closely examining the text to gain a deeper understanding of the author's intentions, themes, and techniques. This process can help you appreciate the nuances of the writing and uncover new insights. Let's explore some approaches to analyzing prose:

Close reading is a method of carefully examining the text to identify its structure, themes, and literary devices. This approach involves paying attention to details such as:

• Word choice and diction
• Sentence structure and syntax
• Imagery and figurative language
• Characterization and dialogue
• Setting and atmosphere

By closely examining these elements, you can gain a deeper understanding of the author's intentions and the text's overall meaning.

Identifying the theme or central message of a piece of prose is another important aspect of analysis. A theme is a recurring idea, topic, or subject that runs through the text. Some common themes in literature include:

• Love and relationships
• Identity and self-discovery
• Power and authority
• Conflict and resolution
• Nature and the environment

To identify the theme of a piece of prose, consider the overall message or lesson that the author is trying to convey. Look for patterns, motifs, and symbols that support this message. Understanding the theme can help you better appreciate the author's intentions and the text's significance.

By employing these approaches to analyzing prose in literature, you can deepen your understanding of the text and enhance your appreciation of the author's craft. Whether you're studying a classic novel or a contemporary short story, these skills will help you unlock the richness and complexity of the written word.

Throughout history, numerous authors have made significant contributions to the world of prose in literature. Their unique writing styles and innovative approaches to storytelling have left an indelible mark on the literary landscape. Let's take a closer look at some notable authors and their distinctive prose:

Jane Austen, an English author from the early 19th century, is well-known for her witty and satirical prose. Her novels often center on themes of love, marriage, and social class in the Georgian era. Examples of her work include Pride and Prejudice , Sense and Sensibility , and Emma . Austen's prose is characterized by:

• Sharp wit and humor
• Observant descriptions of characters and their social interactions
• Realistic dialogue that reveals the personalities and motivations of her characters
• Insightful commentary on societal norms and expectations of her time

Ernest Hemingway, an American author from the 20th century, is celebrated for his distinctive writing style that has had a lasting impact on prose in literature. His works often explore themes of war, love, and the human condition, such as in A Farewell to Arms , The Old Man and the Sea , and For Whom the Bell Tolls . Hemingway's prose is characterized by:

• Simple, direct language and short sentences
• An emphasis on action and external events
• Understated emotions and a focus on the physical world
• A "less is more" approach that leaves room for reader interpretation

Toni Morrison, an American author and Nobel laureate, is renowned for her powerful, evocative prose that delves into the complexities of human relationships and the African American experience. Notable works include Beloved , Song of Solomon , and The Bluest Eye . Morrison's prose is characterized by:

• Rich, lyrical language and vivid imagery
• Complex characters and multi-layered narratives
• Explorations of race, gender, and identity
• A strong sense of voice and emotional intensity

These authors, among many others, have each left their unique imprint on the realm of prose in literature. By studying their works and understanding their techniques, we can better appreciate the diverse ways in which writers can use prose to convey their stories and ideas.

Prose in literature is a global phenomenon, with each culture bringing its own distinctive style, themes, and literary traditions to the table. Let's explore how prose has developed and evolved in some cultures around the world:

Ancient Greek prose has had a profound influence on Western literature. Spanning various genres such as philosophy, history, and drama, Greek prose is known for its intellectual depth and stylistic sophistication. Key features of Greek prose include:

• Rhetorical devices like repetition, parallelism, and antithesis
• Emphasis on logic, reason, and argumentation
• Rich vocabulary and complex sentence structures
• Notable authors like Plato, Aristotle, and Herodotus

Indian prose in literature spans thousands of years and numerous languages, with each region and time period contributing its own flavor to the mix. Indian prose is often characterized by:

• Epic tales and religious texts, such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana
• Folk tales, fables, and parables that convey moral lessons
• Ornate and poetic language, with a focus on imagery and symbolism
• Notable authors like Rabindranath Tagore, R. K. Narayan, and Arundhati Roy

Japanese prose in literature is known for its elegance, subtlety, and attention to detail. Spanning various genres such as poetry, drama, and fiction, Japanese prose often explores themes of nature, human emotion, and the passage of time. Key features of Japanese prose include:

• Haiku and other poetic forms that emphasize simplicity and precision
• Descriptions of the natural world and the changing seasons
• Understated emotions and a focus on the inner lives of characters
• Notable authors like Yasunari Kawabata, Yukio Mishima, and Haruki Murakami

By examining the diverse range of prose in literature from various cultures, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the many ways in which authors use language to tell stories, express ideas, and convey the human experience.

If you found this blog post intriguing and want to delve deeper into writing from your memories, be sure to check out Charlie Brogan's workshop, ' Writing From Memory - Part 1 .' This workshop will guide you through the process of tapping into your memories and transforming them into captivating stories. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your writing skills and unleash your creativity!

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What Is Prose?

The Quick Answer

Table of Contents

The Difference between Prose and Poetry

The difference between prose and prosaic writing, examples of prose, why prose is important.

• I'm not lying when I say a dog is full of love. I know from experience that a wet dog loves you the most.
• The truth I do not stretch or shove When I state the dog is full of love. I've also proved, by actual test, A wet dog is the lovingest. (US poet Ogden Nash)

Anastrophe (deliberately using the wrong word order)

• A stare long and threatening

Assonance (repeating vowel sounds in nearby words)

• The concept of mothering more overtly

Consonance (repeating consonant sounds in nearby words)

• Pick a lock and crack it.

Deliberate repetition (deliberately repeating ideas or words)

• I shall tell you, and you shall listen, and we shall agree.

Euphemisms (using agreeable words to replace offensive ones)

• He was so well oiled he lost his lunch .

Logosglyphs (using words that look like what they represent)

• With eyes like pools

Metaphors (saying something is something else)

• The volcano spewed its flaming Earth sauce .

Onomatopoeia (using words that sound like what they represent)

• Don't growl at customers.

Oxymoron (using contradictory terms)

• Non-prosaic prose

Similes (describing something as being like something else)

• The British accepted her absence like Americans accept the missing full stop in "Dr Pepper".
• Use literary devices to create non-prosaic prose.
• Flair in prose is like salt in soup. None is usually fine. A little is often an improvement. A lot is always a disaster.

This page was written by Craig Shrives .

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What’s the Difference Between Poetry and Prose?

19 Feb, 2024 | Blog Articles , English Language Articles , Get the Edge , Humanities Articles , Writing Articles

What are the key elements of poetry?

1. figurative language.

Figurative language quite simply means language that is not literal. This type of language is descriptive, and poets often use it to link a concrete object with an abstract idea. This non-literal description is used to invoke the reader’s emotions. 

A metaphor, for example, is a figurative technique; “the world is your oyster,” and “I could eat a horse,” are common metaphors. 

A simile is another example of figurative language. This is where the poet compares one thing with another to strengthen a description: for example in the final line of Sylvia Plath’s Mirror : 

“In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.” 

Personification, the attribution of human characteristics to something non-human (e.g. “the wind howled”), and symbolism, the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities, are also figurative techniques. 

These all serve to draw mental associations between the concrete and the abstract, and enhance the imagery of the poem. 

2. Rhythm and Metre

Poetry also often employs rhythmic patterns and metre. Rhythm refers to the rhythmic structure of a line, composed of two or more syllables, while metre is used to describe the pattern of emphasis, or lack of emphasis, on each syllable. Poets choose different rhythms and metres to impact the musical quality of the poem. 

For example, iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama – most famously in the works of Shakespeare. 

Rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called “feet”. “Iambic” refers to the type of foot used: an “iamb” is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (e.g. the word “a-bove”). This creates the pattern: 

de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM de/DUM 

“Pentameter” indicates that each line has five “feet” (think pent- as in “pentagon”, a shape with five sides). 

Consider Act 3, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream : 

“And I do love thee. Therefore go with me. I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.” 

3. Line Breaks and Stanzas

Structure in poetry concerns how the poem’s different elements are organised. This includes: 

• Stanzas – a group of lines forming the basic recurring metrical unit in a poem; a.k.a a verse
• Line breaks
• Verse lengths 

Each impacts the way the reader experiences and interprets the poem.

For example, the Petrarchan sonnet organises itself into an octave, followed by a sestet. The first eight lines (often in ABBA ABBA rhyming scheme) raise a question that the next six lines, the sestet, answers. 

There’s typically a volta , or a turn, at the beginning of the sestet, indicating the change in the poem’s focus. Here, the way the poem’s stanzas are laid out can have a significant impact on the way the poem is read. 

These poems often concern love, and the volta in particular allows for narrative development in the poem. 

See Christina Rossetti’s After Death : 

“The curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept And strewn with rushes, rosemary and may Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay, Where through the lattice ivy-shadows crept. He leaned above me, thinking that I slept And could not hear him; but I heard him say, ‘Poor child, poor child’: and as he turned away Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.   He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold That hid my face, or take my hand in his, Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head: He did not love me living; but once dead He pitied me; and very sweet it is To know he still is warm though I am cold.”

Line breaks also influence the way the poem is interpreted. In After Death, Rossetti employs enjambment (when a phrase flows seamlessly from one line to the next with no punctuation) to reflect the continuity of domestic life. 

4. Rhyme and Sound Patterns

Rhyme schemes, assonance, consonance and alliteration all draw attention to individual words within a poem. These words are drawn together through the repeated use of sound. 

For example, alliteration is the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. In The Raven , Edgar Allan Poe uses plosive alliteration in the phrase “doubting, dreaming dreams”. 

Sibilance, the creation of a hissing sound by the repetition of the letter “s”, is also used:

“Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore”. 

Assonance, the rhyming of two or more stressed vowels in nearby words, creates a sense of rhythm, dictating which syllables should be stressed when the poem is read aloud. It’s also employed in The Raven : 

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”.

A poem’s rhyme scheme, the pattern that outlines which sound each line should end with, lends poetry its tell-tale rhythmic structure. For example, the ABAB rhyme scheme rhymes the end of every other line. 

See the opening stanza of Robert Frost’s Neither Out Far Nor in Deep :

“The people along the sand All turn and look one way. They turn their back on the land. They look at the sea all day.”

Poets often put a rhyme scheme in place, only to break the pattern half-way through. This can work like a volta to indicate a shift in the narrative or to emphasise a particular thematic point. 

Imagery is the poet’s use of vivid description and language to enrich the reader’s understanding and appreciation of the piece. 

See the opening of T.S. Eliot’s Preludes :

“The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots;” 

The array of images conjured elevates the scene, as if we too are there in the street, with leaves at our feet and the smell of smoky steaks at our noses! 

6. Emotional Resonance

Poets also use literary techniques to express strong or intense emotions, which can deeply resonate with readers.

In Daffodils, William Wordsworth uses simple language to evoke loneliness, wonder and felicity: 

“I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.” 

Similarly, Audre Lorde’s If They Come in the Morning expresses a sense of danger and doom, as well as solidarity:

““If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”

She uses the personal pronouns “you” and “we” to connect to the reader, strengthening our connection to the poem and its sentiments.

7. Ambiguity

Poetry can initially be difficult to interpret and understand due to its ambiguity. Oftentimes students find it hard to connect to a poem, and in turn lose enthusiasm for poetry as a literary form. 

However, ambiguity is part of what makes poems so resonant, interesting and evocative! Readers can engage with the poem on multiple levels and connect to the words more personally – ambiguity allows room for interpretation. 

As William Empson wrote in his book Seven Types of Ambiguity : 

“The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”

8. Lyrical Language

Lyric poems use a variety of techniques to produce a songlike quality. 

A sonnet is a popular form of lyric poetry, using its rhythm, structure and descriptions to enhance its beauty and likeness to a song. For example, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 is notably lyrical, a quality that enhances the romantic and sentimental nature of the poem. 

9. Distinct Forms

There are a variety of poetic forms, including sonnets, haikus, villanelles and odes. 

Haikus are a Japanese form of poetry characterised by their unique syllabic structure. Each haiku is composed of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. 

For example, here is one of the Japanese poet Bashō’s earliest haikus: 

“On a withered branch A crow has alighted; Nightfall in autumn.”

A villanelle is a French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas.

What Is Prose?

Prose is a form of written language without the metrical structure and formal patterns that characterise poetry. 

What are the key elements that characterise prose? 

1. narrative and exposition.

Prose is commonly used to convey information, tell stories and provide explanations, making it a versatile form of written expression. All novels are examples of the prose form. 

Think of the Harry Potter series. Through prose, we’re told the story of a young boy who discovers he is a wizard, attends the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, meets his friends, learns spells and battles Voldemort. 

As a versatile form, prose doesn’t just tell stories. It can convey other types of information through news articles, recipes or school essays.

2. Full Sentences and Paragraphs

Prose adheres to grammatical and syntactical rules, consisting of complete sentences and paragraphs. This is in direct contrast with poetry’s experimentation with rhythm, line breaks and metre. 

3. Lack of Rhyme and Metre

There’s generally a notable absence of specific rhythmic patterns and structured metre in prose. This allows for a more fluid and natural flow of language – just as I am writing now! 

For example, the prose form allows dialogue in novels to feel natural and real. This extract from Ernest Hemingway’s Hills like White Elephants is a great example, as the dialogue effectively bounces back and forth between characters.

‘“Well,” the man said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”   “And you really want to?”   “I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you really don’t want to.”   “And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”   “I love you now. You know I love you.”   “I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”   “I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.”   “If I do it you won’t ever worry?”   “I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple.”’

4. Concise and Detailed

Prose can be both concise and straightforward to deliver a message (for example a how-to guide), or descriptive and detailed to depict scenes and characters in literature. 

See the opening of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre : 

“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.”

5. Logical and Coherent

Prose is generally organised logically with a coherent development of ideas. This means it’s very suitable for persuasive writing, argument and clarity. 

See any of Barack Obama’s speeches – he’s a skilled and persuasive writer and speaker, able to use language to suit his purpose and audience. 

6. Linear Narrative

Prose often follows a linear narrative structure, progressing chronologically from beginning to middle to end, while making use of narrative techniques. 

For example, tragedies often adhere to Freytag’s Pyramid, which follows the structure: 

• Introduction, 
• Rise, or rising action 
• Return, or fall
• Catastrophe

This formula is based upon the classical Greek tragedies of Sophocles , Aeschylus and Euripedes .

7. Versatility

Prose adapts to a wide range of genres and styles from creative fiction to academic research papers to a newspaper column. It’s the primary, and most versatile, form of written communication.

Blurring Boundaries Between Poetry and Prose

Although there are many differences between poetry and prose, these distinctions can sometimes blur. 

There are hybrid forms of writing which incorporate elements of both styles. For example, the French poet Charles Baudelaire revolutionised poetry in his prose poems, combining elements of both styles. Rather than incorporating line breaks, rhyme schemes, control of metre or assonance, Baudelaire employed conventions of prose writing such as paragraphs and dialogue. 

This created a condensed version of prose that took advantage of poetic devices like symbolism and imagery. Take a look at Baudelaire’s Be Drunk : 

“And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

Other writers who blur this boundary include Claudia Rankine, whose novel ​ Citizen showcases her prose-poetry hybrid. Her work has been called “lyric essays” by the New York Review of Books . 

Ocean Vuong’s acclaimed works, strikingly Time Is A Mother , also experiment with poetry and prose to explore grief, loss and memory.

There are many, many more canonical writers that blur this boundary, like Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath – all well worth exploring in depth!

Language is clearly not concrete, nor unchanging. Poets and novelists alike are always experimenting with form, technique and style. 

Be inspired to engage and experiment with a range of literary works, from confessional poetry to postmodernist literature to Baudelaire’s subversive prose poetry! Our summer programmes are hosted in Oxford, home to countless great writers over the centuries, and allow you to explore both poetry and prose in a supportive environment.

By Keziah Mccann

Keziah is a second-year French and Italian student at Balliol College, University of Oxford. As well as learning languages and travelling, her interests include writing, journalism, film and cooking.

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What's the difference between essay and prose ?

Definition:

• (n.) An effort made, or exertion of body or mind, for the performance of anything; a trial; attempt; as, to make an essay to benefit a friend.
• (n.) A composition treating of any particular subject; -- usually shorter and less methodical than a formal, finished treatise; as, an essay on the life and writings of Homer; an essay on fossils, or on commerce.
• (n.) An assay. See Assay, n.
• (n.) To exert one's power or faculties upon; to make an effort to perform; to attempt; to endeavor; to make experiment or trial of; to try.
• (n.) To test the value and purity of (metals); to assay. See Assay.

Example Sentences:

• (1) Two days after Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse , published a beautiful essay calling for this year's First World War commemorations to " honour those who died " and "celebrate the peace we now share", Michael Gove has delivered the government's response.
• (2) The rationale for pursuing the development and use of germ-line selection and modification techniques is examined in this essay.
• (3) This essay reviews research on interhemispheric transfer time derived from simple unimanual reaction time to hemitachistoscopically presented visual stimuli.
• (4) What is correct in a tweet might not be in an essay; no single register of English is right for every occasion.
• (5) Unsurprisingly, one of the three lonely references at the end of O'Reilly's essay is to a 2012 speech entitled " Regulation: Looking Backward, Looking Forward" by Cass Sunstein , the prominent American legal scholar who is the chief theorist of the nudging state.
• (6) The present essay gives a brief review of the findings on sex differences in the human brain.
• (7) Evidence exists in the literature to suggest that the reliability of short (c. 10 minutes) essay questions may be higher.
• (8) This pictorial essay should assist the radiologist in recognizing esophageal abnormalities on chest films and in recognizing their place in the spectrum of chest film abnormalities.
• (9) This two-part essay identified major characteristics of War Surgery and explores the essential training and education required to prepare civilian and military surgeons for the practice of war surgery.
• (10) They then wrote essays justifying their ideas for the new classroom; provided a budget, using a variety of maths skills; created an inventory of furniture, lighting and other items; producing a 3D scale model of their classroom and a 2D computer-generated picture.
• (11) In the last part of the essay he discusses the characteristics of traditional Chinese medical ethics.
• (12) Upon further consideration, we concluded the essay did not include some key facts and its overall tone was not consistent with what we seek to publish.
• (13) You can date the phrase back further, to 1998, when Peggy McIntosh used the word "privilege" in her essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack .
• (14) Over the past 40 years her voice has been marked, first and foremost, by a supreme intellectual confidence, a tone evident from the first line of the first essay (Notes on Camp) that made her name in 1964: "Many things in the world have not been named.
• (15) The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes was selected as the subject for a lecture in the 1974 History of Medicine series at Yale University School of Medicine because, as the Latin subtitle of the essay suggests, he represents a fortunate and uncommon, but by no means unique, synthesis of the practical and aesthetic, of science and the humanities.
• (16) Facebook Twitter Pinterest In an essay for the Hollywood Reporter, Camille Paglia writes that Swift promotes a ‘silly, regressive public image’.
• (17) In a 2010 essay, Berman wrote of visiting the Bronx again, with trepidation, fearing that the borough's notorious self-immolation would have left nothing of the world he remembered.
• (18) Batoor is a talented photojournalist who worked on the PR team at the US Embassy in Kabul before he was targeted for a bold and confronting photo essay on the exploitation of Afghanistan’s "dancing boys" in the Washington Post.
• (19) Today we are starting a new series called ‘Facing my fear’, launching with an essay from a young widow who had to return to the city where she first met her late husband .
• (20) As Geoff Dyer notes in his essay for Dewe Mathews's book, her images may "bear a conceptual resemblance to Sternfeld's, but they are taken within the already charged zone of memory that is the Western Front.
• (n.) The ordinary language of men in speaking or writing; language not cast in poetical measure or rhythm; -- contradistinguished from verse, or metrical composition.
• (n.) Hence, language which evinces little imagination or animation; dull and commonplace discourse.
• (n.) A hymn with no regular meter, sometimes introduced into the Mass. See Sequence.
• (a.) Pertaining to, or composed of, prose; not in verse; as, prose composition.
• (a.) Possessing or exhibiting unpoetical characteristics; plain; dull; prosaic; as, the prose duties of life.
• (v. t.) To write in prose.
• (v. t.) To write or repeat in a dull, tedious, or prosy way.
• (v. i.) To write prose.
• (1) Comic writing can be a brutal, unforgiving business, yet it can produce great and multi-layered prose, combining comedy, pathos and satire.
• (2) The prose rhythm and colloquial diction here work against exaggeration, but allow for humour.
• (3) In the first, span and free-recall measures were obtained for 24 subjects, each tested with four types of spoken material (nonsense syllables, random words, fourth-order approximations to English, and normal prose).
• (4) But his magnificent, exact rendering of the world, in his mordant, civilised and generous prose, has no comparison.
• (5) With prose that takes the English language and infuses it with inflections and a history that is uniquely Igbo, discernibly Nigerian and unmistakably African, Achebe's is a realism that ensures the enduring relevance of his fiction.
• (6) It was concluded that CAs are more effective and more efficient than prose for teaching clinical decisionmaking.
• (7) Young and old adults were tested for recall of ideas presented in a 641 word prose passage.
• (8) "The inauguration address was poetry, and now people are looking for some prose," said Alden Meyer, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
• (9) Louise Glück’s prose-poem collection, Faithful and Virtuous Night , won for poetry.
• (10) He writes poetry and prose, he writes news reports and short stories.
• (11) Pinter adores poetry, would perhaps have preferred his poetry to have taken precedence over his plays, and his prose often has the compression and musicality of poetry, what he calls the "question of rhythm".
• (12) These models account for a broad range of memory-related processes, including word recognition, sentence verification, prose comprehension, and sentence production.
• (13) • Various Voices: Prose, Poetry and Politics 1948-98 is published by Faber (£9.99).To order it at the special price of £7.99 plus 99p p&p, freephone 0500 600 102 or send a cheque payable to The Guardian CultureShop to 250 Western Avenue, London, W3 6EE.
• (14) His narrative has the simple directness of the finest English prose: the overall effect is both intimate and majestic Perhaps he was lucky.
• (15) Featuring handwritten lyrics and prose drawn from his notebooks and scraps of paper he kept in ringbinders, the selection was put together with the help of journalist Jon Savage .
• (16) Ada banyak prakarsa dari bawah ke atas, mulai dari usaha pengelolaan sampah hingga tingkat nol sampai proses pengelolaan air kotor secara komunal.
• (17) Subjects suffering from persecutory delusions, psychiatric controls and normal subjects were required to recall immediately six passages of prose, half of which contained mildly threatening propositions.
• (18) But given how addictive the prose was in Constellation, where Marra was lyrical but also drover quickly, those who loved the John Leonard Prize winner a couple of years back are certainly hungering for more.
• (19) P3 measures, physiological (body temperature, heart rate, subjective alertness), and cognitive performance (digit span, prose memory, digit symbol) variables were assessed.
• (20) Someone with a decent prose style should do a proper translation of it.

Words possibly related to " essay "

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What is Prose — Definition and Examples in Literature

• What is a Poem
• What is a Stanza in a Poem
• What is Dissonance
• What is a Sonnet
• What is a Haiku
• What is Prose
• What is an Ode
• What is Repetition in Poetry
• How to Write a Poem
• Types of Poems Guide
• What is an Acrostic Poem
• What is an Epic Poem
• What is Lyric Poetry

P rose can be a rather general literary term that many use to describe all types of writing. However, prose by definition pertains to specific qualities of writing that we will dive into in this article. What is the difference between prose and poetry and what is prose used for? Let’s define this essential literary concept and look at some examples to find out.

What is Prose in Literature?

First, let’s define prose.

Prose is used in various ways for various purposes. It's a concept you need to understand if your goal to master the literary form. Before we dive in, it’s important to understand the prose definition and how it is distinguished from other styles of writing. 

PROSE DEFINITION

What is prose.

In writing, prose is a style used that does not follow a structure of rhyming or meter. Rather, prose follows a grammatical structure using words to compose phrases that are arranged into sentences and paragraphs. It is used to directly communicate concepts, ideas, and stories to a reader. Prose follows an almost naturally verbal flow of writing that is most common among fictional and non-fictional literature such as novels, magazines, and journals.

Four types of prose:

Nonfictional prose, fictional prose, prose poetry, heroic prose, prose meaning , prose vs poetry.

To better understand prose, it’s important to understand what structures it does not follow which would be the structure of poetry. Let’s analyze the difference between prose vs poetry.

Poetry follows a specific rhyme and metric structure. These are often lines and stanzas within a poem. Poetry also utilizes more figurative and often ambiguous language that purposefully leaves room for the readers’ analysis and interpretation.

Finally, poetry plays with space on a page. Intentional line breaks, negative space, and varying line lengths make poetry a more aesthetic form of writing than prose. 

Take, for example, the structure of this [Why] by E.E. Cummings. Observe his use of space and aesthetics as well as metric structure in the poem. 

E.E. Cummings Poem

E.E. Cummings may be one of the more stylish poets when it comes to use of page space. But poetry is difference in structure and practice than prose. 

Prose follows a structure that makes use of sentences, phrases, and paragraphs. This type of writing follows a flow more similar to verbal speech and communication. This makes it the best style of writing to clearly articulate and communicate concepts, events, stories, and ideas as opposed to the figurative style of poetry.

What is Prose in Literature? 

Take, for example, the opening paragraph of JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye . We can tell immediately the prose is written in a direct, literal way that also gives voice to our protagonist . 

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

From this example, you can see how the words flow more conversationally than poetry and is more direct with what information or meaning is being communicated. Now that you understand the difference between poetry, let’s look at the four types of prose.

Related Posts

• What is Litotes — Definition and Examples →
• Different Types of Poems and Poem Structures →
• What is Iambic Pentameter? Definition and Examples →

Prose Examples

Types of prose.

While all four types of prose adhere to the definition we established, writers use the writing style for different purposes. These varying purposes can be categorized into four different types.

Nonfictional prose is a body of writing that is based on factual and true events. The information is not created from a writer’s imagination, but rather true accounts of real events. 

This type can be found in newspapers, magazines, journals, biographies, and textbooks. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl , for example, is a work written in nonfictional style.

Unlike nonfictional, fictional prose is partly or wholly created from a writer’s imagination. The events, characters, and story are imagined such as Romeo and Juliet , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , or Brave New World . This type is found as novels, short stories, or novellas .

Heroic prose is a work of writing that is meant to be recited and passed on through oral or written tradition. Legends, mythology, fables, and parables are examples of heroic prose that have been passed on over time in preservation. 

Finally, prose poetry is poetry that is expressed and written in prose form. This can be thought of almost as a hybrid of the two that can sometimes utilize rhythmic measures. This type of poetry often utilizes more figurative language but is usually written in paragraph form. 

An example of prose poetry is “Spring Day” by Amy Lowell. Lowell, an American poet, published this in 1916 and can be read almost as hyper short stories written in a prose poetry style. 

The first section can be read below: 

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.

Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.

The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air."

While these four types of prose are varying ways writers choose to use it, let’s look at the functions of them to identify the strengths of the writing style. 

What Does Prose Mean in Writing

Function of prose in literature.

What is prose used for and when? Let’s say you want to tell a story, but you’re unsure if using prose or poetry would best tell your story.

To determine if the correct choice is prose, it’s important to understand the strengths of the writing style. 

Direct communication

Prose, unlike poetry, is often less figurative and ambiguous. This means that a writer can be more direct with the information they are trying to communicate. This can be especially useful in storytelling, both fiction and nonfiction, to efficiently fulfill the points of a plot.

Curate a voice

Because prose is written in the flow of verbal conversation, it’s incredibly effective at curating a specific voice for a character. Dialogue within novels and short stories benefit from this style.

Think about someone you know and how they talk. Odds are, much of their character and personality can be found in their voice.

When creating characters, prose enables a writer to curate the voice of that character. For example, one of the most iconic opening lines in literature informs us of what type of character we will be following.

Albert Camus’ The Stranger utilizes prose in first person to establish the voice of the story’s protagonist. 

“Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY. Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.”

Build rapport with the reader

Lastly, in addition to giving character’s a curated voice, prose builds rapport with the reader. The conversational tone allows readers to become familiar with a type of writing that connects them with the writer. 

A great example of this is Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels . As a nonfiction work written in prose, Thompson’s voice and style in the writing is distinct and demands a relationship with the reader.

Whether it is one of contradiction or agreement, the connection exists through the prose. It is a connection that makes a reader want to meet or talk with the writer once they finish their work. 

Prose is one of the most common writing styles for modern writers. But truly mastering it means understanding both its strengths and its shortcomings. 

Different Types of Poems

Curious about learning about the counterpart to prose? In our next article we dive in different types of poems as well as different types of poem structures. Check out the complete writer’s guide to poetry types up next. 

Up Next: Types of Poems →

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11 Literature (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose)

Essential Questions for Literature

• How is literature like life?
• What is literature supposed to do?
• What influences a writer to create?
• How does literature reveal the values of a given culture or time period?
• How does the study of fiction and nonfiction texts help individuals construct their understanding of reality?
• In what ways are all narratives influenced by bias and perspective?
• Where does the meaning of a text reside? Within the text, within the reader, or in the transaction that occurs between them?
• What can a reader know about an author’s intentions based only on a reading of the text?
• What are enduring questions and conflicts that writers (and their cultures) grappled with hundreds of years ago and are still relevant today?
• How do we gauge the optimism or pessimism of a particular time period or particular group of writers?
• Why are there universal themes in literature–that is, themes that are of interest or concern to all cultures and societies?
• What are the characteristics or elements that cause a piece of literature to endure?
• What is the purpose of: science fiction? satire? historical novels, etc.?
• How do novels, short stories, poetry, etc. relate to the larger questions of philosophy and humanity?
• How we can use literature to explain or clarify our own ideas about the world?
• How does what we know about the world shape the stories we tell?
• How do the stories we tell about the world shape the way we view ourselves?
• How do our personal experiences shape our view of others?
• What does it mean to be an insider or an outsider?
• Are there universal themes in literature that are of interest or concern to all cultures and societies?
• What is creativity and what is its importance for the individual / the culture?
• What are the limits, if any, of freedom of speech?

Defining Literature

Literature, in its broadest sense, is any written work. Etymologically, the term derives from Latin  litaritura / litteratura  “writing formed with letters,” although some definitions include spoken or sung texts. More restrictively, it is writing that possesses literary merit. Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama, and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

Taken to mean only written works, literature was first produced by some of the world’s earliest civilizations—those of Ancient Egypt and Sumeria—as early as the 4th millennium BC; taken to include spoken or sung texts, it originated even earlier, and some of the first written works may have been based on a pre-existing oral tradition. As urban cultures and societies developed, there was a proliferation in the forms of literature. Developments in print technology allowed for literature to be distributed and experienced on an unprecedented scale, which has culminated in the twenty-first century in electronic literature.

Definitions of literature have varied over time.  In Western Europe prior to the eighteenth century, literature as a term indicated all books and writing. [1]   A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, in which it began to demarcate “imaginative” literature. [2]

 Contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of analysis both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works. [3]

Major Forms

A calligram by Guillaume Apollinaire. These are a type of poem in which the written words are arranged in such a way to produce a visual image.

Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, prosaic ostensible meaning (ordinary intended meaning). Poetry has traditionally been distinguished from prose by its being set in verse; [4]  prose is cast in sentences, poetry in lines; the syntax of prose is dictated by meaning, whereas that of poetry is held across metre or the visual aspects of the poem. [5]

Prior to the nineteenth century, poetry was commonly understood to be something set in metrical lines; accordingly, in 1658 a definition of poetry is “any kind of subject consisting of Rythm or Verses”. [6]  Possibly as a result of Aristotle’s influence (his  Poetics ), “poetry” before the nineteenth century was usually less a technical designation for verse than a normative category of fictive or rhetorical art. [7]  As a form it may pre-date literacy, with the earliest works being composed within and sustained by an oral tradition; [8]  hence it constitutes the earliest example of literature.

Prose is a form of language that possesses ordinary syntax and natural speech rather than rhythmic structure; in which regard, along with its measurement in sentences rather than lines, it differs from poetry. [9]  On the historical development of prose, Richard Graff notes that ”

Novel : a long fictional prose narrative.

Novella :The novella exists between the novel and short story; the publisher Melville House classifies it as “too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story.” [10]

Short story : a dilemma in defining the “short story” as a literary form is how to, or whether one should, distinguish it from any short narrative. Apart from its distinct size, various theorists have suggested that the short story has a characteristic subject matter or structure; [11]   these discussions often position the form in some relation to the novel. [12]

Drama is literature intended for performance. [13]

Leitch  et al. ,  The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism , 28  ↵

Ross, “The Emergence of “Literature”: Making and Reading the English Canon in the Eighteenth Century,” 406 & Eagleton,  Literary theory: an introduction , 16  ↵

“POETRY, N.”.  OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY . OUP. RETRIEVED 13 FEBRUARY 2014. (subscription required)  ↵

Preminger,  The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , 938–9  ↵

Ross, “The Emergence of “Literature”: Making and Reading the English Canon in the Eighteenth Century”, 398  ↵

FINNEGAN, RUTH H. (1977). ORAL POETRY: ITS NATURE, SIGNIFICANCE, AND SOCIAL CONTEXT. INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS. P. 66. & MAGOUN, JR., FRANCIS P. (1953). “ORAL-FORMULAIC CHARACTER OF ANGLO-SAXON NARRATIVE POETRY”.SPECULUM 28 (3): 446–67. DOI:10.2307/2847021  ↵

Preminger,  The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , 938–9 &Alison Booth; Kelly J. Mays. “Glossary: P”. LitWeb , the Norton Introduction to Literature Studyspace . Retrieved 15 February 2014.   ↵

Antrim, Taylor (2010). “In Praise of Short”. The Daily Beast. Retrieved 15 February 2014.  ↵

ROHRBERGER, MARY; DAN E. BURNS (1982). “SHORT FICTION AND THE NUMINOUS REALM: ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT DEFINITION”.  MODERN FICTION STUDIES . XXVIII (6). & MAY, CHARLES (1995).  THE SHORT STORY. THE REALITY OF ARTIFICE . NEW YORK: TWAIN.  ↵

Marie Louise Pratt (1994). Charles May, ed.  The Short Story: The Long and the Short of It . Athens: Ohio UP.  ↵

Elam, Kier (1980).  The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama . London and New York: Methuen. p. 98.ISBN 0-416-72060-9.  ↵

LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY

Literature. Provided by: Wikipedia. Located at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literature#cite_note-44 . License:  CC BY-SA: Attribution- ShareAlike

PUBLIC DOMAIN CONTENT: Image of man formed by words. Authored by: Guillaume Apollinaire. Located at:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calligramme.jpg . License:  Public Domain: No Known Copyright

Listen to this Discussion of the poetry of Harris Khalique . You might want to take a look at the transcript as you listen.

The first half of a 2008 reading featuring four Latino poets, as part of the American Perspectives series at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Listen to poetry reading of Francisco Aragón and Brenda Cárdenas

Listen to this conversation with Allison Hedge Coke, Linda Hogan and Sherwin Bitsui . You might want to look at the transcript as you listen. In this program, we hear a conversation among three Native American poets: Allison Hedge Coke, Linda Hogan and Sherwin Bitsui. Allison Hedge Coke grew up listening to her Father’s traditional stories as she moved from Texas to North Carolina to Canada and the Great Plains. She is the author of several collections of poetry and the memoir, Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer. She has worked as a mentor with Native Americans and at-risk youth, and is currently a Professor of Poetry and Writing at the University of Nebraska, Kearney. Linda Hogan is a prolific poet, novelist and essayist. Her work is imbued with an indigenous sense of history and place, while it explores environmental, feminist and spiritual themes. A former professor at the University of Colorado, she is currently the Chickasaw Nation’s Writer in Residence. She lives in Oklahoma, where she researches and writes about Chickasaw history, mythology and ways of life. Sherwin Bitsui grew up on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. He speaks Dine, the Navajo language and participates in ceremonial activities. His poetry has a sense of the surreal, combining images of the contemporary urban culture, with Native ritual and myth.

Remember to return to the essential questions. Can expand on any of your answers to these questions? You might want to research these poets.

Chris Abani : Stories from Africa

In this deeply personal talk, Nigerian writer Chris Abani says that “what we know about how to be who we are” comes from stories. He searches for the heart of Africa through its poems and narrative, including his own.

Listen to Isabel Allende’s Ted Talk

As a novelist and memoirist, Isabel Allende writes of passionate lives, including her own. Born into a Chilean family with political ties, she went into exile in the United States in the 1970s—an event that, she believes, created her as a writer. Her voice blends sweeping narrative with touches of magical realism; her stories are romantic, in the very best sense of the word. Her novels include The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna, and her latest, Maya’s Notebook and Ripper. And don’t forget her adventure trilogy for young readers— City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies.

As a memoirist, she has written about her vision of her lost Chile, in My Invented Country, and movingly tells the story of her life to her own daughter, in Paula. Her book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses memorably linked two sections of the bookstore that don’t see much crossover: Erotica and Cookbooks. Just as vital is her community work: The Isabel Allende Foundation works with nonprofits in the San Francisco Bay Area and Chile to empower and protect women and girls—understanding that empowering women is the only true route to social and economic justice.

You can read excerpts of her books online here: https://www.isabelallende.com/en/books

Read her musings. Why does she write? https://www.isabelallende.com/en/musings

You might choose to read one of her novels.

Listen to Novelist Chimamanda Adichie . She speaks about how our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. She tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

One Hundred Years of Solitu de

Gabriel García Márquez’s novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” brought Latin American literature to the forefront of the global imagination and earned García Márquez the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. What makes the novel so remarkable? Francisco Díez-Buzo investigates.

Answer these questions as you listen:

How many generations of the Buendía family are in One Hundred Years of Solitude?

In what year did Gabriel García Marquez start writing One Hundred Years of Solitude?

Who inspired the style of One Hundred Years of Solitude?

A Colonel Aureliano Buendía

B Gabriel García Márquez

C Nicolás Ricardo Márquez

D Doña Tranquilina Iguarán Cotes

Which real-life event is almost directly represented in the novel?

A The Banana Massacre of 1928

B The Venezuelan coup d’état of 1958

C The Thousand Days’ War

D The bogotazo

What is the name of the town where the novel is set?

A Aracataca

Please explain how One Hundred Years of Solitude exemplifies the genre of magical realism.

What were the key influences in García Márquez’s life that helped inspire One Hundred Years of Solitude?

The narrative moves in a particular shape. What is that shape? How is that shape created?

Gabriel García Márquez was a writer and journalist who recorded the haphazard political history of Latin American life through his fiction. He was a part of a literary movement called the  Latin American “boom ,” which included writers like Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, Argentina’s Julio Cortázar, and Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes. Almost all of these writers  incorporated aspects of magical realism in their work . Later authors, such as Isabel Allende and Salman Rushdie, would carry on and adapt the genre to the cultural and historical experiences of other countries and continents. García Máruqez hadn’t always planned on being a writer, but a pivotal moment in Colombia’s—and Latin America’s—history changed all that. In 1948, when García Márquez was a law student in Bogotá,  Jorge Eliécer Gaítan , a prominent radical populist leader of Colombia’s Liberal Party, was assassinated. This happened while the U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall brought together leaders from across the Americas to create the  Organization of American States  (OAS) and to build a hemisphere-wide effort against communism. In the days after the assassination, massive riots, now called the  bogotazo , occurred. The worst Colombian civil war to date, known as  La Violencia ,  also broke out. Another law student, visiting from Cuba, was deeply affected by Eliécer Gaítan’s death. This student’s name was Fidel Castro. Interestingly, García Márquez and Castro—both socialists—would  become close friends later on in life , despite not meeting during these tumultuous events. One Hundred Years of Solitude ’s success almost didn’t happen, but this  article  from  Vanity Fair  helps explain how a long-simmering idea became an international sensation. When Gabriel García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in 1982, he gave a  lecture  that helped illuminate the plights that many Latin Americans faced on a daily basis. Since then, that lecture has also helped explain the political and social critiques deeply embedded in his novels. It was famous for being an indigenous overview of how political violence became entrenched in Latin America during the Cold War.In an  interview  with the  New Left Review , he discussed a lot of the inspirations for his work, as well as his political beliefs.

Don Quixote

Mounting his skinny steed, Don Quixote charges an army of giants. It is his duty to vanquish these behemoths in the name of his beloved lady, Dulcinea. There’s only one problem: the giants are merely windmills. What is it about this tale of the clumsy yet valiant knight that makes it so beloved? Ilan Stavans investigates.

Why do Don Quixote and Sancho Panza work well together?

A They eat at strange times of the day

B They are impatient

C They like to dance together

D Their characters complement each other

Why does Don Quixote want to fix the world?

A He is a knight who believes in social justice

B He reads many books

C He doesn’t have any friends

D He loves toys

Why is Don Quixote’s love for Dulcinea described as “platonic”?

A Plato is their matchmaker

B They love Greek philosophy

C They want material fortune

D It’s purely spiritual

Why is Cervantes’s book described as “the first modern novel”?

A It was originally adapted to television

B The characters evolve throughout the story

C Cervantes only wrote poetry before

D It refers to technological advances

What does the term “quixotic” mean?

B A person without money

C An old man

D A dreamer

In what ways do Don Quixote and Sancho Panza change as the plot progresses?

Is it possible to count the total number of days that pass during their journey?

In what ways does their journey reveal the changes that 17th-century Spain is also undergoing?

Interested in exploring the world of  Don Quixote ? Check out  this translation  of the thrill-seeking classic. To learn more about  Don Quixote ’s rich cultural history, click  here . In  this interview , the educator shares his inspiration behind his book  Quixote: The Novel and the World . The travails of  Don Quixote ’s protagonist were heavily shaped by real-world events in 17th-century Spain. This  article  provides detailed research on what, exactly, happened during that time.

Midnight’s Children

It begins with a countdown. A woman goes into labor as the clock ticks towards midnight. Across India, people wait for the declaration of independence after nearly 200 years of British rule. At the stroke of midnight, an infant and two new nations are born in perfect synchronicity. These events form the foundation of “Midnight’s Children.” Iseult Gillespie explores Salman Rushdie’s dazzling novel.

Saleem Sinai’s birth coincides with:

A The invasion of India by the British

B The end of British occupation and the creation of two new nations, India and Pakistan

C The death of his mother

D His discovery of magic powers

Midnight’s Children is set over the course of:

A About thirty years of Saleem’s life

B A single day in Saleem’s life

C The duration of British occupation

D About thirty years of Saleem’s life, as well as flashbacks to before he was born

Saleem is the only person in the book with magic powers

Saleem has powers of

A Telepathy

B Shape shifting

C Predicting the future

Midnight’s Children is full of cultural references, including

A 1001 Nights

D Mythology

E All of the above

List some of the historical events that are part of the plot of Midnight’s Children

Why is Midnight’s Children a work of postcolonial literature? Describe some of the features of postcolonial literature.

In addition to being a work of postcolonial literature, Midnight’s Children is considered a key work of magical realism. Why do you think this is? What are some of the features of the book that could classify as magical realism?

Midnight’s Children filters epic and complex histories through one man’s life. What are the benefits of fictionalizing history in this way? What do you think he is trying to tell us about the way we process our past? Can history be as much of a narrative construct as fiction?

At the stroke of midnight, the first gasp of a newborn syncs with the birth of two new nations. These simultaneous events are at the center of Midnight’s Children, a dazzling novel about the state of modern India by the British-Indian author  Salman Rushdie . You can listen to an interview with Rushdie discussing the novel  here . The chosen baby is Saleem Sinai, who narrates the novel from a pickle factory in 1977. As  this article  argues, much of the beauty of the narrative lies in Rushdie’s ability to weave the personal into the political in surprising ways. Saleem’s narrative leaps back in time, to trace his family history from 1915 on. The family tree is blossoming with bizarre scenes, including clandestine courtships, babies swapped at birth, and cryptic prophecies. For a detailed interactive timeline of the historical and personal events threaded through the novel,  click here . However, there’s one trait that can’t be explained by genes alone – Saleem has magic powers, and they’re somehow related to the time of his birth. For an overview of the use of magical realism and astonishing powers in Mignight’s Children,  click here. Saleem recounts a new nation, flourishing and founding after almost a century of British rule. For more information on the dark history of British occupation of India,  visit this page. The vast historical frame is one reason why Midnight’s Children is considered one of the most illuminating works of  postcolonial literature  ever written. This genre typically addresses life in formerly colonized countries, and explores the fallout through themes like revolution, migration, and identity. Postcolonial literature also deals with the search for agency and authenticity in the wake of imposed foreign rule. Midnight’s Children reflects these concerns with its explosive combination of Eastern and Western references. On the one hand, it’s been compared to the sprawling novels of Charles Dickens or George Elliot, which also offer a panoramic vision of society paired with tales of personal development. But Rushdie radically disrupts this formula by adding Indian cultural references, magic and myth. Saleem writes the story by night, and narrates it back to his love interest, Padma. This echoes the frame for  1001 Nights , a collection of Middle Eastern folktales told by Scheherazade every night to her lover – and as Saleem reminds us, 1001 is “the number of night, of magic, of alternative realities.” Saleem spends a lot of the novel attempting to account for the unexpected. But he often gets thoroughly distracted and goes on astonishing tangents, telling dirty jokes or mocking his enemies. With his own powers of telepathy, Saleem forges connections between other children of midnight; including a boy who can step through time and mirrors, and a child who changes their gender when immersed in water. There’s other flashes of magic throughout, from a mother who can see into dreams to witchdoctors, shapeshifters, and many more. For an overview of the dazzling reference points of the novel,  visit this page . Sometimes, all this is like reading a rollercoaster: Saleem sometimes narrates separate events all at once, refers to himself in the first and third person in the space of a single sentence, or uses different names for one person. And Padma is always interrupting, urging him to get to the point or exclaiming at his story’s twists and turns. This mind-bending approach has garnered continuing fascination and praise. Not only did Midnight’s Children win the prestigious Man Booker prize in its year of publication,  but it was named the best of all the winners in 2008 . For an interview about Rushdie’s outlook and processed,  click here. All this gives the narrative a breathless quality, and brings to life an entire society surging through political upheaval without losing sight of the marvels of individual lives. But even as he depicts the cosmological consequences of a single life, Rushdie questions the idea that we can ever condense history into a single narrative.

Tom Elemas : The Inspiring Truth in Fiction

What do we lose by choosing non-fiction over fiction? For Tomas Elemans, there’s an important side effect of reading fiction: empathy — a possible antidote to a desensitized world filled with tragic news and headlines.

What is empathy? How does story-telling create empathy? What stories trigger empathy in you? What is narrative immersion? Are we experiencing an age of narcissism? What might be some examples of narcissism? What connection does Tom Elemans make to individualism?

Ann Morgan: My year reading a book from every country in the world

Ann Morgan considered herself well read — until she discovered the “massive blindspot” on her bookshelf. Amid a multitude of English and American authors, there were very few books from beyond the English-speaking world. So she set an ambitious goal: to read one book from every country in the world over the course of a year. Now she’s urging other Anglophiles to read translated works so that publishers will work harder to bring foreign literary gems back to their shores. Explore interactive maps of her reading journey here: go.ted.com/readtheworld

Her blog: Check out my blog (http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/), where you can find a complete list of the books I read, and what I learned along the way.

Jacqueline Woodson: What reading slowly taught me about writing

Reading slowly — with her finger running beneath the words, even when she was taught not to — has led Jacqueline Woodson to a life of writing books to be savored. In a lyrical talk, she invites us to slow down and appreciate stories that take us places we never thought we’d go and introduce us to people we never thought we’d meet. “Isn’t that what this is all about — finding a way, at the end of the day, to not feel alone in this world, and a way to feel like we’ve changed it before we leave?” she asks.

Introduction to Humanities II Copyright © by loribethlarsenclcmnedu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Home › Study Tips › Creative Writing Resources For Secondary School Students

What Is The Difference Between Prose and Poetry?

• Published August 31, 2022

Poetry is an art form that has been around for centuries. It is a way to express oneself through the use of words and can be written in many different styles. There are many different types of poetry, such as sonnets, haikus, and ballads.

Poetry can be written about any topic, and it is often used to express emotions. But what is the difference between poetry and prose?

In this article, we outline the differences between the two popular forms of story-telling.

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Poetry VS Prose

Prose is a form of writing that is based on spoken language. It is characterised by its natural flow and rhythm, as well as its use of regular grammar and punctuation. Prose is often used for novels, short stories, and essays.

Poetry, on the other hand, is a form of writing that is based on musicality and rhythm. It is often characterized by its use of figurative languages, such as metaphors and similes. Poetry is often used for poems and some of its devices are also used in songwriting.

The major difference between the two is that poetry is a form of writing that uses rhythm and rhyme to create a musical or chant-like effect, whereas prose, is a form of writing that is more straightforward and doesn’t rely on rhyme or meter.

Poetry often uses figurative language to create images or expressive ideas, while prose is more literal. Prose is usually used for novels, essays, and nonfiction writing, while poetry is more often associated with literature, lyrics, and storytelling.

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• Key Differences

Know the Differences & Comparisons

Difference Between Prose and Poetry

The basic difference between prose and poetry is that we have sentences and paragraphs, whereas lines and stanzas can be found in a poetry. Further, there is regular writing in prose, but there is a unique style of writing a poetry.

We can find prose in newspaper articles, blogs, short stories, etc., however, poetry is used to share something special, aesthetically. To know more on this topic, you can read the other differences below:

Content: Prose Vs Poetry

Comparison chart, how to remember the difference.

Definition of Prose

The prose is an ordinary writing style in literature, which encompasses characters, plot, mood, theme, the point of view, setting, etc. making it a distinctive form of language. It is written using grammatical sentences, which forms a paragraph. It may also include dialogues, and is sometimes, supported by images but does not have a metrical structure.

Prose can be fictional or non-fictional, heroic, alliterative, village, polyphonic, prose poetry etc.

Biography, autobiography, memoir, essay, short stories, fairy tales, article, novel, blog and so forth use prose for creative writing.

Definition of Poetry

Poetry is something that arouses a complete imaginative feeling, by choosing appropriate language and selective words and arranging them in a manner that creates a proper pattern, rhyme (two or more words having identical ending sounds) and rhythm (cadence of the poem).

Poetry uses an artistic way to communicate something special, i.e. a musical intonation of stressed (long sounding) and unstressed (short sounding) syllables to express or describe emotions, moments, ideas, experiences, feelings and thoughts of the poet to the audience. The structural components of poetry include lines, couplet, strophe, stanza, etc.

It is in the form of verses, which constitutes stanzas, that follows a meter. The number of verses in a stanza depends upon the type of the poem.

Key Differences Between Prose and Poetry

The difference between prose and poetry can be drawn clearly on the following grounds:

• Prose refers to a form of literature, having ordinary language and sentence structure. Poetry is that form of literature, which is aesthetic by nature, i.e. it has a sound, cadence, rhyme, metre, etc., that adds to its meaning.
• The language of prose is quite direct or straightforward. On the other hand, in poetry, we use an expressive or creative language, which includes comparisons, rhyme and rhythm that give it a unique cadence and feel.
• While the prose is pragmatic, i.e. realistic, poetry is figurative.
• Prose contains paragraphs, which includes a number of sentences, that has an implied message or idea. As against, poetry is written in verses, which are covered in stanzas. These verses leave a lot of unsaid things, and its interpretation depends upon the imagination of the reader.
• The prose is utilitarian, which conveys a hidden moral, lesson or idea. Conversely, poetry aims to delight or amuse the reader.
• The most important thing in prose is the message or information. In contrast, the poet shares his/her experience or feelings with the reader, which plays a crucial role in poetry.
• In prose, there are no line breaks, whereas when it comes to poetry, there are a number of line breaks, which is just to follow the beat or to stress on an idea.
• When it comes to paraphrasing or summarizing, both prose and poetry can be paraphrased, but the paraphrase of the poem is not the poem, because the essence of the poem lies in the style of writing, i.e. the way in which the poet has expressed his/her experience in verses and stanzas. So, this writing pattern and cadence is the beauty of poetry, which cannot be summarized.

The best trick to remember the difference between these two is to understand their writing style, i.e. while prose is written ordinarily, poetry has aesthetic features, and so it has a distinctive writing pattern.

Further, the prose is that form of language which expansively conveys a message or meaning by way of a narrative structure. On the contrary, poetry is such a form of literature, with a unique writing format, i.e. it has a pattern, rhyme and rhythm.

In addition to this, prose appears like big blocks of words, whereas the size of poetry may vary as per the line length and the poet’s intention.

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Writing > Prose vs. poetry: what’s the difference?

Prose vs. poetry: what’s the difference?

Both prose and poetry are forms of writing; however, many people don’t fully understand the differences between the two. Learn the difference between prose versus poetry to expand your knowledge of common writing styles.

Have you ever read a beautifully written, heartfelt passage, but weren’t sure if it was considered a poem or prose? People often use the terms ‘prose’ and ‘poetry’ interchangeably, even though they’re two different forms of writing.

What is prose?

Prose is writing that doesn’t follow any meters or rhyming schemes. In fact, everyday writing is considered prose! Books, short stories, essays, and any sort of writing that doesn’t follow a specific structure is considered prose.

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Types of prose

There are a few different types of prose: Fictional prose, nonfictional prose, heroic prose, and prose poetry.

Fictional prose

Prose fiction is when an author tells a story that isn’t based on true events. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a great example of fictional prose.

Nonfictional prose

Non-fictional prose is when an author writes about real events. For example, newspapers or memoirs are examples of non-fiction prose. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi is a memoir that is considered non-fiction prose.

Heroic prose

Heroic prose is a story that is passed down orally, but it can also be written down. This form of prose isn’t as common as fictional prose, nonfictional prose, or prose poetry. Heroic prose includes parables, myths, and fables. The Odyssey by Homer is an example of heroic prose.

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is a form of writing that uses literary devices such as imagery, symbols, or alliteration. Prose poetry can be both fiction and non-fiction, and it is characterized by its poetic qualities expressed in prose form, but not necessarily by the absence of line breaks or rhyming scheme .

Here’s a sample of prose poetry from Amy Lowell’s Bath:

“The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air. The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.” You may have notice that Lowell does incorporate a rhyme in her poem—both white and light rhyme—but the poem itself doesn’t follow a specific rhyming scheme.

What is poetry?

There are many different forms of poetry out there, but in general, poetry focuses on rhythm. Poems also incorporate structure, patterns, and rhyming schemes. Some popular forms of poetry include:

• Lyric poetry

Here is an example from a famous poem titled I’m nobody! Who are you? by Emily Dickinson:

“How dreary to be somebody! How public like a frog To tell one’s name the livelong day To an admiring bog!”

The fundamental differences between poetry and prose

Prose is a straightforward form of writing that follows natural flow of language and doesn’t use line breaks. Poetry, on the other hand, often uses structure such as rhyme, rhythm, and intentional line breaks. While not all poems have to rhyme , it’s a signature of the form and many do.

If you’re interested in learning more about poetry, see how you can write a narrative poem or use punctuation in poetry .

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Home » Language » English Language » Literature » Difference Between Prose and Poetry

Difference Between Prose and Poetry

Main difference – prose vs poetry.

Literature can be categorized into two main classifications based on the structure of language. These two categories are known as prose and poetry. Prose is the language in its original and natural form, i.e., the language that is found in newspapers, textbooks, novels, etc. Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning. The main difference between prose and poetry is that prose is written naturally whereas poetry is written in a metrical structure.

This article describes,

1. What is a Prose? – The Structure, Style, Language Used, etc.

2. What is a Poetry? – The Structure, Style, Language Used, etc.

3. Comparison and Key Differences Between Prose and Poetry

What is Prose

Prose is a major form of literature; both fiction and nonfiction are included in prose. Novels, novellas , short stories , biographies, autobiographies , memoirs , essays, travel books, academic essays, thesauruses, textbooks, etc. are all written in prose.

The language is grammatical in nature and consists of a natural flow of speech, instead of metrical structure. It is composed of full grammatical sentences, and these sentences are then grouped in paragraphs. The language used in nonfiction such as newspaper, textbooks, travel books, etc. are devoid of figures of speech , and other decorations and ideas are expressed in a direct and straightforward manner. The spoken language can also be classified as prose.

Since the spoken language has the characteristics of prose, many people find it easier to write prose than poetry. Another significant factor that contributes to this preference is the word limit in poetry; poets often use a limited number of words to express their ideas.

What is Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning. Factors such as rhyme, rhythm , metric syllables, etc. are taken into account to create poetry. Poetry is normally used to express something in an artistic and aesthetic way.

However, the language of poetry is not as natural or free as prose. Poetic language tends to be more decorative and creative than the language used in prose;  attention is especially paid to sound and rhythm.

A poem is composed of lines; a line can be very long or as short as one word. A stanza is made up of several stanzas. Poems can be classified into different types depending on the structure of the stanzas. Free verse, blank verse , cinquain , diamante poems, etc. are some examples of these structures.

As mentioned above, poets use a limited number of words to express their ideas in poetry. This is why one line can be as short as one word. Sometimes it is difficult to understand the meaning of the poem by reading it only once or twice. An in-depth reading and analysis may be required to decipher the complete meaning.

Difference Between Prose and Poetry   

Prose: Prose is a form of literature that uses the language in its original and natural form.

Poetry: Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning.

Rhyme and Rhythm

Prose : Prose does not pay attention to rhyme and rhythm.

Poetry: Poetry pays attention to rhyme and rhythm; they are the essential components in a poem.

Prose: The writer usually has no word limit.

Poetry: Poets use a limited number of words.

Prose: The ideas are written in sentences; sentences are grouped into paragraphs.

Poetry: The ideas are written in lines; lines are grouped into stanzas.

Prose: The language is more natural and grammatical.

Poetry: The language is figurative and rhythmical.

Understandability

Prose: Prose can generally be understood by reading once.

Poetry: More than one reading may be needed to understand the meaning of a poem.

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Hasanthi is a seasoned content writer and editor with over 8 years of experience. Armed with a BA degree in English and a knack for digital marketing, she explores her passions for literature, history, culture, and food through her engaging and informative writing.

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What is the difference between prose and essay ?Feel free to just provide example sentences.

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Show answer from the AI monga 在英语（美国）中，“prose”和“essay”这两个词有一些区别。它们都是用来描述文学作品的，但在用法和含义上有所不同。 “Prose”（散文）是一种以普通语言书写的文学形式，通常用来叙述、描述事物或表达思想。散文通常以连续的句子和段落组成，没有特定的诗歌形式或韵律。它可以是小说、故事、回忆录、游记等等。散文的目的是通过文字来传达作者的观点、情感或故事。 例如： - 这本小说以散文的形式写成，讲述了一个年轻女孩的成长故事。 - 这篇散文描述了作者在乡村度过的美好时光。 “Essay”（论文、散文）是一种短文，通常用来探讨、分析或阐述一个主题。它可以是学术性的，也可以是个人观点的表达。论文通常有明确的结构，段结论。它的目的是通过逻辑推理和论证来支持作者的观点。 例如： - 我们必须写一篇关于环境保护的论文，以便参加比赛。 - 这篇散文探讨了自由意志与命运之间的关系。 总结来说，“prose”是一种以普通语言书写的文学形式，用于叙述故事或表达思想；而“essay”是一种短文，用于探讨、分析或阐述一个主题。这两个词在用法和目的上有所不同，但都是用来表达作者的观点和思想的文学形式。

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Prose is a general word that means "writing," specifically writing that is not poetry. An essay is a specific type of writing: Oxford dictionary defines it as "a short piece of writing on a particular subject." So you can say "I really like that author's prose" or "I write prose, not poetry." If you say "I really like that author's essay," it sounds like you're talking about a specific, short thing they wrote, not one of their books or their writing in general.

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Sociology essay writing transcends academic requirements, serving as a platform for individuals to explore and understand the intricate dynamics of human societies. These essays prompt rigorous research into social theories, cultural phenomena, and societal structures. Moreover, sociology essay writing https://nursingwriting.org/nursing-homework-help/ critical thinking by compelling individuals to analyze social issues, inequalities, and cultural shifts. Through this process, individuals develop not only a comprehensive understanding of societal dynamics but also the communication skills necessary to address complex social issues.

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• What is the difference between for and in order to ?
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• What is the difference between hang up them and hang them up ?
• What is the difference between much better and even better ?
• What is the difference between dummy (noun) and mannequin (noun) ?
• What is the difference between 硬い and 固い and 堅い ?
• What is the difference between stitch and sew ?
• What is the difference between think on and think about ?
• What is the difference between ‎-he might try accidentally breaking something valuable of hers --...
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• How do you say this in Vietnamese? そのカニは新鮮ですか？
• 我的句子表达自然嘛？ 1）孩子太宠了 2）我的猫太宠了

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