Author Purpose

Behind every piece of writing sits a writer with a purpose. Four purposes cover almost everything you will ever read. To inform: deliver facts to a reader who did not have them. To persuade: move a reader from one position to another. To entertain: hold a reader's attention with story or beauty for its own sake. To instruct: walk a reader through how to do something. A serious reader names the purpose before deciding how much to trust the writer.

The same topic, treated by writers with different purposes, becomes four different things. Take partition. Iqbal's poetry on Muslim self determination written before partition aimed to persuade and to inspire. Faiz's poems written after partition aimed to express grief and to console. Ghalib's earlier ghazals on heartbreak entertain and console at the same time. A history textbook on partition aims to inform. Same general subject, four different purposes, four different reading approaches.

Most real writing mixes purposes, but one of them dominates. A good news article is mostly inform with a small drop of entertain in the lead sentence. A good op ed is mostly persuade with a layer of inform underneath. A good ghazal is mostly entertain plus console. Naming the dominant purpose is the reader's first move; spotting the secondary purposes is the second.

Why does this matter for a Pakistani reader. Because Urdu and English public writing in Pakistan often mixes purposes deliberately. A government press release sounds like inform but is mostly persuade. A morning show segment sounds like entertain but is mostly persuade selling a product. The reader who can untangle these is harder to manipulate than one who cannot.

Today's habit. Pick three short pieces from your week's reading: one news, one column, one poem or song lyric. For each, write the dominant purpose in two words and the secondary purpose in two words. Six labels, three minutes. After a month of this, your eye will name the purpose almost before you finish the first paragraph.