Author's Purpose, Tone and Words in Context

Understanding Author's Purpose

Paragraph Comprehension is one of four subtests that compose the Armed Forces Qualification Test score, alongside Word Knowledge, Arithmetic Reasoning, and Mathematics Knowledge. Recognizing an author's purpose can help with Paragraph Comprehension questions, but you also need to identify main ideas, details, and supported inferences. Author's purpose refers to the primary reason a writer creates a particular text. When you read a passage, evaluating the author's main idea, structure, and overall language choices helps you pinpoint this underlying goal.

The three most common general categories of author's purpose are to persuade, to inform, and to entertain. An author whose main purpose is to inform primarily presents facts or explanations to help readers understand a topic. These informational passages often use a matter-of-fact style and offer facts, examples, or explanations. In contrast, an author whose purpose is to persuade attempts to convince the reader to adopt a specific belief, attitude, or course of action. Persuasive passages frequently contain opinionated statements, emotional appeals, and direct calls to action. Meanwhile, an author whose purpose is to entertain aims to amuse, engage emotions, or tell an enjoyable narrative.

Beyond these broad categories, authors may write with more specific intentions. Other specific writing purposes include describing a person or setting, explaining a process, and issuing a warning. Determining whether an author is warning you of a hazard, guiding you step-by-step through a process, or simply painting a detailed picture of a location depends on looking closely at how the author organizes their information and selects their words.