Glossary
author purpose
Author purpose is the reason a passage was written — to inform, to explain, to persuade, to entertain or to describe.
Author purpose is the reason the writer produced the passage, and it is a different question from what the passage is about. The common purposes are to inform, to explain how something works, to persuade the reader of a position, to entertain, and to describe. Purpose shows in the structure and the verbs: a passage that explains will define and then sequence, one that persuades will take a side and answer the objection, one that informs will report without evaluating. A quick test is to ask what the writer wanted to happen after the reader finished — to know something, to be able to do something, to agree. Questions also use the related idea of tone, which is the attitude the writer takes toward the subject rather than the reason for writing; a passage can be informative in purpose and alarmed in tone.
Taught in
Related terms
- tone — Tone is the writer's attitude toward the subject, carried by word choice and sentence shape rather than stated outright.
- main idea — The main idea is the claim a passage was written to deliver — broad enough to cover every paragraph, narrow enough that no paragraph sits outside it.
- word choice — Word choice is the writer's selection of words, which carries tone and shades meaning beyond a word's plain dictionary sense.
- fact and opinion — A fact can be checked and shown true or false; an opinion is a judgment, preference or prediction that a reader could reasonably dispute.
- problem and solution — A problem-and-solution structure states a problem and then presents one or more fixes, often weighing their limits.
Source: The reading-comprehension guide in this course: the three skills above are the ones that guide teaches, and every definition is written for this course in our own words, with no publisher's prose reproduced. Elsevier's own HESI A2 page, which names reading comprehension among the areas the exam covers, is the exam-side source. (Elsevier HESI A2 page accessed 2026-10-23; definitions written 2026-10-27)