What are the Differences between Composition and Essay?

Many learners are in the habit of taking these two terms- COMPOSITION and ESSAY in the same meaning. The most reasonable cause for this is that they do not feel it necessary to differentiate them as their difference does not at all impact the field they work in.

However the two terms are closely related to each other and there are both difference and relationship between the two.

An essay is a literary form based on the character of a person or a thing. It is a descriptive narration of a specific thing or event. On the contrary, a composition is any literary piece, such as poetry, prose, drama, short story, novel, rhyme etc. Essay is also one kind of composition but composition is not an essay. This is the main difference. Simply speaking, ‘composition’ is a broader term than ‘essay’.

However, different kinds of compositions like poetry, short story etc. need different rules and regulations to write on but essay is mostly descriptive in nature. It describes any given topic or event in a very descriptive manner. Let us take an example. There are many literary works by Rabindranath Tagore, such as novel ‘Joogajoog’, short story ‘Postmaster’, essay ‘Sabhyatar Sonkot’ etc. Each of these literary pieces is a composition by Rabindranath. Again a writer can write an essay based on his literary works named ‘Rabindranath in Bengali poetry’.