The History of Semantics

You are just going to encounter a piece of prose as you browse through the next few lines. Yes, prose is any written matter that is expressed in ordinary language as opposed to poetry that uses rhymes, meters, and imagery to convey ideas and emotions. Derived from the Latin word ‘prosa’, prose literally transforms into ‘straight-forward’. Hence, you would always find prose articles to be descriptive, narrative, or explanatory. Any spoken and writing language that is expressed in a sentence without any regular rhythmic pattern is termed as prose.

Say, for instance, any article that you find in a magazine is a prose narrative. Further, the latest science fiction you read is a prose. In fact, prose can be a novel, essay, short story, drama, fable, fiction, folk tale, legend, biography, hagiography, literature, myth, saga, theme, or tragedy. Learn about some of these kinds of prose writing in detail by navigating through the following lines. Different Types Of Prose Writing Short Story A prose narrative limited to a certain word limit is defined as a short story. It generally includes descriptions, dialogues, and commentaries.

However, one characteristic that distinguishes a short story from the other kinds of prose is the concentration on a compact narrative with detailed character drawing. In general, short stories are believed to have existed decades back, even before the art of writing was known to man. The oldest recorded example of a short story is considered to be the Egyptian tale of “The Two Brothers” dated around 3200 BC. Novel Similar to a short story, a novel includes uncertain information since it centers on different types and possibilities.

However, the length of a novel is highly undecided due to the numerous characters and situations included in it. In short, a novel is a comprehensive narrative on a large scale, in particular. Just like short stories, novels, too, have known to exist ever since literature came into existence. Amongst all the prose kinds, the novel dominates the industry, both in terms of quality and quantity. However, considering its quantity, its only rival is the magazine short story. Prose is a form of language which applies ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure (as in traditional poetry).

While there are critical debates on the construction of prose, its simplicity and loosely defined structure has led to its adoption for the majority of spoken dialogue, factual discourse as well as topical and fictional writing. It is commonly used, for example, in literature, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcasting, film, history, philosophy, law and many other forms of communication. A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. The English word “novella” derives from the Italian word “novella”, feminine of “novello”, which means “new”. 1] The novella is a common literary genre in several European languages. A novella generally features fewer conflicts than a novel, yet more complicated ones than a short story. The conflicts also have more time to develop than in short stories. They have endings that are located at the brink of change. Unlike novels, they are usually not divided into chapters, and are often intended to be read at a single sitting, as the short story, although white space is often used to divide the sections. They maintain, therefore, a single effect