In Kerry Dirk’s “Navigating Genres,” she describes how genres are created and the complex nature of writing to them. She begins by explaining how genres are simply a repetition of rhetorical strategies depending on what you are trying to accomplish, and that different genres are used to reflect our everyday lives and are for different purposes. One example she uses is when she needed to address an incorrect late fee for her credit card. She shows how she analyzed other letters that aimed to accomplish the same thing, and incorporated the same techniques into her own. She even admits that before writing her own essay, she researched how to write to this particular audience.

The overall concept of this essay is to show that genres are created by a person needing to address a certain issue, and people following and revising it along the way. If you look at multiple texts from the same genre, you find that they have many similar characteristics in terms of tone, style, and diction. The rhetorical styles depend on audience and overall goal and reflect what works best in accomplishing that. All different types of writing can be classified as a certain genre depending on what the author is trying to accomplish.