The concept of genre should not be limited to literary genres, but should be expanded to include all types of texts, including those traditionally considered to be nonliterary. Essentially, many things about writing work the way they do because of genre, and a better understanding of genre can give us a better understanding of writing, reading and texts. Genre offers a great deal since it embodies a rhetorical situation and a discourse community. The form that a text takes represents writers' choices in response to a given situation. Genres allow teachers to see various types of values and audiences, and to generalize about communities and their situations. A better understanding of genre could have a powerful impact on an understanding of the processes of writing and of certain long-standing problems of composition theory. For example, study of the process of revision may be greatly clarified by bringing in issues of genre. Students might write better if they were given a better understanding of genre, allowing them to aim at a generic "ideal" text when revising. Writing instructors would do well to give more pedagogical and theoretical attention to genre than they currently do, starting with the plain fact that it is a powerful concept essential to any understanding of writing. (HB)