A Preliminary Study of Writing Skills in Adolescents with Autism Across Persuasive, Expository, and Narrative Genres.

Patton et al. (2020) asked high-school students with autism to write three short texts: a persuasive essay, an explanation piece, and a story. The team compared each writer’s length, organization, and word choice to neurotypical classmates.

No teaching happened. The goal was to map strengths and gaps across the three school genres.

The autistic teens wrote shorter persuasive and expository pieces. Their introductions, reasons, and conclusions were looser than those of peers.

Surprise: in the persuasive task they used a wider, more varied vocabulary. Story writing fell in the middle—some elements weaker, some equal.

Baixauli et al. (2016) reviewed 24 studies and found autistic narratives consistently weaker on structure and feeling words. R et al. add persuasive and explanatory writing to the picture and show the deficit is not uniform—vocabulary can shine.

Llanes et al. (2020) reported younger autistic children’s personal stories had more grammar errors. R et al. move up to adolescence and show the grammar gap may shrink while planning and length issues remain.

Merken et al. (2025) found autistic women’s personal stories were more linguistically complex and positive in affect. R et al. echo the complexity edge but also flag real-world school tasks—essays and explanations—where organization still lags.

When you teach written expression, don’t assume a single autism profile. Start persuasive units with vocabulary banks the student already shows; build length and reason sequencing with graphic organizers. For stories, target climax and cohesion. Match genre to strength and you waste less time.