How to Write a Persuasive Essay

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(Newswire.net — February 29, 2020) — There are many types of essays a student needs to write throughout their studies at college or university. Today we are about to reveal the secrets of writing a persuasive essay. With our guide, you will be able to get the work done effectively and lessen the stress level students often have when it’s time to write another piece of academic writing. Enjoy and don’t forget to share it with friends!

Prepare for the writing

1) Choose a topic

For the persuasive essay, it is necessary that a topic should be controversial. People can have different views on it and you will have a space for debate and persuasion. In case the topic is generally neutral, think about aspects it entails that might cause a dispute and write about this aspect. Often you will need to narrow your topic down to make the debate more grounded. 

2) Decide what side you support

Once the topic is chosen, go on to deciding on your side. Will you agree or disagree with it and why? It is important to have a clear position regarding your argument as you will have to persuade a reader to agree with you. If you have trouble with this step, you can ask a fast essay writing service to make preliminary preparation for your writing. 

3) Make an appealing argument

Your argument has to touch the emotional cord of your audience so that it will be interested in reading your entire piece of writing. The reader needs to feel that their beliefs and views are questioned with a presented statement and thus, they will be eager to know how you can justify your opinion in your essay. 

4) Think about your reader

As you made your reader want to read your essay, now it’s time to think about what they will be thinking about while reading it. Will they argue or will they support your opinion? Understanding how your audience is likely to react will give you hints on how to pick and present evidence of your position.

5) Think of disagreement your audience may feel

If you think that your audience will disagree with you, you have to collect such pieces of evidence that would beat their position. Do not let your reader doubt your words. If you can’t see the way your audience can dispute your side, talk to your friends, family or your classmates about their view on the issue of your essay. Thus, you will get many different opinions about the same problem and will be able to prepare winning evidence. 

6) Research thoroughly

After you’ve taken previous steps, you need enough knowledge on the topic to be able to persuade your reader. Get to know the background of the problem, how people used to approach it before and pay special attention to facts, statistics, logical arguments, and experts’ views on the matter. Don’t forget to take notes while reading a lot of information so as not to lose important data. 

Put your evidence in order

When all pieces of evidence are gathered, they need to be ordered in the way that will convince the reader easily. We recommend you leaving the strongest ones for the end of the body of your essay so that your professor would take your side by the time they finish reading.

Create the structure of an essay

Outlining your essay before you start writing is a key to creating a high-level piece of writing and receiving the highest grade. While creating it, remember general rules like “one argument per one paragraph” in the body of your essay, etc. Refreshing the words and phrases that connect paragraphs will also be helpful. 

Write an introduction

The first part of the essay aims at introducing the topic and the way you present it to your audience, therefore opening your writing with a hook will be a nice idea. It can be statistics, a curious fact or a quote to grab the attention of the reader. Do you feel like you lack ideas and think something like “May someone else write my essay for me?” Then, professional essay writing service can help. 

After the hook, your thesis statement should be created. In the sentence or two, you have to present your topic, demonstrate your side,  explain shortly why it’s true without giving any evidence, and put a transition line to the essay body. 

Work on body paragraphs

When proceeding to the writing body of your essay, remember that one argument with evidence per paragraph is a must. In the opposite case, your work will look messy and your attempt to persuade will look weak. There should be at least three well-written, logical paragraphs to make your audience believe that you are an expert in the topic.

Write a conclusion

The ending part of an essay aims at convincing the reader for the last time and wrapping up everything you’ve written before. Keep in mind that no further evidence or arguments can be presented here; you can only rephrase your thesis and key points of body paragraphs. 

Your last sentence may have an open question, recommendation or a call to action – it is up to you to decide what hint or implied thought you would like to share with your reader. 

Proofread 

After you’ve done such an amount of work, leave your text for at least a few hours. It is good if you have a few days before your deadline to have a rest and forget about your writing. Reading your essay with fresh eyes will make all inaccuracies more noticeable to you.

When you get back to the essay, proofread it to make sure you have no typos, grammar or punctuation mistakes. If you checked everything thoroughly and like how your pieces of evidence sound, feel free to submit the draft to your professor. 

Now that we shared with you everything we know about writing a persuasive essay, we hope these recommendations will help you create worthy persuasive essays that’ll convince everyone, even the most devoted skeptics.