WR2 - Persuasive Writing Lesson

Persuasive Writing

The Purpose of Persuasive Writing

Writers who need to convince or persuade the reader that the opinion or claim of the writer is valid will use persuasive writing. Expository writing often appears in the business world such as marketing, advertising, or lobbying among other fields using any form of persuasion.

Persuasive Writing Description

Persuasive writing is an essay genre that introduces an argument by expressing an opinion and attempts to support that argument. Persuasive essays often use rhetorical strategies of ethos, pathos, and/or logos - revisit this video to review the art of persuasion.

As a piece of academic writing, persuasive writing requires more structure organizationally and developmentally. Similar to the expository essay, use the Writing Template in the sidebar to help structure persuasive writing.

Let's look at an example of a paragraph in persuasive writing for the topic: Is Emily Dickinson a popular writer?

Begins with a clear topic sentence that reveals what the paragraph will be about and focuses on persuading the readers Includes evidence and properly integrates the evidence. Topic Sentence: Emily Dickinson isa popular writer due to her poetry. Development: Her poems reveal themes that relate to the majority of humans. Evidence: Dickinson "had a beautiful way of writing about nature that all people recognized" (Wall 85). Analysis: People in society have the ability to connect strongly with nature, and people who read Transition: Similarly, Dickinson writes poems about the dark side of humanity. Evidence: She "reveals the desire to remain anonymous in society and seems to hint on a deep struggle with the kind of depression that many people feel but few discuss openly" (Smith 32) Analysis: Dickinson's ability to discuss the struggles of life also relate to a large majority of the human population, and people need to know others understand, So many people enjoy reading her work and increase her renown. Conclusion: Overall, Emily Dickinson's poetry remains one of her greatest talents in creating her prominence as a writer Effectively uses organization, development, and analysisthroughout the paragraph to persuade readers

Persuasive Writing Elements

Examine the writing elements associated with a Persuasive Essay and a printout of these elements. Links to an external site.

  1. The introduction paragraph should be distinct from the body paragraphs, move from broad to specific, and may contain an anecdote or background information.
  2. The thesis statement is generally a one sentence summary of the main idea located at the end of the introduction and must be debatable.
  3. The body paragraphs start with topic sentences, provide reason in support of the thesis, contain evidence, may contain an opposition point, move from broad to specific and may be linear.
  4. Persuasive writing requires evidence, including statistics, detailed facts, examples, personal experience ,logical analogies, and expert opinions. 
    Evidence does not include summaries, questions, repetition, false/ made-up statistics.
  5. The conclusion paragraph should provide the reader with an overarching view of why the points in the essay are important and points the reader to research further
    points.
  6. 1st and 2nd person should not be used. 3rd person pronouns are acceptable to use.
  7. Any verb tense can be used.

View the Annotated Persuasive Essay samples for examples of how to craft a Persuasive Writing. Links to an external site.

Essay types Self-Assessment


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