Persuasive writing requires you to persuade readers to agree with your point of view. Due to this, you need to provide strong evidence and show sound reasoning. Your readers need to see facts, quotes, citations, and logical reasoning in your writing. You must show relevance, reliability, and excellence in your text. Persuasion is an art that seeks to capture the psychology of an audience. It provides them with reasons to read your text and agree with it. To achieve this, you need to use your imagination, research, and writing skills well.
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Examples of persuasive writing
Persuasive writing is not used in academic fields only. When you build your writing skills, you can use them in many fields such as advertising, journalism, and marketing. It is common in sectors that seek to persuade people to buy or sell something. Marketers write attractive product reviews to persuade buyers. A student writes a research paper or essay to convince their teachers. Advertisers, newspaper writers, and political writers all do persuasive writing.
Every individual can give an opinion or a stand on something. It could be their thoughts on fashion, food, product, or literature. If you struggle creating good arguments, you can check assignment expert help by EduBirdie. This way you can be sure your paper is good structured and interesting. Here are tips to help you write persuasively.
- Know your audience
In persuasive writing, you will be writing to an audience and not to yourself. Several things can help you identify your audience. The main one is the prompt or essay question. Be keen to understand the key points in the prompt. Read the essay or research paper question keenly. Both give you an idea about who you need to write to. If it is about teenagers, write to teenagers. If it is about politicians, write to politicians. Here are tips to help you define your audience.
- Know who you are writing from. If you got your assignment from a teacher, your audience will mostly be a school community of teachers and students. If it is from a marketer, your audience will likely be customers.
- Know who will read your text. The person who will read your text is your primary audience. Write to convince them about your stand.
- Know the expectations of your readers. Address what they want to learn from you.
- Choose a persuasive topic
Your essay should persuade the reader the moment they read the topic. It should give your audience a reason to desire to read your entire text. It could be an essay, research paper, or case study. Choosing a topic should be a priority that you must consider. Here are points to help you choose a topic.
- Know the expectations of your audience. Choose a topic that resonates with them.
- Choose a topic that you understand well. It is easier to write about something you are familiar with.
- Be clear on the side you want to take. Decide if you want to support, refute, or take a middle position. Pick a topic that you can support your position without struggle.
- Do research and read essays examples. You need to glean ideas from other writers. Read essays examples by professionals and from the student community.
- Do your research well
Research is what helps develop expertise in your writing and topic choice. It is a learning process that helps you develop good memory, creativity, and persuasion. It involves going deeper into databases to get relevant and concrete information. You first need to identify your research sources and resources. Record your ideas systematically and their sources for citations. The deeper you go into research, the more solid information that you get. Even if you are leaning on one side, you should research both sides.
- Develop a hook
Your first intention should be to attract attention from your audience. What you need is a hook that will keep them fixed to your arguments. Your hook should capture your audience’s imagination and draw them to read your text. Here are tips to help you write a strong hook.
- State an interesting fact. For example, the heart of shrimp is in its head. Hot water turns into ice quicker than cold water.
- Evoke emotions with a compelling personal story.
- Use data or ask a question. For example, who should lead leaders? Based on Statista, the fertility rate in Niger is 6.73 children per woman.
- Evoke emotions in your audience
The purpose of evoking emotions in an audience is to grab attention from them. It should stir interest to read your text and a desire to know more. It should drive them to take action and agree with your side of the argument. Depending on your type of argument, you can create different types of emotions. You can evoke an emotion of happiness, urgency, sadness, or anger. Each type of emotion should aim to help your audience agree with your stand from the start. Choose your words and language deliberately.
- Provide strong arguments
A strong argument gives your audience enough reasons to agree with your stand. Pay attention to the following features of a strong argument.
- It should be evidence-based. Support each point with evidence from your research.
- It must be credible. Your sources should be trustworthy.
- It should contain logical reasoning. Let it not attract opposition from readers.
- It should have citations. Cite your text to prove you did deep research.
- Follow the correct writing structure
The writing skills you build as a student should help you write persuasively in any field. You must understand the structure of writing and follow the rules. Your text structure should have the following details.
- An attractive topic. Choose the best topic for your text.
- An introduction. Tell your readers what your text is about. Add a hook in the introduction and include a thesis statement.
- The main paragraphs. The body paragraphs are where you provide details for all your arguments. You should introduce your points and argue them constructively.
- Conclusion. The conclusion paragraph is the ending of your text. Finish strongly and do not leave a trace of doubt in your audience.
- Keep your audience intrigued
The best way to keep your readers intrigued is first to understand where they stand. Their stand could be the opposite of your stand. However, you can still convince them to agree with you. Prove in your text that you understand their stand on the topic or issue. Next, guide them through persuasion to understand the stand you have taken.
Provide concrete reasons for taking the position. To keep them reading your text, keep them interested to dig deeper to know more. Your persuasion should not sound aggressive. If it does, you will lose your reader and they will lose interest in your text.
- Tell stories in your text
Stories are excellent for creating emotions in audiences. It is an effective way of persuasive writing because it lets an audience persuade themselves. Research to understand the trending issues in society that relate to your stand. For instance, your persuasion could aim to draw attention to environmental issues.
Tell a story about something that happened due to wrong conservation decisions. Your story should be clear from the start, in the middle, and end. You can tell a short story in the opening paragraph of the introduction. You can also add a story in the body paragraphs to cement your points. Choose the most emotion-evoking stories to create effective persuasion for your audience.
- Use repeat and be good at editing and proofreading
Repetition makes your ideas more familiar and improves the acceptance rate. It enhances understanding in readers. Repetition requires you to utilize several iterations of words or phrases closely. When you repeat words or phrases several times, you create clarity. You develop an emphasis and highlight the deeper meaning intended in the text. Effective repetition can use words such as:
- This is what it is
- From time after time
- From generation to generation
- Going deeper and deeper
- Working hand in hand
- Heart to heart
Editing and proofreading your work are critical in your persuasive essay writing. It is what makes your text effective in meeting its persuasion goals. Editing provides clarity to your arguments. It makes your communication better and ensures a smooth flow of your points. Proofreading helps you to fix grammar errors, spelling, and flow inconsistencies. If your proofreading and editing are poor, your audience cannot find your text interesting. They will not desire to read it and it will fail to meet its goal.
Conclusion
Persuasive techniques in writing include repetition, storytelling, and a call to action. The call to action should aim to persuade the readers to agree with your point of view. You need to take time to research the right and credible sources. Your text should attract attention right from the topic. Follow the right writing structure and be thorough in your editing and proofreading.
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