Writing Persuasive Essays: How to Be Convincing to Readers

Persuading the reader can be seen as one of the main tasks of writers. Writing persuasive essays is not an easy task, in which it is one thing to provide good points in the essay, and it is another thing for these points to be convincing.

Writing persuasive essays is mostly associated with argumentative writing, which is understandable as persuasion is based on good argumentation. In order to clarify the process of writing persuasive essays, this article will attempt to provide helpful notes on persuasion in such essays.

Audience

Identifying the potential audience is one of the important aspects of writing persuasive essays. Taking an analogy with a salesman, if you know what the customer wants, you are likely to sell the car. In that regard, the latter does not imply that in order to learn writing persuasive essays you should have to adapt the content to suit specific audience.

The point is to predict the need of the audience in terms of questions that might be raised, specific points of interest and try to satisfy these needs. For example, when writing persuasive essays on abortion, and assuming that the audience will likely to support such phenomenon, it will be a good idea to include sections that refute the arguments of the opposition.

Logic or Quotes When Writing Persuasive Essays

When writing persuasive essays, a question that might arise is: what is more convincing, a quote of an authority on the subject or using logic to support a particular view. Well, the best answer would be to use both depending on the topic, when writing persuasive essays.

If the information cannot be known or reached by logic, it is better to use citation, e.g. scientific findings, statistics, etc. In other cases, the usage of logic implies the participation of the reader in the process, and thus, the argument can be more convincing. Generally, writing persuasive essays is similar to lines of dialogue in a debate, with the writer having the responsibility of answering for both parties.