How to write a persuasive essay
As its name implies, a persuasive essay is meant to convince the audience about a specific concept, ideology, perspective, or opinion. The act of persuasion can be achieved throughout a vast array of linguistic tools and methods. An essay can be persuasive either directly or indirectly. You can reveal your opinion or idea right from the beginning and invite the readers explicitly to embrace it. Language is a powerful means such that you can use it to influence the decision-making process of your audience. Nonetheless, it should be acknowledged that it is not easy to convince the readers, especially when the content you write is superficial and lacks depth.
First of all, the step that has to precede writing a persuasive essay embodies in the understanding of your audience; in other words, you should know to whom you are writing, to which gender, social category; age group, economic and cultural classes your essay is intended to reach and influence. You should be skilled enough to succeed at convincing people, mainly through writing.
Voice is of utmost importance in a persuasive essay. In order to establish a rapport of proximity between yourself and your audience, you can keep a conversational tone all along your essay, that is, to address your reader using personal pronouns such as “you” and to use the active voice. Creating a personal voice that penetrates to the reader’s mind and soul is more likely to result in a positive effect on the reader’s decision about the topic or matter in question. The use of the passive voice in a persuasive essay does not fulfill the intended effect.
Another crucial tip that would strengthen the persuasive property of your essay is the use of short sentences containing intelligible diction. Such not-too-long sentences have to be informative and consistent enough to draw the attention of the reader to what is being actually communicated. Show your audience that you are authoritative, self-confident, and firm, which makes them believe what you claim to be true or untrue. For instance, if you hedge your voice too much through expressions such as “it seems that”, “it appears to be”, “it is likely to ..”, chances are your audience would have the option to refute and overlook your claim. Instead, if you strongly affirm what you say, they are more likely to get hooked and feel more hypnotized by your words. Most importantly, there should be enough evidence to flesh out your assertion and make your addressee support it by hook or by crook.
