Persuasive Writing

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Persuasive Writing
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Persuasive Writing

• Consider purpose or occasion
• persuade readers
• call to action
• influence readers
• Audience
• target those with interest in issue
• target those who are unsure or disagree
• call to action those who agree
• Point of View
• Writers attitude, opinions, or belief about the
  topic
• direct (explicit) - through a topic sentence
• indirect (implicit) - through words examples

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• Tone
• writers attitude
• Consider sarcastic, serious, formal, casual,
  satirical, sincere, respectful, rude
• Voice
• how you sound as writer
• Ineffective tone People who dont recycle are
  just stupid.
• Serious, respectful tone Our worlds resources
  are being used much more quickly than they are
  being produced. We must encourage one another to
  be responsible citizens of the earth.

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OPINION
REASONS

• EVIDENCE
• facts
• Examples
• Expert testimony

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Logical Appeals (logos)

• Speak to readers minds, foundation of paper
• Types of Evidence
• Facts
• can be observed or proven, statistics
• Expert opinion
• statements by knowledgeable people
• Anecdotes examples
• illustrations of a general idea

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Logical Appeals

• reasons - why readers should accept opinion
• evidence - facts, examples, anecdotes, expert
  opinion

The age requirement for obtaining a drivers
license should be raised.
OPINION
Younger drivers have more accidents than older
drivers.
FACT
EXPERT OPINION
Police Chief Caswell said, Our most
accident-prone drivers are aged 16 or 17. Many
accidents have occurred on or near the high
school campus.
Each year in our city, about 40 of all accidents
involve drivers under 19.
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Emotional Appeals (pathos)

• Appeal to readers emotions
• sympathy, anger, goodness, etc.
• Tools for Emotional Appeal
• Anecdotes - bring situations to life, readers
  relate
• Word Choice - use of words to suggest emotions
• Connotation - associations or feelings a word
  suggests
• Loaded Language - suggests very strong emotions

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Emotional Appeals
Be careful! Lots of loaded language could mean
weak logical appeals.
Word Choice
Anecdote
Last week a young woman with two small children
was seriously injured when a teenage driver ran a
red light. The young mother is still in the
hospital.
Over ten thousand teenage drivers are running
loose in our town and are menacing other
drivers--these teenagers are accidents waiting to
happen.
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Evidence must be

• Relevant
• tied closely to issue
• Reliable
• from trustworthy sources
• Representative
• from various sources

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Avoid Circular Reasoning

• Good reasoning leads the reader through a
  progression of thoughts
• Bad reasoning ends up in a repetitive cycle

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Persuasive Organization

• Introduction
• Get attention (powerful quote, startling
  statistic, anecdote)
• Identify explain the issue
• State opinion (thesis)
• Body
• each reason is a paragraph with 2 evidence for
  support
• Consider modified order of importance
• 2nd most important, least important, most
  important
• Conclusion
• review (not repeat) opinion
• summarize reasons
• Draw final conclusions without introducing
  entirely new ideas
• Present a call to action

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VOICE

• The sound of a writers work
• Determined by
• vocabulary
• sentence structure
• figurative language
• Also by perspective
• 1st person
• refers to writer, informal (I, me, my, our, we)
• 2nd person
• refers to reader, informal (you, your)
• 3rd person
• objective reference, formal (he, she, it, they,
  one)

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Getting Started

• The state government should not create laws that
  limit the noise levels coming from car stereos.
• because there are already laws about disturbing
  the peace that cover this situation.
• because such a law will only add to the burden
  of the already over-worked police.
• One reason for defeating the proposed law is that
  there are already laws about disturbing the peace
  that cover this situation.

• Write an opinion statement
• Add at least 2 because clauses
• Rewrite each because clause as a topic sentence
  for a body paragraph
• Delete because
• Add introductory or transitional words as
  necessary