Persuasive Essay Writing Tips for College Students

Part of being a student involves dealing with tons of written assignments. Needless to say that it can be quite a challenge, especially when you’re a freshman snowed under with tons of tasks. That is why we have singled out top effective tips for college students on how to deal with a particular task — a persuasive (or also known as argumentative) essay. Let’s get it started!

What Is a Persuasive Essay?

It’s clear from the name that this type of writing includes persuading the reader. Particularly, to craft a great argumentative essay one needs to convince the reader that your point of view has a say.

How to Write a Good Persuasive Essay

First and foremost, one should keep in mind that a persuasive essay is an academic type of writing. That is to say it should be written in accordance with various requirements and standards. These will include an appropriate structure, a peculiar vocabulary choice and profound unique research.

Secondly, it’s essential to choose a topic that will be both relevant these days and interesting to you. How can you persuade someone if you don’t believe in it yourself?

Finally, you should have no doubts and check for secrets and tips on how to write an essay the right way. This is the reason why we’re here, so enjoy our list of 7 persuasive essay writing tips that truly work.

7 Tips to Make Your College Essay Rock

• Choose the Topic Smart

You’re probably familiar with the saying ‘A good beginning makes a good ending’. Choosing a topic for a persuasive essay isn’t an exception. As this isn’t just any essay, there’s a particular criterion one should keep in mind.

A great topic for a persuasive essay should be controversial, and have at least two opposing sides. In other words, in order to persuade someone to agree with your opinion there should be the need to convince them.

If you feel uneasy coming up with a topic yourself, you can always search for topics on the Internet and then ask your professor to help you polish the topic in accordance with all the requirements. If you're struggling to write your own essay and want to get a sample of a good one, you may use one of the most popular essay writing services listed on Stressays.

• In-Depth Research Matters

College writing assignments require profound research. You cannot beat around the bush, using your own hypotheses and not having real data, facts, statistics to support your ideas.

That is why, before getting down to writing an essay, you need to spend some time investigating the existing works on the topic, and see how other scientists present their ideas. Gather as much information as possible, and make sure you take notes while you’re reading and examining the data.

• Stay Clear of Poor Vocabulary Choice

It’s not enough to come up with a great idea and have amazing thoughts regarding it. One should know how to present their point of view without being too manipulative, or too blunt. For instance, make sure you avoid such expressions like "it’s common knowledge that", "every intelligent person" knows that’ etc.

What is more, stay clear of slang or colloquial language as such vocabulary can significantly lower your mark and definitely won’t make your essay sound more persuasive. In order to enhance your vocabulary choice use Power Thesaurus and keep a notebook with smart words for academic papers.

• Stick to an Active Voice

A common mistake is using passive voice to keep the paper sound academic. Despite a persuasive essay being a structured college assignment, it shouldn’t become a boring piece of writing your professor will fall asleep while reading. For this reason, if you can avoid using passive voice and change the sentence into active — do it!

Active voice helps to persuade the reader with stronger evidence. What is more, it’s easier to hook the reader’s attention with a ‘subject does action’ constructions, so don’t underestimate their importance.

• Add Some Emotion

While it’s important to remain academic when crafting an argumentative essay, you don’t need to lose your emotion whatsoever. There are some tricks on how to remain your tone scholar and make it sound live and vivid. One of such tricks involves using a more emotionally-coloured vocabulary. Compare the word ‘said’ and words like ‘exclaimed, insisted, denied’. Needless to say that the latter words have way more convincing energy than the word ‘said’

• Follow an Outline

A well-crafted outline is half the job, as it’s much easier to follow the structure, avoid writer’s block and make your writing coherent. A persuasive essay outline includes: introduction, main body and conclusion.

• Introduction

This is the part of your essay where you need to grab the reader’s attention and provide an overview of your argument.

• Main Body

To support your argument with several convincing pieces of evidence you should create a well-detailed and persuasive main body paragraph (each dealing with one piece of evidence). Don’t forget to include the paragraph with opposing views to your ideas.

• Conclusion

You need to restate the thesis from the beginning and reinforce your evidence to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

• Proofread and Edit

Last piece of advice and final stage of any writing, as well as crafting a persuasive essay, involves proofreading and editing your paper. Make sure you write your task beforehand and forget about it for a few days. Then come back to the assignment and read it with a fresh eye, as if it wasn’t written by you. This will help you spot mistakes and come across any ambiguity.

Don’t hesitate to use various online grammar checkers and ensure you scan your assignment with anti-plagiarism software. Even though you’re doing your own research, you may become the victim of unintentional plagiarism, so it’s better to check your essay to be on the safe side.