Library at UCC: English Composition: Getting Started

Persuasive and Argumentative Writing Resources

For writing guides on persuasive or argumentative styles of writing, see the OWL Writing Center web site from Purdue University:

Effective Persuasion Presentation (PowerPoint Presentation)
This presentation is designed to introduce your students to a variety of factors that contribute to strong, effective, and ethical persuasion in their writing
Establishing Argument
These Purdue OWL resources will help you develop and refine the arguments in your writing.
Logic in Argumentative Writing
This resource helps writers analyze the arguments of others and generate their own arguments.

An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided.