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The value of persuasive writing
All writing is an art, but the art of persuasive writing is a particularly ambitious one: to actually change someone's mind about a particular position or behavior. Persuasive writing can be formal, as in the case of an editorial to the newspaper, or informal, such as a persuasive email to a friend encouraging him or her to exercise more. Persuasive writing is a necessary skill to have in a writer's toolbox -- although writing designed to inform or entertain certainly has its place, being able to genuinely shift someone's point-of-view and see the world in a new way is a vital personal and professional skill.
Whether they know it or not, all students have engaged in persuasive writing by the time they have entered university, simply by writing a research paper. A paper with a controversial thesis such as "the U.S. should not have dropped the atomic bomb during World War II" or "Hamlet was wrong...
Of course, the student must amass evidence in support of that thesis. But in contrast to informational writing, persuasive essays demand much more discretion in terms of the information the student selects and how he or she presents it.
The degree to which persuasive writing hones a student's analytical thinking is very valuable. Not only must the student be more selective in his or her choice of information -- the student must carefully think about how he or she will present the information strategically, to be most appealing to the reader's psychology. Mere organization is not enough. The student must think of possible objections to his or her thesis, bring them up, and then refute them. A simple, logical factual presentation will not necessarily persuade. And as well as information, there is also the additional component of entertainment that must be part of a persuasive work. As with all writing, the reader must want to keep reading. Emotional as well as logical appeals are necessary to…
