How to Write a Comparisons Essay

How to Write a Comparisons EssayThe essence of writing an essay for college is to compare two or more viewpoints so that one perspective is more interesting or complete than the other. Thus, writing an essay on topics such as the humanities, science, politics, or economics requires that you consider how two or more views will affect the audience you are writing for. Here are some ways to do just that:* Contrast between fundamental elements of your essay. At the end of your essay, you should be able to point out something that sets it apart from another document. It might be a style that you use in a different way, or it might be a sentence structure. Always strive to make your essay as interesting and unique as possible, so make sure that you fully document your difference.* Identify similarities. In addition to contrasting your essay with other essays, you also want to contrast your essay with other texts. This means that you should include contrast between an essay's purpose and it s message. You can do this by comparing what the text means for students in a specific class to the general nature of the text.* A secondary purpose for writing an essay that you are planning to submit is to draw attention to an argument that you feel strongly about. This is an important part of essay writing, because if your arguments aren't strong enough to stand up to other people's views, then your essay will probably fail to get noticed by your audience.* Contrast between opposing viewpoints. There are lots of ways to compare your viewpoints; you can use how similar or different each side is to how similar or different each viewpoint is to the other. For example, you could note that members of your viewpoint group do not share the same interests as the opposing group; they don't even like the opposing group much.* Try to pinpoint exactly what they do agree with. A great way to help you find areas of agreement between the two sides is to ask each group to tell you what types of issues they feel strongly about. You can then combine their responses with your own to find out what areas of agreement each group finds meaningful. In addition, this is a good way to pick the strongest points among the essays.* Look for similarities. There are differences between peoples' views on almost every topic in their lives, so a key strategy for highlighting the similarities among your views is to see if you can't point out similar characteristics between your and the opposing view's thesis statement. If you can, you can try to introduce a few ideas of your own that will bring these similarities into focus.These are just a few ways to compare views and find areas of agreement between them. When you are working on an essay that you need to submit, you'll want to take these four methods into account so that you are able to highlight areas of similarities and contrast areas of difference in your essay and get noticed.