Compare & Contrast Essay Compare and contrast is a rhetorical style that discusses the similarities and differences of two or more things: ideas, concepts, items, places, etc. This rhetorical style is one that you’ll see often as a complete essay, but you may also use it quite a lot within paragraphs of any kind of essay in which you need to A supreme compare and contrast essay example can be found online to serve as a guideline and sample to follow for an inexperienced writer. Be specific while writing a thesis for this type of essay The thesis serves the readers as a map to the tourists writing a compare/contrast paper A compare and contrast essay examines two or more topics (objects, people, or ideas, for example), comparing their similarities and contrasting their differences. You may choose to focus exclusively on comparing, exclusively on contrasting, or on both-or your instructor may direct you to do one or both
Compare & Contrast Essay - Excelsior College OWL
By assigning such essays, your instructors are encouraging you to make connections between texts or ideas, engage in critical thinking, and go beyond mere description or summary to generate interesting analysis: when you reflect on similarities and differences, you gain a deeper understanding of the items you are comparing, their relationship to each other, and what is most important about them.
Here are a few hypothetical examples:. You may want to check out our handout on understanding assignments for additional tips. Making a Venn diagram or a chart can help you quickly and efficiently compare and contrast two or more things or ideas. In the central area where they overlap, list the traits the two items have in common. To make a chart, figure out what criteria you want to focus on in comparing the items.
Along the left side of the page, writing compare and contrast essay, list each of the criteria. Across the top, list the names of the items. As you generate points of comparison, consider the purpose and content of the assignment and the focus of the class.
How does it fit with what you have been studying so far and with the other assignments in the course? Are there any clues about what to focus on in the assignment itself? Here are some general questions about different types of things you might have to compare, writing compare and contrast essay.
You may want to begin by using the questions reporters traditionally ask: Who? By now you have probably generated a huge list of similarities and differences—congratulations! Next you must decide which of them are interesting, writing compare and contrast essay, important, and relevant enough to be included in your paper. Ask yourself these questions:. Suppose that you are writing a paper comparing two novels.
However, if you were writing a paper for a class on typesetting or on how illustrations are used to enhance novels, the typeface and presence or absence of illustrations might be writing compare and contrast essay critical to include in your final paper. Sometimes a particular point of comparison or contrast might be relevant but not terribly revealing or interesting. Talking about the different ways nature is depicted or the different aspects of nature that are emphasized might be more interesting and show a more sophisticated understanding of the poems.
Be careful, though—although this thesis is fairly specific and does propose a simple argument that atmosphere and delivery make the two pizza places differentyour instructor will often be looking for a bit more analysis.
Again, thinking about the context the class provides may help you answer such questions and make a stronger argument. You may find our handout on constructing thesis statements useful at this stage. The danger of this subject-by-subject organization is that your paper will simply be a list of points: a certain writing compare and contrast essay of points in my example, three about one subject, then a certain number of points about another.
This is usually not what college instructors are looking for in a paper—generally they want you to compare or contrast two or more things very directly, rather than just listing the traits the things have and leaving it up to the reader to reflect on how those traits are similar or different and why those similarities or differences matter.
Thus, if you use the subject-by-subject form, you will probably want to have a very strong, analytical thesis and at least one body paragraph that ties all of your different points together. Rather than addressing things one subject at a time, you may wish to talk about one point of comparison at a time, writing compare and contrast essay. There are two main ways this might play out, writing compare and contrast essay, depending on how much you have to say about each of the things you are comparing.
Be aware, too, of the placement of writing compare and contrast essay different points. Our handout on organization can help you write good topic sentences and transitions and make sure that you have a good overall structure in place for your paper. The following words may be helpful to you in signaling your intentions:. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4. You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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Comparison / Contrast Essays
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Compare & Contrast Essay Compare and contrast is a rhetorical style that discusses the similarities and differences of two or more things: ideas, concepts, items, places, etc. This rhetorical style is one that you’ll see often as a complete essay, but you may also use it quite a lot within paragraphs of any kind of essay in which you need to Compare & Contrast Essay Student/Class Goal Students are often asked to explain or evaluate in their writing and will be asked to write compare and contrast essays for postsecondary courses. Outcome (lesson objective) Students will explore the similarities and differences between two texts, then write a compare and contrast essay. Time Frame Sep 08, · The purpose of a compare and contrast essay is to analyze the differences and/or the similarities of two distinct subjects. A good compare/contrast essay doesn’t only point out how the subjects are similar or different (or even both!). It uses those points to
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