Compare and contrast essay is among the most common types of essay writings asked to be done, because of its nature of evoking analysis and observation. The purpose of receiving this type of essays is to encourage you to get engaged into critical thinking, try and make connections between different elements and go beyond just putting a simple description. When you compare and contrast two different things, you get deeper level of understanding in making intelligence and interesting observations.
Important tips
Before you jump off to know how to write a compare and contrast essay, you need to ensure that the similarities or differences that you list down in your compare and contrast essay should be able to address certain questions:
- What points are relevant as per the guidelines provided?
- What is the central argument of the entire essay?
- What stands more important – the similarities, or the differences?
Writing a compare and contrast essay
- The first thing you need to know to start off is to find out two elements or subjects to compare and contrast. Make sure that you don't pick two highly different elements that it becomes very difficult for you to find any similarity between them at all. Similarly, don't pick two elements of absolutely same nature that it becomes difficult to list down any differences at all.
- Before moving to the compare and contrast essay outline, put a demarcation in the rough draft page. Research well enough to ensure that you pick only those elements that have some decently well available information.
- Make a rough list of everything that you think should come under similarities and differences. At this stage, do not worry about making a final draft. Just put everything that you may gather through in-depth brainstorming.
- After you have worked well around the rough draft, it's time to look at the compare and contrast essay format, which starts with a thesis, as in most of the essay-cases. The thesis projects the most significant difference and similarity of the elements.
- The outline for writing a compare and contrast essay includes introduction, body paragraphs, competitive arguments, and conclusion.
- The compare and contrast essay introduction writes the basic information about the elements taken into study. Also, this part of the essay projects the thesis statement.
- As you jump to the main body of the essay, start putting each bulleted point written in your rough draft as a separate paragraph, clubbing all the similarities separately versus all the differences. Also, while writing these paragraphs, do the organizing part, as to which format you would prefer to design your essay into: three-body point-by-point essay, or two-body whole-to-whole format.
- After you have listed down every point of similarity and differences separately, move to the compare and contrast essay conclusion. Keep in mind to use simple and formal language. Be clear about the arguments you mention, without leaving any scope for them to confuse the readers.
