Ways to Improve Persuasive Writing

For persuasive speaking to be successful, there are five principles that come from ancient Greece. The five principles are invention, which means coming up with the idea, arrangement, which means ordering and laying out ideas, style, meaning developing the appropriate expression for those ideas, memory, retaining invented ideas, recalling additional supporting ideas, and delivery, meaning presenting or performing ideas. These five principles are called the canons of rhetoric. Invention is like brain storming ideas of what argument you want to persuade, and it can help you come up with argument ideas and how they can come across to others. Ethos, Logos, and Pathos that we learned in chapter 2 can also help you develop ideas. Arrangement is key to trying to persuade someone. You want the audience to view and side with your side, so you have to be careful of how you word things. You can use many organizational strategies, such as, chronological order, cause-effect, problem-solution, block structure, thematic structure, and deferred thesis. Chronological order is using time, going from the first point to the last. Cause-effect is what an event can cause. Problem solution is stating the problem and giving a solution. Block structure is going through a series of examples. Thematic structure means listing theme like relationships. A deferred thesis is a thesis question for a thesis statement at the beginning. Chapter 3 also introduced Toulmin’s way to analyze an argument with the claim, or thesis statement, grounds, or the reasons you think should be delivered, warrants, or assumptions that describe how the grounds support the argument. Style is using your own voice and personality in your writing. This is also a relation to creating your persona by how you phrase your text. These are some suggestions that will help improve your persuasive writing.