Compare & Contrast Essays? Read This!

This type of essay is one of the most frequently assigned in college, particularly in the first year. That’s why learning to write one is a requirement for many students.

Writing a compare and contrast essay aids students in the development and improvement of abilities. These abilities include analytical thinking, persuasive scientific writing, and organized systematic writing.

The best essays of this kind have a clear objective, like illuminating a convoluted concept or dispelling myths regarding a challenging subject. An additional goal might be to demonstrate why one topic is superior to another or highlight a different way of approaching a problem. Of course, each assignment will be further from the others and should have a specific rubric.

However, most students get stuck at writing the introduction, and become hopeless. But don’t you worry! In today’s post, we’re going to look at introductions for compare and contrast essays! Sounds good? Well then, keep reading until the end!

What Are Compare and Contrast Essays?

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Imagine you’re writing an essay about how excellent renewable resources are. But, you find yourself spending a lot of time explaining how fossil fuels operate. Your reader needs some background on fossil fuels and their alternative to comprehend why renewable resources are so amazing. However, the essay’s focus is evenly distributed that it appears to be discussing two topics at once. 

When comparing and contrasting topics, essays perform most effectively. By highlighting the similarities and differences between two topics, you can more effectively explain how they relate to or define one another. This is true for subjects conflated or mistaken for one another. Readers benefit when someone explains what is similar and different about such topics. 

The secret to writing a successful compare and contrast essay is to pick two or more topics that are related. Comparing or contrasting things is done to highlight subtle differences or unexpected similarities rather than to state the obvious.

For instance, if you wanted to compare and contrast two subjects, you wouldn’t choose apples and oranges. Rather two types of apples or two types of oranges to highlight the subtle differences. In contrast to Granny Smith apples, which are acidic and tart, Red Delicious apples are sweet. The goal of the compare-and-contrast essay is to help the audience better understand a similar category by comparing elements within it.

Contrary to argumentative and persuasive essays, compare and contrast essays deal with several topics rather than concentrating on just one. The drawback is that they don’t adequately describe the individual topics as single-topic essays do.

They’re also a typical task for college essays because they demonstrate to the professor how well you understand both subjects.

Example Introductions for Compare and Contrast Essays!

  • Numerous people throughout history have contested the existence of God. They are atheists and believe that a supreme being doesn’t govern the universe. Contrarily, believers believe that God is accurate and that he created everything. However, despite belonging to opposing philosophies and ideologies, both sides share some traits in common. I’ll examine the philosophical underpinnings of atheism and how it impacts a person’s life in this essay.
  • People’s belief in God endured for hundreds of years as a result of Darwin’s theory about the origins of species and evolution. They split the once-common unity into two camp. Those who maintained that life, as we know it today, was the product of more complex organisms. On the other side, creationists who argued that life, as it exists today, was the product of a higher power. There are some issues where both creationism and evolution can coexist without losing their validity, despite the fact that their main points of contention. These two theories might even be helpful in combination at times.
  • Children frequently ask their friends about the transition from elementary to middle school each year. A student who has gone to both schools can respond to the question by comparing and contrasting them.

Conclusion

We hope our guide on writing introductions for compare and contrast essays was useful for you. Our examples above are obviously written for a specific subject, however y ou can use those examples as a jumping off point.

If you have more questions on writing an introductory paragraph for this topic, let us know! We would love to help you out!

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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