Persuasive Techniques in Writing — A Quick Guide

Writing is an essential skill in many professions. Your ability to write persuasively can enhance your resume, email communications, written proposals and other important documents throughout your career.

For this reason, it’s crucial to develop your persuasive writing skills and become the most effective and versatile employee you can be. Any writing that aims to persuade the reader of the writer’s viewpoint is considered persuasive writing.

A persuasive essay writer may use personal experience in addition to more traditional writing techniques. In addition, they may persuade readers with logical justifications, emotional appeals, and persuasive speeches.

Writing that is intended to persuade has different tactics and strategies than other types of writing. It’s not enough to only enlighten the reader in a persuasive essay; you also need to persuade them that your way of thinking is the best.

In this guide, we’ll look at some persuasive techniques in writing to help you master the art of writing the best sales copies!

What is Persuasive Writing?

Contrary to writing intended to inform or amuse, the persuasive essay is created to persuade the reader to share a particular point of view. 

The closest analogy between persuasive and argumentative essays is that both address severe issues with convincing justifications. The primary distinction between an argumentative essay and a persuasive essay is that the former emphasizes personal experience and makes use of emotional appeals. In contrast, the latter mainly sticks to the facts. 

Additionally, argumentative essays cover both sides of a topic, while persuasive essays only present the author’s viewpoint. Additionally, the language and tone used in persuasive essays tend to be more conversational. This is a strategy used in persuasive speech to create a more close-knit bond between the author and reader. 

To start, the need for persuasive writing is constant in the business world. Persuasive messaging is used extensively in advertising, website copywriting, and general branding to persuade readers to become customers of a particular business. 

Yet not all persuasive writing must be self-serving. Since the development of the printing press, persuasive essays have played a significant role in many political and social movements. 

As you can see from the examples of persuasive writing below, you can use persuasive speech techniques to challenge or change prevailing social beliefs. In fact, if you examine any significant cultural movement of the last few centuries, you’ll discover persuasive writing encouraging support for a cause. 

Persuasive Techniques in Writing

In order to establish a personal connection with the reader through persuasive writing, word choice is essential. To persuade the reader that your viewpoint is correct, you should always choose the most potent words and phrases possible in each situation. 

Persuasive writing frequently utilizes strong language, so make clear-cut statements and refrain from “hedging.” Emotional language, or words and phrases that express feelings, is another technique used in persuasive writing. This persuades readers to identify emotionally with the subject. 

You can also use wordplay like puns, rhymes, and jokes to aid the reader in remembering essential details and your main point. 

Never underestimate the strength of the word because. According to psychological research, people are more likely to comply with a request if you simply explain why, even if the explanation is illogical.

If you stop to consider it, the strategy itself makes sense. Without a valid justification, we dislike when someone tells us things or asked to do something. Always explain your claims when you want other people to accept your point of view.

Readers admire us when we are consistent in our thoughts and deeds. We don’t want to come across as inconsistent. That trait is linked to instability and impulsivity, whereas consistency is linked to morality and sensible behavior. Use this to your advantage when writing persuasively. Get the reader to agree with something in the headline and introduction that most readers would find laborious to argue against. 

Then, firmly argue your point with a ton of evidence while tying your main argument back to the already-accepted opening premise.

More Persuasive Techniques to Keep In Mind

Although questions are excellent for making transitions from one topic or paragraph to another, they also have a purpose in persuasive writing. Your reader will automatically try to answer any question you ask in their head if they can. If they can’t do that, at the very least, they will ponder it for a short while. 

Persuasive writers can use questions to stimulate the reader’s critical thinking. In the first place, you can use questions to aerate concepts and direct the reader to the author’s solutions. Second, we have the ultimate goal of persuasive writing: getting the reader to come to the author’s conclusion on their own. You can achieve this by asking the right question if you’ve organized your argument and presented your evidence. 

As we’ve already mentioned, the author-reader relationship is significant in persuasive writing. Speaking directly to the reader—and occasionally using the pronoun “you”—is one way to forge that connection. 

Writing effectively involves talking directly to the reader. Even though it is one-sided, it gives the writing a more conversational feel. It may persuade the reader to let down some defenses and present your arguments a fair shot. 

Repetition is a fundamental persuasive writing technique to implant ideas in your readers’ minds. Repetition is a great memory aid. A person is more likely to remember something if they hear it repeatedly. Repetition can affect readers’ perspectives. 

The same concept is essentially normalized when it is repeated repeatedly. Repetition can give even the most radical ideas the appearance of being grounded when combined with solid evidence and reason. 

The best writing tools for persuasion are metaphors, similes, and analogies.

You are more likely to persuade someone to agree when you can relate your scenario to a concept they already hold to be true.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are many different persuasive techniques that can be used in writing. This guide provided a brief overview of some of the most common techniques, including emotional appeal, using authority, and creating a sense of urgency. If you found this guide helpful, be sure to check out INK’s Bullet Point Generator tool.