What is Persuasive Writing?

Persuasive writing is a type of writing in which the author tries to convince their readers of a certain point, opinion, belief, or view. In order to successfully persuade your readers to believe what you’re writing about, you must have strong supporting points, explanations, and examples.

Persuasive writing is a useful writing type for your young author to learn. Being able to write persuasively is a tricky skill to master, but can be used in many types of writing, aside from persuasive writing specifically. Being able to successfully persuade your readers of the point you’re trying to make is an important skill to have as a writer.

Core Features of Persuasive Writing

There are several core features of persuasive writing, which include facts and statistics, rhetorical questions, connectives, and conditionals. Let’s take a look at each core feature!

Facts and Statistics

Facts and statistics are true and cannot be proven false. They’re helpful in persuasive writing because they can help support your opinion. Including facts and statistics in persuasive writing makes it much stronger because facts can help convince your readers of your viewpoint.

Rhetorical Questions

Rhetorical questions are questions that are not meant to be answered. These types of questions can be useful in persuasive writing to highlight important words or feelings. Rhetorical questions help emphasize certain points that your reader is meant to remember. They help make your point even stronger, which is why they can be useful in persuasive writing.

Connectives

Connectives, or linking words/phrases, help the author transition between ideas. They make a piece of writing flow really smoothly. Connectives are helpful in all types of writing but can be useful in persuasive writing specifically to keep your readers from getting confused. By using connectives, your readers will understand your writing a lot better, making it easier for them to focus on the opinion you’re trying to express. Please reference our resource on connectives if you’d like to learn more!

Conditionals

Conditionals are statements that express cause and effect. These are useful in all writing types, including persuasive writing. By using conditional statements, readers are able to understand the connection between two events, thoughts, feelings, etc. Conditionals can be helpful in persuasive writing to help your readers understand certain cause-and-effect relationships. Reference our resource on cause and effect words to learn more!

Activity & Resource

Now that we’ve discussed what persuasive writing is and its core features, we have an activity for your child writer to get started with. We’ve also included a reference page that outlines the core features of persuasive writing we’ve covered above. Happy persuading!