Are you looking for a complete guide on how to write an argumentative essay, step-by-step, one you can read and get to pro writing level within no time? You came to the right place.
Most students dread writing argumentative essays; many find themselves confusing it for a persuasive essay. Argumentative writing helps you to research and investigate your ideas methodically. It builds your debate, writing, persuasion, rhetorical, and decision-making skills. You can take an argumentative essay topic, look at it objectively, and use evidence to convince the reader (s) that your stance is truer or more valid than the alternate position.
No matter your writing level, whether you have a grasp of the essay writing basics or have never written an essay like this, we got you.
When you hit the end of this comprehensive guide, our best bet is that you will write a strong argumentative essay with solid, sober, and well-supported arguments to defend your stance, impress your readers, and score the top grade for it.
An argumentative essay is a genre of writing where the writer investigates a topic by researching, reading, and organizing evidence from scholarly sources to establish a position or stance on a topic while appreciating conflicting viewpoints concisely and painstakingly.
Professors, instructors, and teaching assistants assign students to write argumentative essays to evaluate their competence in research, synthesis, organization, and ability to establish a credible stance on an issue or topic and persuade the readers to adopt it.
When writing such an essay, you must carefully evaluate claims and use your judgment to evaluate and use the best evidence.
Equipping yourself with argumentative writing skills is vital for all disciplines. For instance, you can be asked to weigh in on a social issue in your writing course, and at the same time, you can be assigned to write an argumentative essay on a nursing or healthcare issue. You can also be asked to write an argumentative essay on an environmental, philosophical, theological, or legal issue.
At its best, an excellent argumentative essay has three parts: the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion paragraph. In most cases, it can be a three-paragraph essay for short essays or a 5-paragraph format for slightly longer ones.
Argumentative essays holistically explore a topic or issue using the best available scholarly evidence. When writing an argumentative essay, you must make a clear assertion or argument about a topic or an issue. To do that, certain elements make an argumentative essay tick. These are the features or attributes that every professor, assessor, or reader wishes to see in an essay to say it is worth higher grades. A comprehensive argumentative essay will have the following:
Check out the template for structuring argumentative writing by SFU for more details on how to raise the bar high when writing your argumentative essay assignment.
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You can format your argumentative essay in Chicago, MLA, APA, Turabian, Oxford, or Harvard, among other styles, depending on the preferred or recommended writing style. Your professor will always indicate the format in the instructions.
If you are asked to present an outline before beginning to write, ensure that you outline the main ideas of the three sections below:
When introducing your arguments in an argumentative essay, you should make the beginning memorable, enjoyable, and interesting to lure the readers.
To hook your readers, begin with a good attention grabber, such as a statistic, statement, fact, or analogy. Follow this with background information that explains the topic or introduces the question.
Finally, state your claim by presenting the thesis statement. If you are writing an argumentative essay on a literary work, ensure that you briefly explain the author and the work itself.
A typical argumentative essay has three or more paragraphs explaining why you support your thesis. Each body paragraph proves your argument by supporting your central claim using evidence. As the cornerstone of the essay, it focuses on:
Having these as part of your body paragraph makes your argumentative essay stand out. Use the MEAL, TEEL, or PEEL paragraph formatting strategies to make it sound.
When writing the body paragraphs, ensure that you have supporting evidence paragraphs and counterclaim paragraphs. The latter can have sentences that serve as rebuttals.
A typical supporting evidence paragraph gives evidence that fortifies your stance. It proves that your argument is strong enough, making it the voice of reason such that it resonates with the audience. It should contain:
You should also have a counterclaim paragraph that presents the potential opposing viewpoints. It shows that you are a mature writer.
Extend it by providing a rebuttal that makes the case of your position by explaining why, even though considerable, the opposing viewpoints are not valid as your arguments.
Each paragraph should be between 150 to 200 words long. The entire body section comprises 70-80% of the word count.
You can end your argumentative essay by restating or revisiting the thesis to remind your readers of your stance or the balanced middle ground (in case you use the Toulmin approach).
The concluding paragraph should also show the reader that you have weighed in on both sides of the issue, topic, or problem and taken a strong position.
It should conclude your argument and give your readers some closure. Therefore, have a closing statement that gives them food for thought or a call to action.
This should account for 10 or 15% of the total word count for your argumentative essay.
Although it sounds like your essay should be brutal or aggressive, you should focus on presenting factual evidence and using logical reasoning to convince the readers of a particular way of thinking. Here are the seven steps for writing a perfect argumentative essay.
When assigned to do an argumentative writing assignment, take some time to read and decode the instructions. Focus on the prompt of your argumentative essay.
As you read, take note of the length, deadline, scope, topic, formatting and citation requirements, and other instructions.
If the instructions are unclear, consult with your peers, professor, or the writing department.
After reading the instructions, ensure you know what you are writing about. If a topic is given, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, select the best argumentative essay topic.
Do not go for any topic. Consider a good topic that meets the following criteria:
Many websites list the most suitable argumentative essay topics to use; consider using them when brainstorming a topic to select. Also, observe issues in the news that are debatable and consider them a good topic for your essay.
The argument or thesis is the pillar of the best essay. Even with a perfect essay structure, you will never succeed if your thesis is weak. A perfect argumentative thesis is a major takeaway that the readers remember after reading the essay. Ask yourself:
A solid argumentative thesis states a clear position on the issue to assert the writer's stance. It should be one or two sentences long. Regarding placement, it comes at the end of the first paragraph.
Use signals such as "should," ought to,” “need to,” “must,” “have an obligation to,” or “had better” to signal an opinion. You can also write general phrases such as for several important reasons, in many ways, or for a number of reasons.
An argumentative thesis can also be a list of the reasons for supporting or opposing an idea. You can use hedging words such as some people or some and words like “might,” “can,” “seem,” and “appear” with the verb to limit or qualify the unsupported statement. The thesis can also include a contrasting connector such as “although,” “while,” or “despite.”
Try turning the topic into a question and answer it by formulating a perfect thesis statement. You can also state an argument and refute it or outline your main points.
Examples of argumentative thesis statements:
Do not use a fact as your thesis statement because it cannot be argued. It should also not be a personal opinion. Instead, it should be falsifiable, arguable, and imply a position on an issue.
You have understood the instructions, settled on a topic, and formulated an argumentative thesis; all you have to do in the next step is to research.
You must extensively research the previously published material and literature when writing an argumentative essay. Most of your research will be online because you can access many scholarly sources from your school library portal and a general online search.
Perhaps the best place to begin is to look for examples of argumentative essays published online to learn more about the organization, style, word choice, and approach. You get to get inspired when writing your essay.
After looking at the examples, you should find scholarly sources that cover all sides of an issue. Remember, your essay should give a balanced argument for either side but stress more to your point of view. You need to focus on empirical research published in scholarly peer-reviewed journals. Consider information published on government and institutional websites with .gov, .edu, and .org URL extensions. Use new sources published within the last 5 years because they have current information. Unless it is a seminal paper, consider the new sources.
Even when you are not required to submit an outline, ensure you write one for your own good.
An essay outline or plan helps you to organize your ideas by prioritizing them. It also helps you visualize the essay, which reduces time wasted when you finally settle in to write the first draft. To make it clear, you can use numbers and sentences to highlight the headings, subheadings, main points, and sub-points. You can fill out your outline as you research and take notes to help you complete your argumentative essay on time. The choice is yours regarding whether you need a formal or an informal outline.
Related Reading: How to Outline a college essay or Paper
With everything in place, it is now time to write. Write the rough draft of your argumentative essay by filling in your outline. Give it flesh bit by bit until you have something that makes for an essay. When drafting, focus on writing and not perfection.
You can start with the body paragraphs, do the introduction, and finalize with the conclusion. Whatever approach you take, ensure that you write a comprehensive first draft that considers all the main points, supporting facts and includes in-text citations and transition words. Write the paper formally and be very deliberate when choosing words to use. You should paraphrase ideas from the sources well and cite them to avoid accidental plagiarism.
Ensure that your essay has a good title. The title of your argumentative essay helps the teacher know what it is all about, even before reading the introduction. It should be appealing, descriptive, clear, and concise.
Ensure you start your argumentative essay with a hook, attention-grabber, or attention-getter. It gives a solid start to the essay. The background information section of the introduction should highlight why the topic is essential and make a case for your claim before introducing the thesis that asserts your claim.
The body paragraphs should support the thesis and have concrete evidence. Depending on your approach, ensure a counterclaim paragraph with point-by-point rebuttals to assert your position further.
The conclusion should summarize your essay and give closure to the readers.
The last step of writing an argumentative essay is polishing it into a final draft. To do this:
You now have a final copy or draft that you can confidently submit for grading. Skim through it one last time and ensure everything is as good as it should be before submitting it to your professor. When you turn in the paper via SafeAssign, Canvas, Blackboard, or Turnitin, check for plagiarism because it would be a waste of time to undergo the entire writing process only to submit a paper that will cause you trouble.
Knowing the basics of general essay writing alone is not enough in college. You will be writing many types of essays, such as expository, analytical, informative, definition, and many more. Writing a good argumentative essay is a skill of immense benefits. The good thing about argumentative writing is that you can structure your arguments in three ways: classic, Toulmin, and Rogerian approaches or formats. We will look at each briefly.
The classical or Aristotelian argument approach is the most popular one among students. Almost everyone who writes an argumentative essay naturally settles for it. It entails using rhetorical appeals: ethos, pathos, and logos, to convince the readers or audience about something or for them to adopt your side, position, or viewpoint on a specific issue. When using this approach, you will use the format below:
A classical argumentative essay will have all these parts spread out in paragraphs.
A Toulmin or Polemic argumentative essay works well for topics or issues with no absolute solutions or truth because it considers the complex nature of arguments. Toulmin’s arguments aim to reduce pointless debates by locating the areas of argument within a debate. To examine whether whaling should be banned, you must examine the most critical points from either side of the debate, including their strengths and weaknesses. Six elements must feature in such an essay:
Check out this infographic by Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL. Using the Toulmin method, you can analyze a text you have read and respond to a given argument.
The Rogerian argument was the brainchild of Carl Rogers. Aristotelian arguments focus more on the author’s argument – “this is my argument, and here are the strong reasons why I am right.” However, academic arguments can sometimes be strong and forceful, limiting the classic approach. You need a surefire approach that works in all situations, especially when the audience is difficult to convince that their position is invalid and yours is; that is the Rogerian arguments approach. It helps find a middle ground between the author's insights and the audience. A rather persuasive approach helps writers to understand their personal biases and helps in finding a balance with others’ arguments. To write an essay in the Rogerian approach, ensure you have the five parts below:
Effective argumentative writing is a skill you will want to carry with you in your personal, academic, and professional life. Mastering the art sets you apart from others because you can debate issues without unnecessary drama.
Here are some related readings you can consider:
When you write a solid argumentative essay, you use evidence and reason to argue for or against a topic. You also convince the readers to take your stance while exposing to them the weaknesses in their potential, conflicting, or alternate points of view.
A well-written argumentative essay makes it irresistible to award the highest grade. It should strive to inform, negotiate, convince, and persuade the readers (in the school context, the professor, or anyone marking your paper). Ensure you have a solid argumentative essay title, introduction (including the thesis), and conclusion (restate the thesis and summarize points stressing your stance) because that is where the professors focus, especially if they have many papers to mark. Your body paragraphs should build on your thesis statement (main claim), and you should have a paragraph dedicated to counterarguments and rebuttals.
If you have come this far and appreciated the guide but feel that you are not confident with writing one, you can hire our argumentative essay writers to help you. We offer credible, reliable, and timely writing assistance to students who want custom essays written to their preferred tastes and deadlines. Check out our writing help services section to see what else we can do for you.
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