Writing a compare and contrast essay is quite straight-forward when you have the necessary steps and know how to use your critical thinking skills to create it. But you may need a few tips to get you started. Additionally, it helps to have a topic that’s easy to tackle. You don’t want to try using a topic that’s too far out of your experience to handle.
Of course, this list shows you very general ideas. You must narrow down to something a lot smaller in focus in order to do a good job in comparing or contrasting the two. A topic too broad will yield too much information and a topic too narrow won’t give you enough to work with.
Carefully read the two texts you have chosen for your paper. You need to have a firm understanding of many aspects of each so that you have something to work with when considering what factors you are going to compare or contrast.
As you read your two texts, start making notes of key differences and similarities so you can refer to them later. Make sure you keep track of where each reference is located in your sources, for later when you need it. Decide which the most important points are and which you will use to support your argument. Sort these into a logical order and make sure you have enough supporting data for each so you can make a valid comparison or contrast.
Use the main ideas to create your outline. This becomes the skeleton of your essay. Using an outline to write your essay is a great way to stay organized. Once you’ve got a good outline in place the remainder of the writing is just basically filling in the details.
Editing and proofreading are essential final steps to the completion of a stellar essay. This involves going through and ensuring you haven’t missed any important points in your argument. Also look for word usage, spelling or grammar errors and correct them.