About // Professional Editors & Writers // Writing // Copyediting // Proofreading // Ghostwriting // Persuasive Writing // Magazines // Technical & Educational Writing // Web & Blog Content // Rates // Examples
PERSUASIVE WRITING
Non-fiction writing using carefully chosen words and phrases
WHAT IS IT?
Persuasive writing aims to convince target audiences to accept and act on ideas or opinions. It is not only for marketers and politics to sell products or ideas. It is also the most challenging and rewarding form of communication. To communicate compelling and persuasive messages to internal and external audiences, persuasive writers apply various techniques to correspondence, reports, proposals, or any off-line and on-line publications.
A writer needs to consider so much before endeavouring to write anything of a persuasive nature, that most universities now offer persuasive writing as a subject. It may include fields such as rhetoric, semantics, etymology, communication, audience analysis, research, language (including style and voice), advertising, policy documents, or information campaigns.
ITS GOALS
The primary goal of persuasive writing is to influence beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours of the target audience. The desired result of a persuasive text could be for the audience to have a positive opinion/image of the company, or to convince them to agree to a proposal, or support policies or decisions, or change behaviour, e.g., of employees constantly coming late for work, or a combination of these goals.
Other forms of writing, such as informational or educational writing, may unintentionally also have a persuasive effect. For instance, when a corporation advertises their Corporate Social Investment into a home for disabled people, the reader may also decide to support the home.
Persuasive writing is a complex subject, comprising various strategies, approaches, and techniques. It can become a most potent tool for those using it. Correctly applied, the writer can use it to:
WHAT IT IS NOT
Persuasive writing is not propaganda, which is unethical or immoral. The difference depends on the sender’s intentions. Propaganda mostly offers one-sided arguments, is emotional and the sender repeats the same message continuously over numerous public media. Outright lying, falsifying evidence, misrepresentation, deliberate use of deceptive reasoning and misleading the audience about the intention of the message, is unethical and categorised as propaganda.
HOW SUCCESSFUL IS IT?
No writer or sender can guarantee the success of a persuasive text. Readers are under no obligation to read all the persuasive texts landing in their inboxes, or they have become immune to persuasive strategies that writers use repeatedly. However, careful use of the right medium, the right message to the right audience, should reduce failure.
For those with deep pockets, formal research of attitudes and behaviours before writing the persuasive text and evaluation afterwards, may increase the chances of success of future persuasive texts.
THE PERSUASIVE WRITER
The writer will understand how the content, structure, and style of a text can influence the reader’s beliefs, attitudes, or behaviours. They would further consider what information to include, how to structure it, how to phrase it to increase the probability of the text’s acceptance, and lastly, how to choose the best design and layout of the text.
Strategies that the writer can use include using the credibility of texts, applying crucial elements of style such as clarity and factual accuracy. They can also offer tangible evidence of statements made or address the reader’s knowledge and feelings about the subject. During this process, a writer must consider prevailing conditions before readers take the next step. In the meantime, a reader must decide to pay attention to the text, decide whether they will inspect it for arguments, and finally decide to yield to/accept the texts.
IN CLOSING
Not all writers have the time to tackle a persuasive text as it is laborious work requiring detailed study and discipline. Here at WordCarver, should a client require a persuasive text, we would clean out our diaries, avoid distractions and delays, and focus solely on the persuasive project until completion.