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Examples of Persuasive Writing


"The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars."
- Nadine Gordimer


Now that you have learned about persuasive writing, determined how it can be done effectively, and even written your own persuasive letter, it is time to look at other examples of persuasive writing. There are several types of persuasive writing that are used for different reasons. Some are good, some are bad, but all have the same goal in mind -- and that is to convince you, or someone else, that an opposing view is right.
In this lesson, we will look over the five most common types of persuasive writing in our world today. You may use your own persuasive writing talents in one of these manners, or you may find another way to use your talent. Either way, recognizing persuasive writing when you see it is a good way to help keep you from being persuaded by it and the methods we talked about in these lessons.


The first type of persuasive writing is advertisement. Advertisements are designed to promote and motivate the purchase of goods and services, as well as ideas, on occasion. There are countless ways that persuasive writing is used in advertising in various forms. Just a few examples include:


All of these forms use persuasive writing in one way or another to entice you to buy what they are trying to sell. In persuasive ads, there are four ways to make the persuasive writing successful.

  1. There has to be a clear goal in mind. Ask yourself who your audience is, what are the results you want, and how will you measure success and failure with the ad.

  2. Choose the right audience for the ad. The product may only appeal to a small niche of the population, so you should appeal to them.

  3. Set the right objective for the ad. The ad objective should be brief and follow the lines of, "After reading this ad, I expect to ." This will help you write out the ad and tailor it to the correct audience.

  4. Graphics are always important in an ad, so be sure to add graphics that give the ad more character and emotion. Don't confuse the reader with the graphics however. If writing your persuasive argument took you one hour, then you should proof read for at least half of that time. How long it takes you to proofread will depend on how thorough you want the editing to be.


The second type of persuasive writing is political speech. Political speeches are designed to be persuasive. If they were not persuasive, there would be no point in having political speeches. In many ways, our entire world is shaped by the persuasive writings of political speeches.

The third type of persuasive writing is essays that are written to convince, or even argue the merits of, one opinion over another. The most common type of persuasive writing that you will put together will be a persuasive essay. Most of what we have talked about in these lessons can be applied to writing a persuasive essay effectively and properly.

The fourth type of persuasive writing is letters to the editor. Letters to the editor are usually in response to something that has appeared in the newspaper with which the writer disagrees or agrees. A person will write a letter to the editor not only to show their own point of view, but to also convince other readers of their point of view and get them to agree. This is one of the shortest types of persuasive writing, with the exception of advertisements that can be as little as one or two sentences in length.

The fifth and last type of persuasive writing that we see a lot of is public service announcements. Public service announcements do use persuasive writing to get their point across to the public. These can be either weather warnings meant to persuade you to get somewhere safe, or even just notices in the paper that show the merits of a particular development in the area.

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