Persuasive Writing
How to Harness the Power of Words
By Peter Frederick
May 2011
Pearson Education
Distributed by Trans-Atlantic Publications
ISBN: 9780273746133
194 pages
$39.50 paper original
A combination of effective writing, decision-making and persuasion. Designed for everyday use, this book offers practical advice to help readers write concise, convincing and effective documents.
Contents
Introduction
Section 1: What is Persuasive Writing?
Why are you writing?
Who is your audience?
Reader Response = Result
Section 2: Tools for Persuasive Writing
Ethos, Logos, Pathos
Using emotive language
You, We, I – getting personal
Storytelling
Persuasive writing example
Section 3: Persuasion – Beyond Logic
The science of decision-making
Primacy – why coming first matters
Availability
Consistency and why we hate changing our minds
Justification and evidence
Simplicity
Loss and reward – a bird in the hand…
Outside influences – following the herd
Repetition, Repetition, Repetition
Anchoring – decision-making all at sea
The Halo Effect
Recency – the here and now
The reader is always right
Commercial Break: Advertisement Slogans
Section 4: Conciseness Equals Clarity
Ason and the Jargonauts
Sentence length
The writer’s diet – cutting padding
Culling lazy words
Examples, similes and analogies
A 7-step concise writing process
Section 5: Verbs Equal Vigour
Grammar refresher
Verbs just wanna have fun
Verbs in disguise – noun suffixes
Section 6: Mistakes
Commonly confused words
Using the wrong word
Scattershot punctuation and no punctuation
Poor spelling
‘Mistakes’ that aren’t mistakes
Section 7: Planning and Structuring
Plan, Draft, Edit
Document structures
Section 8: Layout, Fonts and Formatting
Font choice
Layout
Headings
Bullets
Tables and diagrams
Section 9: Tips for Common Documents
More effective emails
Writing for the web
Persuasive CVs
Executive summaries and abstracts
Grant funding
Feedback, fear and a favour
Section 10: Persuasion – the Dark Arts
Assume causality
It’s common sense, stupid
It’s common knowledge
Abuse statistics
Widen or narrow definitions
Flattery will get you everywhere
And a few more…
The End
Appendix 1: Summary of rules
Appendix 2: Supersized words and their alternatives
Appendix 3: Recommended reading
Appendix 4: Persuasive writing flowchart
Appendix 5: Persuasive writing checklist
Appendix 6: Exploiting and countering human decision-making
Appendix 7: the 7 step concise writing process – worked example
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