APPENDICES: Academic Writing Basics
Appendix G: Writing Comparisons
Suzan Last
University classes often ask you to write comparative analyses in which you compare 2 or more items in a way that offers some insights and meaningful conclusions. You can compare almost anything – even porcupine and mushrooms – as long as you have a clear reason for your comparison (a thesis) and logical criteria for comparing the items. For example, although porcupines and mushrooms seem to have very little in common (different life forms) you might compare how both porcupines and mushrooms have developed similar self-preservation methods to avoid predators. In order to compare two items, they must have obvious differences, but interesting similarities – or, conversely, obvious similarities, but interesting differences. Your reason for comparing can often be expressed by clearly articulating these interesting similarities and differences.
This chapter will review
- The basic grammar of comparative sentence structure
- Overall comparative essay structures.
1. Comparative Grammar
We frequently engage in making comparisons in every day life. This leads to a sort of “short hand” in the way we express comparisons. This shorthand might be understood in a conversational way, but formal writing should adhere to certain grammatical standards. A correct comparative sentence should do the following:
- Clearly identify the things being compared
- Ensure the compared items are equivalent and comparable
- State the specific criteria for comparison
These rules might seem obvious, but we often break them in our informal conversational comparisons. For example, the following sentence wants to compare the difficulty of dealing with the peels of apples and oranges, but grammatically compares apple peels to “my lab group,” which are not equivalently comparable.
Compared with apples peels, my lab group found orange peels more difficult to deal with.
How would you fix this sentence to correctly express the comparison of apple peels to orange peels?
They say you can’t compare apples and oranges, but you actually can as long as you have established their equivalence, have stated a purpose, and defined clear criteria for comparison. For example, you CAN compare apples to oranges, but you cannot compare apples to fruit. You can compare fruit to vegetables, but you cannot compare fruit to carrots. These are non-equivalent. Non-equivalent comparisons are often a result of faulty sentence structure.
Here is an example of effective comparative topic sentence:
There are significant differences between apples and oranges, in terms of their culinary uses, nutritional content, and growing needs.
Comparative sentences can fail for several reasons:
- They are incomplete (do not clearly identify the two items being compared)
- Apples grow better in northern climates. (than what?)
- Oranges have twice the vitamin C content. (than what?)
- Apples are considered more effective “comfort food.”
- This design