Comparison and Contrast

Volunteer State Community College
Learning Commons

Introduction

Comparison/Contrast is instinctive. It's how we make sense of our world.

This eBook will help you understand how to tackle a comparison/contrast essay, including brainstorming, organization, and thesis.

Why do we compare/contrast?
One of the most common types of essays you will write is the comparison/contrast essay, in which you focus on the ways in which certain things or ideas—usually two of them—are similar to (comparison) and/or different from (contrast) one another. Your instructors assign these types of essays because they encourage students to move beyond summary or description and into analysis, which is the goal of collegiate education.

From an early age, one of the ways we make sense of our world is through comparison and contrast. In college, when we reflect on similarities and differences, we gain a deeper understanding of the items we are comparing, their relationship to each other, and what is most important about them.

Recognizing comparison/contrast in assignments
Some assignments use words--like compare, contrast, similarities, and differences--that make it easy for you to see that they are asking you to compare and/or contrast. In some cases, though, it may not be so easy to determine whether an essay is asking you to include comparison and/or contrast.

Sometimes comparison/contrast is only part of the essay—you begin by comparing and/or contrasting two or more things and then use what you’ve learned to construct an argument, proposal, or evaluation. Furthermore, some topics ask only for comparison, others only for contrast, and others for both. You will need to carefully analyze what the assignment is asking you to do. Look at the action words.

Determine if comparison/contrast is part of the assignment, the entire assignment, or not necessary at all. There is some information that may help with this in our handout on Understanding Assignments.

Using comparison/contrast for pre-writing
Sometimes you may want to use comparison and/or contrast techniques in your own pre-writing work to get ideas that you can later use for an argument, even if comparison or contrast isn’t an official requirement for the paper you’re writing and the lists of similarities and differences you generate may not appear anywhere in the final draft of your paper.

Understanding the Assignment

Prewriting

Comparison and contrast may be part of the assignment, the entire assignment, or not necessary at all.

Comparison and contrast techniques can be useful in pre-writing for any paper, even if it isn't an official requirement for the paper you're writing.

Pizza Perfect

Gondola House

*Downtown Nashville
*Delivery
*Long wait

*Pizza and Pasta
*Same price
*Comfortable seating

*Hermitage
*No delivery
*No wait

How do I compare?
Making a Venn diagram or chart can help you quickly and efficiently compare and contrast two or more things or ideas.

To make a Venn diagram, simply draw some overlapping circles, one circle for each item you’re considering. In the central area where they overlap, list the traits the two items have in common. In the areas that do not overlap you can list the traits that make the things different. To the left is a very simple example, using two pizza places:

To make a chart, figure out what criteria you want to focus on in comparing the items. Along the left side of the page, list each of the criteria. Across the top, list the names of the items. You should then have a box per item for each criterion; you can fill the boxes in and then survey what you’ve discovered. Here’s an example, this time using three pizza places:

What should I include?
As you generate points of comparison, consider the purpose and content of the assignment and the focus of the class. What do you think the professor wants you to learn by doing this comparison/contrast? How does it fit with what you have been studying so far and with the other assignments in the course? Are there any clues about what to focus on in the assignment itself?

Examples

The following pages contain some general questions about different types of things you might have to compare. These are by no means complete or definitive lists; they’re just here to give you some ideas—you can generate your own questions for these and other types of comparison.

You may want to begin by using the questions reporters traditionally ask: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

If you’re talking about objects, you might also consider general properties like size, shape, color, sound, weight, taste, texture, smell, number, duration, and location.