SMARTHINKING Writer's Handbook

Chapter 3, Lesson 18: Section 8

Comparing and Contrasting Ideas and Things

Objective: To discover how to use questioning techniques to describe how things are the same or different, and methods for weaving these ideas into an essay.

Writing to Explain How Things are the Same and/or Different

Writers often use the idea of sameness to provide examples that help their readers understand specific points about a topic. For example, if you were going to write a sentence about junk food, you might say that a Hershey bar is about the size of a personal check. By using a familiar object as a comparative description, the reader understands size in a relative sense that is more descriptive than saying a Hershey bar is about 2" x 5." The approach is the same when you describe different-ness. Using our Hershey bar example, you might continue by saying something like: "However, people who eat Hershey bars do more than spend money - they gain weight!" Here you have described a clear difference between the two items in terms that have affected the readers' own lives.

As a writing tool, comparing and contrasting is often used in introductions and body paragraphs, but seldom used in conclusions because it is a tool used to explain new information. In the conclusion of a paper, you have moved from explaining to convincing. Comparing and contrasting can be combined in a sentence level definition:

While chocolate and spinach are both foods (compare), most people would not crave spinach between meals (contrast).

Or, you might use them in a paragraph to provide an example to illustrate one of your opinions:

Chocolate has long been considered a junk food that should be avoided because it causes skin problems in adolescents (opinion). Yet, the same could be said about beef, which contains a large amount of fat (comparing fact).

Chocolate has long been considered a junk food that should be avoided because it causes skin problems in adolescents (opinion). However, recent studies show that adolescent skin problems are usually caused by hormonal imbalances (contrasting fact).

Using Point Questions to Find Particulars

But how do you come up with all these comparing and contrasting ideas? One way is to make lists about the things you want to explore based on the answers to some standard questions called point questions. They are based on journalist's questions: who, what, where, why, when, and how. Using the example of comparing two kinds of junk food, chocolate candy (C) and potato chips (P), let's look at how these questions might be structured. The trick here is to think about each item individually and answer the questions.

1. Who eats this kind of junk food?
• People who are not on diets (C) (P)
• People of all ages (C) (P)
• People who are on diets but are sneaking a treat (C) (P)
2. What do they eat taste like?
• Chocolate candy is creamy and sweet (C)
• Potato chips are salty and crunchy (P)
3. When do people eat them?
• Watching TV (C) (P)
• Studying (C) (P)
• At the movies (C)
• At parties (P)
• With a meal (P)
4. Where do people eat them?
• Everywhere (C) (P)
• Not in bed (P)
5. Why do people eat them?
   • Taste good (C) (P)
   • Addictive (C) (P)
   • Satisfies cravings (C) (P)
   • Relieve boredom (C) (P)
   • Be sociable (C) (P)
6. How do people eat them?
• Bars (C)
• Kisses (C)
• Covering other kinds of candy (C)
• One at a time (C)
• From bags of all sizes (P)
• From tubes like Pringles (P)
• With dip (P)
• By the handful (P)

You can practice making a list of points and particulars using two kinds of fruit or two kinds of movies here:

Answers to the journalist's questions can be organized into a parallel chart to help you decide what particulars you want to emphasize. Here is the kind of list that you might develop when you explore kinds of junk food:

Using your list from above about fruit or movies, you can practice building a same/different parallel list here:

Well, now that you have all this information, what do you do with it?

Organizing Compare and Contrast Information

Compare and contrast information can be used in every kind of essay as a descriptive content development tool. For instance, if you were writing a paper about ways to lose weight, you might include a sentence that says something like: "It is easier to avoid potato chips in big bags than it is to avoid Hershey Bars in hand-sized convenient wrappers." This sentence contrasts the two kinds of junk food, and could be used as an example in a paragraph.

Sometimes, you will need to write a whole paper that compares and/or contrasts two different things. There are two development patterns that will help you when faced with this kind of task:

• Parallel Development - switching back and forth between the objects or ideas that you are using while you explore one point that you developed in your list as topics for your paragraphs: who, what, where, when, why, how. Now, all these categories might not fit what you need to write about, but you can choose the ones that do.
• Chunked Development -- writing everything about one object or idea and then switching to the other object or idea and writing everything about it. The trick to this kind of organization is that you need to be consistent with your choice and order of ideas; if you write about the who, what, and how of one object, you must write about the who, what, and how of the other in the same order.

Summary

The compare and contrast tool helps you explain ideas and things to your reader in terms that they can understand easily. This tool can be used in paragraphs as examples, or it can be used to invent and organize whole essays. The easiest way to develop your ideas is to use journalistic questions (who, what, where, why, and when) to discover points about your subject and then identify specific particulars about your subject from the answers to your questions.

As an organizational tool, compare and contrast techniques can help you with the structure of your paper by giving you specific patterns to develop from: parallel or chunked.

q When you use the parallel method of development, you will naturally keep your ideas in order. When you use the chunked method, you will need to proofread to be sure that you are keeping the same order of points and particulars for the objects or ideas that you explore.