Comparing Things: Choosing Pros/Cons Essay Topics

The pro and con essay is a persuasive essay that requires you to discuss both sides to a debate prior to revealing your position within the debate at the end of the paper. The objective of this paper is to compare things.

It is to allow the audience to read through the paper with a balanced amount of information for both sides so that they can create an opinion for themselves before their read over your final analysis.

You can write a great pro con essay by providing equal time and treatment to each side of an issue and describing both the advantages and disadvantages to both sides clearly and with specific research. In the end you want to summarize your position within this debate but this is not until the conclusion.

Because this type of essay requires you to treat both sides with equality the topic is often a controversial one which is often and easily debatable. This essay works well for debatable topics because the structure of it requires you to weigh both positions. Consider the topics below:

• The pros and cons of legalizing marijuana
• The pros and cons of cell phones in society
• The pros and cons of beauty pageants
• The pros and cons of spying on friendly countries
• The pros and cons of vaccines
• The pros and cons of diets
• The pros and cons of legal drinking ages

Whatever topic you pick you should start by making a list of the negatives and positives for both sides of the argument.

The tone should be objective. You want to give the readers an entirely neutral amount of information so that they do not end up with one side being forced upon them rather than another side.

You want to offer details and examples that develop the arguments for each side within every paragraph of your essay. Some students prefer presenting one side of the argument and then the other. Other students prefer providing a point and then a counterpoint. No matter the format you select it is important that you offer clear examples that are well researched. You want to use transitional phrases in between each paragraph so that the essay has focus and fluency. Use phrases like those below to introduce new points:

• “on the other hand…”
• “many people believe…”
• “another point of view is…”