Sometimes you may want to use comparison/contrast techniques in your pre-writing work to get ideas that you can later use for an argument, even if comparison/contrast isn’t an official requirement for your paper. For example, if you wanted to argue that Frye’s account of oppression is better than both de Beauvoir’s and Bartky’s, comparing and contrasting the main arguments of those three authors might help you construct your evaluation—even though the topic may not have asked for comparison/contrast and the lists of similarities and differences you generate may not appear anywhere in the final draft of your paper.
Discovering similarities and differences
Making a Venn diagram or a 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. List the traits the two items have in common in the central area where they overlap. Assign each one of the areas that don’t overlap; in those areas, you can list the traits that make things different. Here’s a very simple example, using two pizza places.