What Are the Different Types of Persuasive Essay Topics?

Some writers use persuasive essays to clarify an idea or point, but a persuasive essay typically is one that aims to convince the reader to change his mind or opinion about a particular topic. As such, persuasive essay topics usually deal with two kinds of topics. Those are topics people already have strong opinions on and topics of a nature that usually incites strong opinions. Laws and other legal matters, public policies, and moral, ethical, and religious issues are common persuasive essay topics. Every now and then, though, a writer or teacher might decide to have some fun with a persuasive essay.

Both existing laws and potential laws provide plenty of persuasive essay writing material for writers. Persuasive essay topics on legal issues could involve the laws related to a nation’s illegal immigrants, health insurance requirements, and mandatory prison sentences for certain crimes. Issues such as requirements regarding recycling, using public transportation, and providing resources for homeless individuals are examples of persuasive essay topics related to existing or potential public policies. Similarly, topics like instating or reinstating a military draft and officially requiring all residents of a country to speak one language relate to legal and public policy matters.

Usually, moral, ethical, and religious persuasive essay topics spill over into other topics. For example, whether or not to teach sex education in school might be both a religious and legal topic. At what point during a pregnancy a woman should be denied an abortion could be a religious, ethical, and legal topic. A persuasive essay on why the death penalty should be abolished also falls under several categories. Other such moral, ethical, and religious essay topics include allowing prayer in public schools, whether human cloning research should be stopped, and the euthanasia rights of fatally ill patients.

Sometimes, a writer wants to have some fun, or a teacher or professor wants to give his students a break. This is when lighthearted, fun persuasive essay topics can come in handy. Writers can compose papers on the merits of one type of hairstyle over another, or why the school should change its mascot from a tiger to a goldfish. One college student might write a persuasive essay to convince the university’s president that no classes should begin before noon, and another might write a composition on the benefits of paying the tuition of the student who graduates with the highest grade point average each semester. Such persuasive essay topics aren’t serious, but they do allow students to both strengthen their writing skills and indulge their creativity.