Comparison: Writing a Real Comparison

The failure mode

Most comparison essays are two summaries stapled together: a paragraph on A, a paragraph on B, and a conclusion saying both had similarities and differences. That structure cannot earn the analysis points, because nothing in it is a comparison.

A comparison is a claim about how two things differ and why. Three things must appear:

1. A category of comparison — goals, membership, tactics, relationship to the state, outcome. You compare along a category, never in general.
2. A statement of degree — more, less, earlier, narrower.
3. A reason for the difference — the part that earns the point.

Structure by category, not by subject

Instead of paragraph 1: the Knights of Labor; paragraph 2: the AFL, write paragraph 1: membership; paragraph 2: goals; paragraph 3: relationship with employers and the state. Each paragraph then contains both subjects and forces you to write comparative sentences.

Words that do the work

• whereas, by contrast, similarly, both … but
• The difference stemmed from… — the reason clause.
• The similarity is more apparent than real, since… — a complexity move.

For the complexity point, the strongest move is to show that a difference on the surface hides a shared cause, or that two similar-looking things came from opposite motives. Example: the Populists and the Progressives both demanded federal regulation of business, yet one movement rose from indebted farmers and the other from urban professionals — which is why Progressive reform survived and Populist reform did not.