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112 Persuasive Speech Topics That Are Actually Engaging

What’s covered:, how to pick an awesome persuasive speech topic, 112 engaging persuasive speech topics, tips for preparing your persuasive speech.

Writing a stellar persuasive speech requires a carefully crafted argument that will resonate with your audience to sway them to your side. This feat can be challenging to accomplish, but an engaging, thought-provoking speech topic is an excellent place to start.

When it comes time to select a topic for your persuasive speech, you may feel overwhelmed by all the options to choose from—or your brain may be drawing a completely blank slate. If you’re having trouble thinking of the perfect topic, don’t worry. We’re here to help!

In this post, we’re sharing how to choose the perfect persuasive speech topic and tips to prepare for your speech. Plus, you’ll find 112 persuasive speech topics that you can take directly from us or use as creative inspiration for your own ideas!

Choose Something You’re Passionate About

It’s much easier to write, research, and deliver a speech about a cause you care about. Even if it’s challenging to find a topic that completely sparks your interest, try to choose a topic that aligns with your passions.

However, keep in mind that not everyone has the same interests as you. Try to choose a general topic to grab the attention of the majority of your audience, but one that’s specific enough to keep them engaged.

For example, suppose you’re giving a persuasive speech about book censorship. In that case, it’s probably too niche to talk about why “To Kill a Mockingbird” shouldn’t be censored (even if it’s your favorite book), and it’s too broad to talk about media censorship in general.

Steer Clear of Cliches

Have you already heard a persuasive speech topic presented dozens of times? If so, it’s probably not an excellent choice for your speech—even if it’s an issue you’re incredibly passionate about.

Although polarizing topics like abortion and climate control are important to discuss, they aren’t great persuasive speech topics. Most people have already formed an opinion on these topics, which will either cause them to tune out or have a negative impression of your speech.

Instead, choose topics that are fresh, unique, and new. If your audience has never heard your idea presented before, they will be more open to your argument and engaged in your speech.

Have a Clear Side of Opposition

For a persuasive speech to be engaging, there must be a clear side of opposition. To help determine the arguability of your topic, ask yourself: “If I presented my viewpoint on this topic to a group of peers, would someone disagree with me?” If the answer is yes, then you’ve chosen a great topic!

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for what it takes to choose a great persuasive speech topic, here are over one hundred options for you to choose from.

• Should high school athletes get tested for steroids?
• Should schools be required to have physical education courses?
• Should sports grades in school depend on things like athletic ability?
• What sport should be added to or removed from the Olympics?
• Should college athletes be able to make money off of their merchandise?
• Should sports teams be able to recruit young athletes without a college degree?
• Should we consider video gamers as professional athletes?
• Is cheerleading considered a sport?
• Should parents allow their kids to play contact sports?
• Should professional female athletes be paid the same as professional male athletes?
• Should college be free at the undergraduate level?
• Is the traditional college experience obsolete?
• Should you choose a major based on your interests or your potential salary?
• Should high school students have to meet a required number of service hours before graduating?
• Should teachers earn more or less based on how their students perform on standardized tests?
• Are private high schools more effective than public high schools?
• Should there be a minimum number of attendance days required to graduate?
• Are GPAs harmful or helpful?
• Should schools be required to teach about standardized testing?
• Should Greek Life be banned in the United States?
• Should schools offer science classes explicitly about mental health?
• Should students be able to bring their cell phones to school?
• Should all public restrooms be all-gender?
• Should undocumented immigrants have the same employment and education opportunities as citizens?
• Should everyone be paid a living wage regardless of their employment status?
• Should supremacist groups be able to hold public events?
• Should guns be allowed in public places?
• Should the national drinking age be lowered?
• Should prisoners be allowed to vote?
• Should the government raise or lower the retirement age?
• Should the government be able to control the population?
• Is the death penalty ethical?

Environment

• Should stores charge customers for plastic bags?
• Should breeding animals (dogs, cats, etc.) be illegal?
• Is it okay to have exotic animals as pets?
• Should people be fined for not recycling?
• Should compost bins become mandatory for restaurants?
• Should electric vehicles have their own transportation infrastructure?
• Would heavier fining policies reduce corporations’ emissions?
• Should hunting be encouraged or illegal?
• Should reusable diapers replace disposable diapers?

Science & Technology

• Is paper media more reliable than digital news sources?
• Should automated/self-driving cars be legalized?
• Should schools be required to provide laptops to all students?
• Should software companies be able to have pre-downloaded programs and applications on devices?
• Should drones be allowed in military warfare?
• Should scientists invest more or less money into cancer research?
• Should cloning be illegal?
• Should societies colonize other planets?
• Should there be legal oversight over the development of technology?

Social Media

• Should there be an age limit on social media?
• Should cyberbullying have the same repercussions as in-person bullying?
• Are online relationships as valuable as in-person relationships?
• Does “cancel culture” have a positive or negative impact on societies?
• Are social media platforms reliable information or news sources?
• Should social media be censored?
• Does social media create an unrealistic standard of beauty?
• Is regular social media usage damaging to real-life interactions?
• Is social media distorting democracy?
• How many branches of government should there be?
• Who is the best/worst president of all time?
• How long should judges serve in the U.S. Supreme Court?
• Should a more significant portion of the U.S. budget be contributed towards education?
• Should the government invest in rapid transcontinental transportation infrastructure?
• Should airport screening be more or less stringent?
• Should the electoral college be dismantled?
• Should the U.S. have open borders?
• Should the government spend more or less money on space exploration?
• Should students sing Christmas carols, say the pledge of allegiance, or perform other tangentially religious activities?
• Should nuns and priests become genderless roles?
• Should schools and other public buildings have prayer rooms?
• Should animal sacrifice be legal if it occurs in a religious context?
• Should countries be allowed to impose a national religion on their citizens?
• Should the church be separated from the state?
• Does freedom of religion positively or negatively affect societies?

Parenting & Family

• Is it better to have children at a younger or older age?
• Is it better for children to go to daycare or stay home with their parents?
• Does birth order affect personality?
• Should parents or the school system teach their kids about sex?
• Are family traditions important?
• Should parents smoke or drink around young children?
• Should “spanking” children be illegal?
• Should parents use swear words in front of their children?
• Should parents allow their children to play violent video games?

Entertainment

• Should all actors be paid the same regardless of gender or ethnicity?
• Should all award shows be based on popular vote?
• Who should be responsible for paying taxes on prize money, the game show staff or the contestants?
• Should movies and television shows have ethnicity and gender quotas?
• Should newspapers and magazines move to a completely online format?
• Should streaming services like Netflix and Hulu be free for students?
• Is the movie rating system still effective?
• Should celebrities have more privacy rights?

Arts & Humanities

• Are libraries becoming obsolete?
• Should all schools have mandatory art or music courses in their curriculum?
• Should offensive language be censored from classic literary works?
• Is it ethical for museums to keep indigenous artifacts?
• Should digital designs be considered an art form? 
• Should abstract art be considered an art form?
• Is music therapy effective?
• Should tattoos be regarded as “professional dress” for work?
• Should schools place greater emphasis on the arts programs?
• Should euthanasia be allowed in hospitals and other clinical settings?
• Should the government support and implement universal healthcare?
• Would obesity rates lower if the government intervened to make healthy foods more affordable?
• Should teenagers be given access to birth control pills without parental consent?
• Should food allergies be considered a disease?
• Should health insurance cover homeopathic medicine?
• Is using painkillers healthy?
• Should genetically modified foods be banned?
• Should there be a tax on unhealthy foods?
• Should tobacco products be banned from the country?
• Should the birth control pill be free for everyone?

If you need more help brainstorming topics, especially those that are personalized to your interests, you can  use CollegeVine’s free AI tutor, Ivy . Ivy can help you come up with original persuasive speech ideas, and she can also help with the rest of your homework, from math to languages.

Do Your Research

A great persuasive speech is supported with plenty of well-researched facts and evidence. So before you begin the writing process, research both sides of the topic you’re presenting in-depth to gain a well-rounded perspective of the topic.

Understand Your Audience

It’s critical to understand your audience to deliver a great persuasive speech. After all, you are trying to convince them that your viewpoint is correct. Before writing your speech, consider the facts and information that your audience may already know, and think about the beliefs and concerns they may have about your topic. Then, address these concerns in your speech, and be mindful to include fresh, new information.

Have Someone Read Your Speech

Once you have finished writing your speech, have someone read it to check for areas of strength and improvement. You can use CollegeVine’s free essay review tool to get feedback on your speech from a peer!

Practice Makes Perfect

After completing your final draft, the key to success is to practice. Present your speech out loud in front of a mirror, your family, friends, and basically, anyone who will listen. Not only will the feedback of others help you to make your speech better, but you’ll become more confident in your presentation skills and may even be able to commit your speech to memory.

Hopefully, these ideas have inspired you to write a powerful, unique persuasive speech. With the perfect topic, plenty of practice, and a boost of self-confidence, we know you’ll impress your audience with a remarkable speech!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 105 interesting persuasive speech topics for any project.

General Education

Are you struggling to find good persuasive speech topics? It can be hard to find a topic that interests both you and your audience, but in this guide we've done the hard work and created a list of 105 great persuasive speech ideas. They're organized into ten categories and cover a variety of topics, so you're sure to find one that interests you.

In addition to our list, we also go over which factors make good persuasive speech topics and three tips you should follow when researching and writing your persuasive speech.

What Makes a Good Persuasive Speech Topic?

What makes certain persuasive speech topics better than others? There are numerous reasons, but in this section we discuss three of the most important factors of great topics for a persuasive speech.

It's Something You Know About or Are Interested in Learning About

The most important factor in choosing and creating a great persuasive speech is picking a topic you care about and are interested in. You'll need to do a lot of research on this topic, and if it's something you like learning about, that'll make the process much easier and more enjoyable. It'll also help you sound passionate and informed when you talk, both important factors in giving an excellent persuasive speech.

It's a Topic People Care About

In fourth grade, after being told I could give a persuasive speech on any topic I wanted to , I chose to discuss why the Saguaro cactus should be the United State's national plant. Even though I gave an impassioned talk and drew a life-size Saguaro cactus on butcher paper to hang behind me, I doubt anyone enjoyed the speech much.

I'd recently returned from a family vacation to Arizona where I'd seen Saguaro cacti for the first time and decided they were the coolest thing ever. However, most people don't care that much about Saguaro cacti, and most people don't care what our national plant is or if we even have one (for the record, the US has a national flower, and it's the rose).

Spare yourself the smattering of bored applause my nine-old self got at the end of my speech and choose something you think people will be interested in hearing about. This also ties into knowing your audience, which we discuss more in the final section.

It Isn't Overdone

When I was in high school, nearly every persuasive speech my classmates and I were assigned was the exact same topic: should the drinking age be lowered to 18? I got this prompt in English class, on standardized tests, in speech and debate class, etc. I've written and presented about it so often I could probably still rattle off all the main points of my old speeches word-for-word.

You can imagine that everyone's eyes glazed over whenever classmates gave their speeches on this topic. We'd heard about it so many times that, even if it was a topic we cared about, speeches on it just didn't interest us anymore.

The are many potential topics for a persuasive speech. Be wary of choosing one that's cliche or overdone. Even if you give a great speech, it'll be harder to keep your audience interested if they feel like they already know what you're going to say.

An exception to this rule is that if you feel you have a new viewpoint or facts about the topic that currently aren't common knowledge. Including them can make an overdone topic interesting. If you do this, be sure to make it clear early on in your speech that you have unique info or opinions on the topic so your audience knows to expect something new.

105 Topics for a Persuasive Speech

Here's our list of 105 great persuasive speech ideas. We made sure to choose topics that aren't overdone, yet that many people will have an interest in, and we also made a point of choosing topics with multiple viewpoints rather than simplistic topics that have a more obvious right answer (i.e. Is bullying bad?). The topics are organized into ten categories.

Arts/Culture

• Should art and music therapy be covered by health insurance?
• Should all students be required to learn an instrument in school?
• Should all national museums be free to citizens?
• Should graffiti be considered art?
• Should offensive language be removed from works of classic literature?
• Are paper books better than e-books?
• Should all interns be paid for their work?
• Should employees receive bonuses for walking or biking to work?
• Will Brexit hurt or help the UK's economy?
• Should all people over the age of 65 be able to ride the bus for free?
• Should the federal minimum wage be increased?
• Should tipping in restaurants be mandatory?
• Should Black Friday sales be allowed to start on Thanksgiving?
• Should students who bully others be expelled?
• Should all schools require students wear uniforms?
• Should boys and girls be taught in separate classrooms?
• Should students be allowed to listen to music during study hall?
• Should all elementary schools be required to teach a foreign language?
• Should schools include meditation or relaxation breaks during the day?
• Should grades in gym class affect students' GPAs?
• Should teachers get a bonus when their students score well on standardized tests?
• Should children of undocumented immigrants be allowed to attend public schools?
• Should students get paid for getting a certain GPA?
• Should students be allowed to have their cell phones with them during school?
• Should high school students be allowed to leave school during lunch breaks?
• Should Greek life at colleges be abolished?
• Should high school students be required to volunteer a certain number of hours before they can graduate?
• Should schools still teach cursive handwriting?
• What are the best ways for schools to stop bullying?
• Should prostitution be legalized?
• Should people with more than one DUI lose their driver's license?
• Should people be required to shovel snow from the sidewalks in front of their house?
• Should minors be able to drink alcohol in their home if they have their parent's consent?
• Should guns be allowed on college campuses?
• Should flag burning as a form of protest be illegal?
• Should welfare recipients be required to pass a drug test?
• Should white supremacist groups be allowed to hold rallies in public places?
• Should assault weapons be illegal?
• Should the death penalty be abolished?
• Should beauty pageants for children be banned?
• Is it OK to refuse to serve same-sex couples based on religious beliefs?
• Should transgender people be allowed to serve in the military?
• Is it better to live together before marriage or to wait?
• Should affirmative action be allowed?
• Should prisoners be allowed to vote?
• Should Columbus Day be replaced with Indigenous Peoples' Day?

Government/Politics

• Should the government spend more money on developing high-speed rail lines and less on building new roads?
• Should the government be allowed to censor internet content deemed inappropriate?
• Should Puerto Rico become the 51st state?
• Should Scotland declare independence from the United Kingdom?
• Whose face should be on the next new currency printed by the US?
• Should people convicted of drug possession be sent to recovery programs instead of jail?
• Should voting be made compulsory?
• Who was the best American president?
• Should the military budget be reduced?
• Should the President be allowed to serve more than two terms?
• Should a border fence be built between the United States and Mexico?
• Should countries pay ransom to terrorist groups in order to free hostages?
• Should minors be able to purchase birth control without their parent's consent?
• Should hiding or lying about your HIV status with someone you're sleeping with be illegal?
• Should governments tax soda and other sugary drinks and use the revenue for public health?
• Should high schools provide free condoms to students?
• Should the US switch to single-payer health care?
• Should healthy people be required to regularly donate blood?
• Should assisted suicide be legal?
• Should religious organizations be required to pay taxes?
• Should priests be allowed to get married?
• Should the religious slaughter of animals be banned?
• Should the Church of Scientology be exempt from paying taxes?
• Should women be allowed to be priests?
• Should countries be allowed to only accept refugees with certain religious beliefs?
• Should public prayer be allowed in schools?

Science/Environment

• Should human cloning be allowed?
• Should people be allowed to own exotic animals like tigers and monkeys?
• Should "animal selfies" in tourist locations with well-known animal species (like koalas and tigers) be allowed?
• Should genetically modified foods be sold in grocery stores?
• Should people be allowed to own pit bulls?
• Should parents be allowed to choose the sex of their unborn children?
• Should vaccinations be required for students to attend public school?
• What is the best type of renewable energy?
• Should plastic bags be banned in grocery stores?
• Should the United States rejoin the Paris Agreement?
• Should puppy mills be banned?
• Should fracking be legal?
• Should animal testing be illegal?
• Should offshore drilling be allowed in protected marine areas?
• Should the US government increase NASA's budget?
• Should Pluto still be considered a planet?
• Should college athletes be paid for being on a sports team?
• Should all athletes be required to pass regular drug tests?
• Should professional female athletes be paid the same as male athletes in the same sport?
• Are there any cases when athletes should be allowed to use steroids?
• Should college sports teams receive less funding?
• Should boxing be illegal?
• Should schools be required to teach all students how to swim?
• Should cheerleading be considered a sport?
• Should parents let their children play tackle football?
• Will robots reduce or increase human employment opportunities?
• What age should children be allowed to have a cell phone?
• Should libraries be replaced with unlimited access to e-books?
• Overall, has technology helped connect people or isolate them?
• Should self-driving cars be legal?
• Should all new buildings be energy efficient?
• Is Net Neutrality a good thing or a bad thing?
• Do violent video games encourage players to become violent in real life?

3 Bonus Tips for Crafting Your Persuasive Speech

Of course, giving a great persuasive speech requires more than just choosing a good topic. Follow the three tips below to create an outstanding speech that'll interest and impress your audience.

Do Your Research

For a persuasive speech, there's nothing worse than getting an audience question that shows you misunderstood the issue or left an important piece out. It makes your entire speech look weak and unconvincing.

Before you start writing a single word of your speech, be sure to do lots of research on all sides of the topic. Look at different sources and points of view to be sure you're getting the full picture, and if you know any experts on the topic, be sure to ask their opinion too.

Consider All the Angles

Persuasive speech topics are rarely black and white, which means there will be multiple sides and viewpoints on the topic. For example, for the topic "Should people be allowed to own pit bulls?" there are two obvious viewpoints: everyone should be allowed to own a pit bull if they want to, and no one should be allowed to own a pit bull. But there are other options you should also consider: people should only own a pit bull if they pass a dog training class, people should be able to own pit bulls, but only if it's the only dog they own, people should be able to own pi tbulls but only if they live a certain distance from schools, people should be able to own pit bulls only if the dog passes an obedience class, etc.

Thinking about all these angles and including them in your speech will make you seem well-informed on the topic, and it'll increase the quality of your speech by looking at difference nuances of the issue.

Know Your Audience

Whenever you give a speech, it's important to consider your audience, and this is especially true for persuasive speeches when you're trying to convince people to believe a certain viewpoint. When writing your speech, think about what your audience likely already knows about the topic, what they probably need explained, and what aspects of the topic they care about most. Also consider what the audience will be most concerned about for a certain topic, and be sure to address those concerns.

For example, if you're giving a speech to a Catholic organization on why you think priests should be allowed to marry, you don't need to go over the history of Catholicism or its core beliefs (which they probably already know), but you should mention any research or prominent opinions that support your view (which they likely don't know about). They may be concerned that priests who marry won't be as committed to God or their congregations, so be sure to address those concerns and why they shouldn't worry about them as much as they may think. Discussing your topic with people (ideally those with viewpoints similar to those of your future audience) before you give your speech is a good way to get a better understanding of how your audience thinks.

More Resources for Writing Persuasive Speeches

If you need more guidance or just want to check out some examples of great persuasive writing, consider checking out the following books:

• Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History by William Safire—This collection of great speeches throughout history will help you decide how to style your own argument.
• The Essentials of Persuasive Public Speaking by Sims Wyeth—For quick direct tips on public speaking, try this all-purpose guide.
• Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds by Carmine Gallo—This popular book breaks down what makes TED talks work and how you can employ those skills in your own presentations.
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman—These two recent speeches by contemporary writers offer stellar examples of how to craft a compelling (and engaging) argument.

Conclusion: Persuasive Speech Ideas

Good persuasive speech topics can be difficult to think of, but in this guide we've compiled a list of 105 interesting persuasive speech topics for you to look through.

The best persuasive speech ideas will be on a topic you're interested in, aren't overdone, and will be about something your audience cares about.

After you've chosen your topic, keep these three tips in mind when writing your persuasive speech:

• Do your research
• Consider all the angles
• Know your audience

What's Next?

Now that you have persuasive speech topics, it's time to hone your persuasive speech techniques. Find out what ethos, pathos, logos, and kairos are and how to use them here .

Looking to take your persuasive technique from speech to sheets (of paper)? Get our three key tips on how to write an argumentative essay , or learn by reading through our thorough breakdown of how to build an essay, step by step .

Want a great GPA? Check out our step-by-step guide to getting good grades in high school so you can have a stellar transcript.

Interested in learning about other great extracurricular opportunities? Learn more about job shadowing , community service , and volunteer abroad programs.

Still trying to figure out your courses? Check out our expert guide on which classes you should take in high school.

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Persuasive Speech Outline, with Examples

March 17, 2021 - Gini Beqiri

A persuasive speech is a speech that is given with the intention of convincing the audience to believe or do something. This could be virtually anything – voting, organ donation, recycling, and so on.

A successful persuasive speech effectively convinces the audience to your point of view, providing you come across as trustworthy and knowledgeable about the topic you’re discussing.

So, how do you start convincing a group of strangers to share your opinion? And how do you connect with them enough to earn their trust?

Topics for your persuasive speech

We’ve made a list of persuasive speech topics you could use next time you’re asked to give one. The topics are thought-provoking and things which many people have an opinion on.

When using any of our persuasive speech ideas, make sure you have a solid knowledge about the topic you’re speaking about – and make sure you discuss counter arguments too.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• All school children should wear a uniform
• Facebook is making people more socially anxious
• It should be illegal to drive over the age of 80
• Lying isn’t always wrong
• The case for organ donation

Read our full list of  75 persuasive speech topics and ideas .

Preparation: Consider your audience

As with any speech, preparation is crucial. Before you put pen to paper, think about what you want to achieve with your speech. This will help organise your thoughts as you realistically can only cover 2-4 main points before your  audience get bored .

It’s also useful to think about who your audience are at this point. If they are unlikely to know much about your topic then you’ll need to factor in context of your topic when planning the structure and length of your speech. You should also consider their:

• Cultural or religious backgrounds
• Shared concerns, attitudes and problems
• Shared interests, beliefs and hopes
• Baseline attitude – are they hostile, neutral, or open to change?

The factors above will all determine the approach you take to writing your speech. For example, if your topic is about childhood obesity, you could begin with a story about your own children or a shared concern every parent has. This would suit an audience who are more likely to be parents than young professionals who have only just left college.

Remember the 3 main approaches to persuade others

There are three main approaches used to persuade others:

The ethos approach appeals to the audience’s ethics and morals, such as what is the ‘right thing’ to do for humanity, saving the environment, etc.

Pathos persuasion is when you appeal to the audience’s emotions, such as when you  tell a story  that makes them the main character in a difficult situation.

The logos approach to giving a persuasive speech is when you appeal to the audience’s logic – ie. your speech is essentially more driven by facts and logic. The benefit of this technique is that your point of view becomes virtually indisputable because you make the audience feel that only your view is the logical one.

• Ethos, Pathos, Logos: 3 Pillars of Public Speaking and Persuasion

Ideas for your persuasive speech outline

1. structure of your persuasive speech.

The opening and closing of speech are the most important. Consider these carefully when thinking about your persuasive speech outline. A  strong opening  ensures you have the audience’s attention from the start and gives them a positive first impression of you.

You’ll want to  start with a strong opening  such as an attention grabbing statement, statistic of fact. These are usually dramatic or shocking, such as:

Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the food that they eat – Jamie Oliver

Another good way of starting a persuasive speech is to include your audience in the picture you’re trying to paint. By making them part of the story, you’re embedding an emotional connection between them and your speech.

You could do this in a more toned-down way by talking about something you know that your audience has in common with you. It’s also helpful at this point to include your credentials in a persuasive speech to gain your audience’s trust.

Obama would spend hours with his team working on the opening and closing statements of his speech.

2. Stating your argument

You should  pick between 2 and 4 themes  to discuss during your speech so that you have enough time to explain your viewpoint and convince your audience to the same way of thinking.

It’s important that each of your points transitions seamlessly into the next one so that your speech has a logical flow. Work on your  connecting sentences  between each of your themes so that your speech is easy to listen to.

Your argument should be backed up by objective research and not purely your subjective opinion. Use examples, analogies, and stories so that the audience can relate more easily to your topic, and therefore are more likely to be persuaded to your point of view.

3. Addressing counter-arguments

Any balanced theory or thought  addresses and disputes counter-arguments  made against it. By addressing these, you’ll strengthen your persuasive speech by refuting your audience’s objections and you’ll show that you are knowledgeable to other thoughts on the topic.

When describing an opposing point of view, don’t explain it in a bias way – explain it in the same way someone who holds that view would describe it. That way, you won’t irritate members of your audience who disagree with you and you’ll show that you’ve reached your point of view through reasoned judgement. Simply identify any counter-argument and pose explanations against them.

• Complete Guide to Debating

4. Closing your speech

Your closing line of your speech is your last chance to convince your audience about what you’re saying. It’s also most likely to be the sentence they remember most about your entire speech so make sure it’s a good one!

The most effective persuasive speeches end  with a  call to action . For example, if you’ve been speaking about organ donation, your call to action might be asking the audience to register as donors.

Practice answering AI questions on your speech and get  feedback on your performance .

If audience members ask you questions, make sure you listen carefully and respectfully to the full question. Don’t interject in the middle of a question or become defensive.

You should show that you have carefully considered their viewpoint and refute it in an objective way (if you have opposing opinions). Ensure you remain patient, friendly and polite at all times.

Example 1: Persuasive speech outline

This example is from the Kentucky Community and Technical College.

Specific purpose

To persuade my audience to start walking in order to improve their health.

Central idea

Regular walking can improve both your mental and physical health.

Introduction

Let’s be honest, we lead an easy life: automatic dishwashers, riding lawnmowers, T.V. remote controls, automatic garage door openers, power screwdrivers, bread machines, electric pencil sharpeners, etc., etc. etc. We live in a time-saving, energy-saving, convenient society. It’s a wonderful life. Or is it?

Continue reading

Example 2: Persuasive speech

Tips for delivering your persuasive speech

• Practice, practice, and practice some more . Record yourself speaking and listen for any nervous habits you have such as a nervous laugh, excessive use of filler words, or speaking too quickly.
• Show confident body language . Stand with your legs hip width apart with your shoulders centrally aligned. Ground your feet to the floor and place your hands beside your body so that hand gestures come freely. Your audience won’t be convinced about your argument if you don’t sound confident in it. Find out more about  confident body language here .
• Don’t memorise your speech word-for-word  or read off a script. If you memorise your persuasive speech, you’ll sound less authentic and panic if you lose your place. Similarly, if you read off a script you won’t sound genuine and you won’t be able to connect with the audience by  making eye contact . In turn, you’ll come across as less trustworthy and knowledgeable. You could simply remember your key points instead, or learn your opening and closing sentences.
• Remember to use facial expressions when storytelling  – they make you more relatable. By sharing a personal story you’ll more likely be speaking your truth which will help you build a connection with the audience too. Facial expressions help bring your story to life and transport the audience into your situation.
• Keep your speech as concise as possible . When practicing the delivery, see if you can edit it to have the same meaning but in a more succinct way. This will keep the audience engaged.

The best persuasive speech ideas are those that spark a level of controversy. However, a public speech is not the time to express an opinion that is considered outside the norm. If in doubt, play it safe and stick to topics that divide opinions about 50-50.

Bear in mind who your audience are and plan your persuasive speech outline accordingly, with researched evidence to support your argument. It’s important to consider counter-arguments to show that you are knowledgeable about the topic as a whole and not bias towards your own line of thought.

Persuasive Speeches — Types, Topics, and Examples

What is a persuasive speech?

In a persuasive speech, the speaker aims to convince the audience to accept a particular perspective on a person, place, object, idea, etc. The speaker strives to cause the audience to accept the point of view presented in the speech.

The success of a persuasive speech often relies on the speaker’s use of ethos, pathos, and logos.

Ethos is the speaker’s credibility. Audiences are more likely to accept an argument if they find the speaker trustworthy. To establish credibility during a persuasive speech, speakers can do the following:

Use familiar language.

Select examples that connect to the specific audience.

Utilize credible and well-known sources.

Logically structure the speech in an audience-friendly way.

Use appropriate eye contact, volume, pacing, and inflection.

Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions. Speakers who create an emotional bond with their audience are typically more convincing. Tapping into the audience’s emotions can be accomplished through the following:

Select evidence that can elicit an emotional response.

Use emotionally-charged words. (The city has a problem … vs. The city has a disease …)

Incorporate analogies and metaphors that connect to a specific emotion to draw a parallel between the reference and topic.

Utilize vivid imagery and sensory words, allowing the audience to visualize the information.

Employ an appropriate tone, inflection, and pace to reflect the emotion.

Logos appeals to the audience’s logic by offering supporting evidence. Speakers can improve their logical appeal in the following ways:

Use comprehensive evidence the audience can understand.

Confirm the evidence logically supports the argument’s claims and stems from credible sources.

Ensure that evidence is specific and avoid any vague or questionable information.

Types of persuasive speeches

The three main types of persuasive speeches are factual, value, and policy.

A factual persuasive speech focuses solely on factual information to prove the existence or absence of something through substantial proof. This is the only type of persuasive speech that exclusively uses objective information rather than subjective. As such, the argument does not rely on the speaker’s interpretation of the information. Essentially, a factual persuasive speech includes historical controversy, a question of current existence, or a prediction:

Historical controversy concerns whether an event happened or whether an object actually existed.

Questions of current existence involve the knowledge that something is currently happening.

Predictions incorporate the analysis of patterns to convince the audience that an event will happen again.

A value persuasive speech concerns the morality of a certain topic. Speakers incorporate facts within these speeches; however, the speaker’s interpretation of those facts creates the argument. These speeches are highly subjective, so the argument cannot be proven to be absolutely true or false.

A policy persuasive speech centers around the speaker’s support or rejection of a public policy, rule, or law. Much like a value speech, speakers provide evidence supporting their viewpoint; however, they provide subjective conclusions based on the facts they provide.

How to write a persuasive speech

Incorporate the following steps when writing a persuasive speech:

Step 1 – Identify the type of persuasive speech (factual, value, or policy) that will help accomplish the goal of the presentation.

Step 2 – Select a good persuasive speech topic to accomplish the goal and choose a position .

Step 3 – Locate credible and reliable sources and identify evidence in support of the topic/position. Revisit Step 2 if there is a lack of relevant resources.

Step 4 – Identify the audience and understand their baseline attitude about the topic.

Step 5 – When constructing an introduction , keep the following questions in mind:

What’s the topic of the speech?

What’s the occasion?

Who’s the audience?

What’s the purpose of the speech?

Step 6 – Utilize the evidence within the previously identified sources to construct the body of the speech. Keeping the audience in mind, determine which pieces of evidence can best help develop the argument. Discuss each point in detail, allowing the audience to understand how the facts support the perspective.

Step 7 – Addressing counterarguments can help speakers build their credibility, as it highlights their breadth of knowledge.

Step 8 – Conclude the speech with an overview of the central purpose and how the main ideas identified in the body support the overall argument.

Persuasive speech outline

One of the best ways to prepare a great persuasive speech is by using an outline. When structuring an outline, include an introduction, body, and conclusion:

Introduction

Attention Grabbers

Ask a question that allows the audience to respond in a non-verbal way; ask a rhetorical question that makes the audience think of the topic without requiring a response.

Incorporate a well-known quote that introduces the topic. Using the words of a celebrated individual gives credibility and authority to the information in the speech.

Offer a startling statement or information about the topic, typically done using data or statistics.

Provide a brief anecdote or story that relates to the topic.

Starting a speech with a humorous statement often makes the audience more comfortable with the speaker.

Provide information on how the selected topic may impact the audience .

Include any background information pertinent to the topic that the audience needs to know to understand the speech in its entirety.

Give the thesis statement in connection to the main topic and identify the main ideas that will help accomplish the central purpose.

Identify evidence

Summarize its meaning

Explain how it helps prove the support/main claim

Evidence 3 (Continue as needed)

Support 3 (Continue as needed)

Restate thesis

Review main supports

Concluding statement

Give the audience a call to action to do something specific.

Identify the overall importan ce of the topic and position.

Persuasive speech topics

The following table identifies some common or interesting persuasive speech topics for high school and college students:

Persuasive speech examples

The following list identifies some of history’s most famous persuasive speeches:

John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address: “Ask Not What Your Country Can Do for You”

Lyndon B. Johnson: “We Shall Overcome”

Marc Antony: “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar

Ronald Reagan: “Tear Down this Wall”

Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I a Woman?”

How to Write an Effective Persuasive Speech Outline: 5 Key Elements

• The Speaker Lab
• April 14, 2024

Table of Contents

If you’re a speaker, you are probably well familiar with the path from initial speech drafts to the day you actually present. By its nature, speech delivery is a journey filled with obstacles, yet it’s simultaneously an adventure in persuasion. With a well-crafted persuasive speech outline , you can do more than just present facts and figures to your audience. You can weave them into a narrative that captivates, convinces, and converts.

A meticulously planned persuasive speech outline isn’t just helpful; it’s essential. Crafting this blueprint carefully lets you deliver your message more effectively, making sure each point lands with the impact you’re aiming for. To help you achieve this impact, we have some tips and tricks for you to try.

Writing an Effective Persuasive Speech Outline

When we talk about persuasive speeches , we’re diving into the art of convincing others to see things from a certain point of view. Your speech is your one shot to grab attention, build your case, and inspire action. Your secret weapon for achieving this is your speech outline. In your speech outline, you want to touch on several key elements.

• Pick your fight: Start by zeroing in on what you really want to change or influence with this speech.
• Support your claim with evidence: Identify those key points that back up your stance to appeal to your audience’s rational side .
• The emotional hook: Weave in stories or facts that hit home emotionally .
• Avoid the kitchen sink approach: Don’t throw everything at them hoping something sticks. Be selective and strategic with the info you share.
• Nail that closer: Your conclusion isn’t just goodbye; it’s where you charge your audience with a call to action.

These elements form the backbone of your persuasive speech. By including these in your talk’s outline, you can’t go wrong.

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Establishing Your Main Objective and Structuring Your Points

Now that you have a general idea of what goes into a persuasive speech outline, let’s break a couple of these pieces down and look at them a little more closely.

Identifying the Purpose of Your Persuasive Speech

When writing your speech, you first need to nail down why you’re doing this in the first place. In other words, identify your main objective. After all, choosing to speak up isn’t merely about the desire to express oneself; it’s deeply rooted in understanding the effect you hope your discourse will unleash. Do you hope to sway opinions towards the belief that animal experimentation is a relic of the past? Or perhaps persuade them that social media does more good than harm? Whatever your cause, identifying your main objective will help keep you on track and avoid rambling.

Organizing Key Points for Maximum Impact

Once you’ve determined what you want to persuade your audience of, you can start building your argument. Specifically, you can determine your key points. Key points support your position on a topic, proving to your audience that you have actual reasons for taking your position.

To pack the most punch, arrange these key points in a logical order. Consider how you might connect your key points. Are there some that can be grouped together? The flow of your argument matters just as much as the argument itself, and a disjointed argument won’t do anyone any favors. As you organize your key points, consider these tips:

• Lead with strength, but don’t throw all your cards out at once.
• Build upon each point; important transitions between them can make or break audience engagement.
• Finish strong by tying back everything to the emotional chord you struck at the beginning.

Nailing these steps will ensure that when you speak, your message doesn’t just echo—it resonates.

Selecting Compelling Topics for Your Persuasive Speeches

Let’s face it, picking the right topic for your persuasive speech outline is half the battle. But what makes a topic not just good, but great? First off, it needs to spark interest, both yours and your audience’s. If you’re not fired up about it, chances are they won’t be either. Second, make sure the topic is something relevant. It should resonate with your listeners’ experiences or touch on their concerns and aspirations. Lastly, your topic has to be something you can research and back up with solid facts and expert opinions.

For ideas to get you started, check out a variety of speech topics here .

Enhancing Persuasion Through Rhetorical Appeals

The art of persuasion is something that’s been studied since ancient Greece. Back then, Greek philosopher Aristotle came up with the three rhetorical appeals . Each one described a different way of convincing your audience of your position. Together, these appeals help you form a rock-strong argument, making them worth learning.

Building Credibility with Ethos

To get people on your side, you first need to win their trust. That’s where ethos comes into play. Demonstrating to your listeners that you’re both trustworthy and deserving of their attention hinges on transparency about your qualifications, genuine self, and the wisdom gained from occasional setbacks. Letting folks know why they should listen can make all the difference.

Connecting with the Audience Through Pathos

At some point, we’ve all been moved by a story or an ad because it hit right in the feels. That sort of emotional appeal is called pathos , and it’s powerful stuff. If you want people really invested in what you’re saying, then be sure to use this appeal in your presentation. To harness the power of pathos, try telling a story , especially one your audience can relate to. The key is authenticity—sharing true experiences resonates more than anything fabricated ever could.

Strengthening Arguments with Logos

Last but not least, we have logos, our logical appeal. Oftentimes, this logical appeal entails facts and data points, which are used to back up what you’re selling, turning skeptics into believers. But just because you’re listing facts and figures doesn’t mean this part has to be boring. To keep your audience engaged, craft persuasive narratives and then ground them in robust proof. Giving your story to go with your numbers doesn’t just help keep them engaged, it also helps the information stick.

The Importance of Supporting Evidence and Counterarguments

In your persuasive speech outline, you need to note compelling evidence for each key point. In addition, you’ll want to address opposing views.

Gathering and Presenting Convincing Evidence

No matter how trustworthy you seem, or how compelling your stories are, most people need tangible proof. That’s where concrete evidence steps into the spotlight. To fortify your argument and boost its believability, sprinkle in a mix of hard data, customer stories, numerical evidence, and endorsements from authorities. To illustrate this data for your audience, you may find it helpful to create a slideshow . Supporting every assertion with research is an essential part of any persuasive speech. Without it, arguments inevitably sound flimsy and unconvincing.

Addressing Opposing Views Effectively

Although it may seem counterintuitive, address counter-arguments head-on in your persuasive speech outline. It might feel like walking into enemy territory but it actually strengthens your own argument. By acknowledging opposing views, you’re showing that not only do you know what they are, but also that they don’t scare you.

When you address these counter-arguments, demonstrate your understanding. Again, this is where your good research skills are going to come in handy. Present the facts, and ditch biased explanations. In other words, don’t mock or belittle the other side’s viewpoint or you’ll undermine your own trustworthiness. Instead, explain opposing viewpoints with neutrality.

Adopting this strategy not only neutralizes possible objections but also enhances your stance. Plus, this makes for an engaging dialogue between both sides of any debate, which keeps audience members hooked from start to finish.

In essence, tackling counter-arguments is less about winning over naysayers and more about enriching discussions around hot-button issues. At its core, persuasion isn’t just convincing folks; it’s sparking conversations worth having.

Crafting a Captivating Introduction and Conclusion

Now that you have the body of your persuasive speech outline, it’s time to talk beginning and end. To really hit your message home, you want to grab your audience’s attention at the beginning and call them to action at the end.

Creating an Engaging Hook to Capture Attention

The opening of your speech is where you need a good first impression. To hook your audience, consider starting with an intriguing question, a surprising fact, or even a short story related to your topic. Whatever route you choose, keep it interesting and concise, so that you can transition into the rest of your persuasive speech outline.

Concluding with a Strong Call to Action

Crafting strong conclusions is about leaving your readers feeling pumped and ready to jump into action. After all, if you’ve argued convincingly enough, your audience should be ready to act. To channel this energy, urge listeners towards specific actions. Here are some strategies:

• Suggest clear next steps: Don’t leave your audience hanging wondering what’s next. Give them concrete steps they can take immediately after reading.
• Create urgency: Why wait? Let folks know why now is the perfect time to act.
• Show benefits: Paint vivid pictures of how taking action will positively impact their lives or solve their problems.

With that captivating hook and a decisive call-to-action, you are one step closer to presenting an unforgettable speech.

Utilizing Monroe’s Motivated Sequence for Persuasive Structure

As you finish off your persuasive speech outline, you may be wondering how best to structure your speech. If that’s you, then Purdue University professor Alan H. Monroe has some answers. In his book “Monroe’s Principles of Speech,” the professor outlines Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, the best structure for persuasive speeches. Each step is broken down below.

Attention: Grabbing the Audience’s Focus

You’ve got something important to say. But first, you need them to listen. Start with a bang. Throwing out a shocking truth, posing a thought-provoking query, or sharing an enthralling tale could work magic in grabbing their attention. It’s all about making heads turn and ears perk up.

Need: Highlighting the Issue at Hand

Now that they’re listening, show them there’s a gaping hole in their lives that only your message can fill. Paint a vivid picture of the problem your speech addresses.

Satisfaction: Proposing a Solution

This is where you come in as the hero with a plan. Introduce your solution clearly and convincingly. How does it patch things up? Why does it outshine merely applying quick fixes to deep-rooted issues? Give your audience hope.

Visualization: Helping the Audience Visualize Benefits

Show them life on the other side of adopting your idea or product—brighter, easier, better. Use vivid imagery and relatable scenarios so they can see themselves reaping those benefits firsthand.

Action: Encouraging Audience Action

Last step: nudge them from “maybe” to “yes.” Make this part irresistible by being clear about what action they should take next—and why now’s the time to act. Whether signing up, voting, or changing behavior, make sure they know how easy taking that first step can be.

Learn more about Monroe’s Motivated Sequence here .

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Overcoming Public Speaking Fears for Effective Delivery

Let’s face it, the thought of public speaking can turn even the most confident folks into a bundle of nerves. But hey, you’ve got this. Dive into these expert strategies and you’ll find yourself delivering speeches like a seasoned orator in no time.

Techniques to Build Confidence in Public Speaking

If you’re feeling nervous on the big day, these three techniques are perfect for you. Take a look!

• Breathe: Deep breathing is your secret weapon against those pesky nerves. It tells your brain that everything is going to be okay.
• Pose like a superhero: Stand tall and strike a power pose before you go on stage. This isn’t just fun; science backs it up as a confidence booster .
• Kick perfectionism to the curb: Aim for connection with your audience, not perfection. Mistakes make you human and more relatable.

The goal here is to calm yourself enough to be able to deliver your persuasive speech outline with confidence. Even if you still feel a little nervous, you can still present an awesome speech. You just don’t want those nerves running the show.

Practicing Your Speech for Perfect Execution

If you know that you tend to get nervous when public speaking, then you don’t want to be running through you speech for the first time on the big day. Instead, practice beforehand using these techniques.

• The mirror is your friend: Practice in front of a mirror to catch any odd gestures or facial expressions.
• Vary your voice: As you deliver your speech, let your voice rise and fall to match what you’re sharing. Avoid speaking in a monotone.
• Say no to memorization: Rather than memorizing every word, learn key points by heart. You want to sound natural out there.

Remembering these steps won’t just help you tackle public speaking fear, but will also polish those all-important public speaking skills .

Once you’ve honed the skills you need to write a persuasive speech outline, the only thing left to do is to get out there and practice them. So take the rhetorical appeals—ethos, logos, and pathos—and practice weaving each element into your speech. Or take Monroe’s Motivated Sequence and work on structuring your outline accordingly.

Prepare well and when you hit the stage, you have not just a well-prepared persuasive speech outline, but also the power to alter perspectives, challenge the status quo, or even change lives.

• Last Updated: April 11, 2024

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237 Easy Persuasive Speech Topics and Guide

A persuasive speech is a speech written and delivered to convince people of the speaker’s viewpoint. It uses words to make the audience ‘see’ the speaker’s point of view and to ‘sway’ them into agreeing with it.

It is not a simple matter of presenting gathered facts and evidence. More than just seeing why the speaker thinks that way, a persuasive speech tries to persuade the audience in accepting that line of thought and make it the way they, too, think.

To jump to the persuasive speech topic section, click here .

This is where it differs from an argument. The difference between an argumentative and persuasive speech is that one tries to prove a point while the other tries to affect the listener’s perspective.

• Informative Speech Topics and Ideas
• Toastmasters Project 9: Persuade With Power

Table of Contents

Satisfaction

Visualization, writing introduction for persuasive speech, persuasive speech videos, persuasive speech topics, persuasive speech topics about animals and pets, persuasive speech topics about automobiles, persuasive speech topics about education, persuasive speech topics about environment, persuasive speech topics about ethical issues, persuasive speech topics about food, persuasive speech topics about health.

Some examples of a persuasive speech are sales pitch, the speech of politicians, the speech of environmentalists, the speech of feminists, the speech of animal activists, etc.

In the above examples, you must have noticed that all these kind of speech has a goal. A sales pitch is to get you to buy something, politicians give speeches to get you to vote for them, and environmentalists, feminists, and animal activists have a cause to advocate. They all want you to ‘do’ something.

Action is a persuasive speech’s end goal. Ultimately, the speaker wants to persuade you to do something. And why would you do that?

Say, an environmentalist wants people to re-cycle because they think or know that it is good for the environment. Now, it is the people who need to know and think recycling is good for the environment. Only then they would recycle.

Therefore, a more complete definition of a persuasive speech would be “Speech that convinces the audience of a certain idea to inspire them into the desired action.”

Art of Persuasion

Persuasive speech is an art form.

Take an example of a man who was begging in the street. He had a hat in front of him and a sign that said “I am blind, please help” He got a few coins. Then, a lady came along, turned the sign around, and wrote something. A lot more people started to give the man money. His hat was filled with coins. What did that lady write? What persuaded people to give?

“Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.”

The second line got him more money because it ‘affected’ people, it appealed to their emotions more than the straightforward “I am blind, please help.” This is called pathos.

According to Aristotle, there are three components of or modes to affect people. They are Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

Ethos in layman’s terms is credibility or authority. The dictionary defines it as “the character or disposition of a community, group, person, etc.” So, you need to have that disposition that makes you a reliable or trustable person.

For example, a woman talking about women’s problems is more likely to have an effect on the audience than a male speaker. The principal comes into the class and tells you ‘Tomorrow is a holiday and no questions will be asked. But if your teacher says so, you will investigate first. You will be more eager to listen to a popular person in the field than to a newbie.

It is having an effect on people by your person so that they would be more receiving of you.

Pathos in Greek means ‘suffering’ or ‘experience’. It is generally defined as an appeal to people’s emotions. Like in the story of the blind boy above, Pathos is to tap into people’s experience of suffering in order to move them towards a certain action.

Of course, those people have not experienced blindness but they can imagine losing the privilege of sight that they now possess. In simple words, it is to evoke feelings of pity, fear, anger, and such.

Logos is the logical appeal. This is to persuade by the means of reasoning. If the speaker makes a claim such as ‘polythene bags should be banned, then he should give a reason as to ‘why’ like ‘polythene bags do not biodegrade and continue to pollute the environment or facts like ‘Thousands of bags are produced every week and are dumped somewhere after use’ or ‘every bag produced since 19_ still exists somewhere on earth today.’

Presentation- Monroe’s motivated sequence

Presentation is very important. It is the backbone. How you perform your speech, how you deliver the words have the maximum effect on people. Therefore, a speech needs to be organized.

Monroe’s motivated sequence is a technique for organizing persuasive speech. It consists of the following steps.

Grab their attention. Start with a startling statement, an intriguing story, a dramatic action, anything that will make the audience take notice of you. This is also the introduction part. Hook them. Build their interest.

Now, convince the people that there is a problem. More than that, convince them that action needs to be taken against the problem, that it will not go away by itself. Tap into their imagination to show how this problem affects them. Use reasons and facts to support your claims and to impress upon them the need for change.

The audience should be looking forward to the ‘solution’ to the problem. They should want to know what they can do. In this step, introduce your solution. Demonstrate or give examples to make the audience understand how it works and how it solves the problem. Use testimonials or statistics to prove the effectiveness of that solution.

Paint a world where nothing was done and how it affected them. Also, paint a world where they did as you suggested and how it changed the situation for the better. Use vivid imagery to make them ‘feel’ the troubles and relief of not doing and doing as you said. Create a viable scenario. It should be relatable and believable.

Call to action. Strike when the iron is hot. It should be something that they can readily do and immediately. More the time passes less they are likely to follow with it as other things in life take precedence and the feeling of urgency is lost. Make it easy too. Do most of the handiwork so they have to put the least effort.

This is a classic technique developed by Alan Monroe in the mid-1930s. It is still the most effective basis for many persuasive speeches.

Some people are born with the skill of persuasion while others can build on it by applying such techniques and practicing. Here are some Persuasive Speech Topics that you can practice with.

Take a look at the video below. It explains how to write an introduction for a persuasive speech.

Below are 6 sample videos of persuasive speeches.

• Why homeschooling is good and should be promoted. (School)

Some students do better in a group with a healthy competition to keep them motivated. Some children are better off studying on their own, continuing at their own fast or slow pace which is hindered when moving along with other children.

• Students should get minimum of 45 minutes tiffin break. (School)

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. Keeping children cooped up in a room for a long is not good. They need regular refreshing breaks to revitalize, to talk with their friends…

• Is it racism to ban Marijuana when smoking tobacco is legal? (Funny)

Everybody knows cigarettes are harmful and addictive. Yet, there are big industries manufacturing these drugs on a large scale. Then there is Marijuana that is less harmful, less addictive, and has dozens of use; is it not racism to ban it?

• Some juveniles needs to be prosecuted as adults. (School?)

More and more teenagers are committing heinous crimes. They know they will get off easy, that they will not face serious consequences. According to the level of savagery committed, juveniles should at times be prosecuted as adults.

• Are pretty or handsome students really dumber? (School)

This is just a stereotype, just like saying women are less logical and others. Or. That appears to hold true in most cases. As time is limited, people who spend more time on appearance spend less time learning and those who spend time learning fails to look after their appearance.

• Proficiency in academics is not the only measure of intelligence. (School)

Are grades everything? Different people possess different types of intelligence but grades measure only a few kinds. Is it not like judging a fish on its ability to climb a tree?

• What is the right age to start owing a mobile phone? (Parenting)

Most parents believe that the right age to own mobile is when children can pay for it so that they can be aware of their expenditure. Else, they might engage in long, unnecessary conversation and…

• Should children be bought a mobile phone for emergencies? (Parenting)

Mobiles or cell phones are the fastest means of communication. Should children, therefore, be allowed to owe mobiles so that they can contact their guardians in case of emergency?

• Homework should be banned. (School)

Children spend most of their waking hours in school. They have only a few hours at the home to do things other than academics. But homework is the tag along with that…

• Should men pay child support even if pregnancy was a one sided decision? (Feminism)

If a woman decides to bear a child despite her partner’s protest, is he still obligated to provide monetary support upon divorce for the same reason?

• Laws should not be based on religion.

There are many religions. Their ideas vary. But the law should be uniform. Basing laws on certain religions is like forcing the ideas of that religion on every citizen.

• Birth controls should be free and easily available. (Feminism?)

If teen pregnancy is to be avoided, birth controls should be free and easily available with no parental permission required. Imagine asking your parents if you can have sex or parents permitting it. It is the same as unavailability of the contraceptives which takes us back to square one.

• Honking unnecessarily should be punishable.

Honking during a traffic jam is not going to clear it up. It only disturbs and aggravates everyone else. Honking at girls is offensive. Honking to bully is wrong. Honking unnecessarily like this should be considered criminal and punished.

• Divorced and happy parents is better for the children than living in a conflicted home.

Some parents stay together for the sake of their children but fail to get along. This creates a very tense environment and that is not how a home should be.

• Hiding your HIV status in a relationship should be punishable by law.

HIV is a serious disease with no cure available. If a person is aware of his/her HIV positivity, withholding the information and therefore transmitting it to the unsuspecting partner in the process is criminal.

• Legalization of prostitution has more positive effects than negative.

Stopping prostitution is impossible. They will continue to operate underground where they face many problems. Girls get trafficked, tricked, or forced into it. Making it legal will at least ensure safety and justice to the sex workers and will also help control forced labor.

• Schools should take bullying more seriously. / Why bullying is a serious offense. (School)

Bullying is very damaging to the victim and can take a very dangerous turn. But it is dismissed as children’s play in most cases. We don’t realize its seriousness until it is too late…

• Partial Birth Abortion is a sin.

In this method of abortion, a living baby is pulled out from the womb feet first. The base of the skull is punctured and the brain is removed with a powerful suction machine. This is no different from murder. It is usually allowed by law only in order to save the mother’s life but many healthy mothers’ babies are aborted this way every year…

• All institutions like schools, colleges and offices should start only after 10.

When such institutions start early, people need to wake up earlier for preparation. Waking up feeling unrested can make a person inactive, irritable, and unproductive. Scientists say that a person’s mind is not fully awake until 10 in the morning…

• Sexual relationship before marriage is not a crime.

Sex is a biological need and a healthy sex life has a lot of mental and physical benefits. If the partners involved are adults and there is mutual consent…

• School and teachers should stay away from student’s personal life. (School?)

Every institution has some rule. This rule should govern the members within the institution. But some schools like to take this beyond the school grounds and have control over what students do and do not in their personal time.

• Energy drinks should be considered borderline medicines. (Health)

Energy drinks provide added energy. So, it should only be consumed when your body lacks energy, in a weakened state, like medicine. Plus, it contains a lot of caffeine that does more harm than good…

• Parents should properly answer their children’s curiosities. (Parenting)

‘How does a baby come?’ children ask and parents tell them about gods and storks. This raises more questions and does nothing but confuse the child. Try to give an anatomically correct answer without being graphic. Never try to dismiss any of their questions or scold them…

• Euthanasia, is it ethical?

A person should get to choose whether they want to live or die in dire conditions. Or. Euthanasia is no different from suicide. Supporting euthanasia is like supporting suicide.

• Prospective parent(s) should get a psychiatric approval before adoption. (Parenting)

We want to find a home for every orphaned child but we want a happy home. There are many sick people out there who want to adopt a child only to abuse them or for some other kind of personal gain…

• Cigarettes should be illegal.

Cigarettes are like drugs and they should be illegal just like drugs are. It has adverse health effects on the smoker as well as people around him…

• Smoking in public places should be fined.

Cigarettes are very harmful and their harmful smoke does not affect the smoker alone. It affects the surrounding people as well. Not all people are suicidal that way. Why should they suffer? When one’s action harms the other, it is an offense.

• Are uniforms necessary?

Uniform brings uniformity. It eliminates frivolous fashion competition which is not what school is for… Or. Clothes are a form of expression. Students spend most of their time in school. They should be comfortable with what they wear…

• Number of children one can have should be limited and children with previous partner(s) counts.

Four from two, eight from four; population multiplies that way. Already, the earth has become so crowded. If this is to continue, we will rid this world of ourselves.

• Would it be ethical to genetically design babies? (Technology?)

Yes. Why not use science to cure diseases and eradicate the possibility of a child’s suffering? Or. This method can be misused to alter more than just a threat of diseases and that will disturb the diversity in the gene pool…

• ‘Living together’ relationships, good or bad?

Marriage cannot keep together those who want to go their separate ways and those who want to together do not need such a constitution.

• ‘Early to sleep, early to rise’ benefits.

They say ‘Early to sleep and early to rise makes a man healthy and wise.’ This was not said without a reason. Going to bed early and waking up early the next day have many benefits, for both our mind and body.

• Every property should compulsorily have trees. (Environment)

Trees produce oxygen and filters air. We need more trees. But the population is increasing. We are cutting down trees to erect concrete buildings instead…

• Fast foods are overpriced.

Fast foods like French fries, burgers, pizza, etc. cost way more than they actually should. The restaurants are ripping us off. Take fries for example…

• Using animals as test subjects is cruel and unfair. (Animal rights)

For you, it is one animal among many. But for that particular animal, one life is all it has and you have no right to play with it.

• Why Gay Marriage should be legalized. (Gay rights)

Homosexuality is not a disease. It is how people are. They want to marry their partner for the same reasons heterosexual couples do. Not legalizing gay marriage is discrimination…

• Marriage is not about procreation. (Gay rights)

One, almost logical, reason people give against gay marriage is that they cannot bear kids because of which it is definitely not natural/ biological or ‘how god intended’. But marriage is not about procreation. It is about you and your comfort or happiness, about who you want to spend the rest of your life with.

• Electronics are stealing childhood.

These days, children spend a lot of time on mobile phones, computers, or other electronic devices instead of running around, going out, and playing as a child should.

• Teens cannot be good parents. (School/ Parenting)

Some teens decide to start a family when the female partner gets pregnant. While this is seen as an admirable option against abortion, are teen parents really good for the kid?

• Ads should be tested for sexist messages before being aired. (Feminism)

Not only children but everyone learns from what they see and hear. The subliminal sexist messages in ads impart gender roles on their minds, undoing a lot of feminists’ efforts. But mostly, it brainwashes the coming generation and we should not allow that.

• Protection and breeding of white tigers is illogical; why hinder natural selection? (Environment/ Animal rights)

White tigers do not fare well in the wild due to their color. It was a case of mutation that would have naturally been eliminated if humans had not interfered. I am not saying all living white tigers must be killed but why are people breeding it in captivity instead of letting it die out? Just because they’re pretty and we like pretty?

• Exotic pets are not pets. (Animal rights)

Exotic animals belong in the wild. They need to be with their own kind, living in their natural habitat. They should not be isolated in people’s homes where their mobility is limited.

• Feminism should be made a compulsory subject in high school and college. (Feminism)

Feminism is an eye-opener. It is something every man and woman should know of. Thus, it should be a compulsory and common subject instead of being exclusive to Arts or few other faculty.

• Age 16 is not juvenile. (School?)

Are 16-year-olds really kids? Can they not be expected to know the difference between right and wrong? Maybe they do not know it is a crime to download songs and movies but what about rape and murder? If 16 is old enough to drive in most countries, it is old enough to be tried as an adult.

• Playing Video games for few hours does good. (School/ parenting?)

It has been found out that playing a few hours of video game help improve people’s hand-eye coordination and enhances cognitive power. Also, games based on real history or science can impart knowledge…

• Read before agreeing to sites and applications.

We download apps and software and signup on different sites. Each of these requires us to click ‘I agree’. We click this ‘I agree’ without actually reading the agreement. This can later cause problems…

• Is death penalty ethical?

It is not ethical to eliminate people like we try to eliminate diseases. What about human rights? Or. What kind of rights for the person who does not respect others’ rights and freedom? It is a befitting punishment.

• Send drug dealers to prison but addicts for rehabilitation.

Drug Addicts are victims too. They need rehabilitation, not prison. Dealers are the real criminals.

• Parents should cook tastier option instead of making children eat the healthy foods they don’t want.

If not meat then milk and pulses. There is a range of choices for the required nutrition. So why should children have to eat something they don’t like? Just give them a tastier option.

• If girls can wear pants, boys can wear skirts. (Funny?)

Is all equality fighting for girls only? What about boys’ rights? When girls can wear boys’ clothes why can boys not wear that of girls?

• Being slim is not just about looks but health too. (Health?)

Beauties were those who were plum. Now, skinny is the fashion. But to those who want to be ‘comfortable’ in their size, know that a slim body is more than just looks.

• There should be one holiday in the middle of workdays.

Saturday and Sunday’s rest do not keep us charged up to Friday. This makes people less productive by Thursday and Friday. A break in the middle would be wonderfully refreshing…

• Considering the real meaning behind Nursery Rhymes, should they be taught to children? (School)

The fun nursery rhyme “Ring around the Rosie” is actually about the bubonic plague that killed nearly 15% of the country. This is only an example among many. Consider the lyrics of “Three blind mice” that goes “… Who cut off their tails, With a carving knife.” Is it okay to teach these to the children?

• Countries should provide free Wi-Fi in tourist destinations.

Doing this will help tourists as they will be able to contact their people without wandering around confused in a foreign land. This will definitely increase the flow of both national and international tourists. It will be most helpful to students from abroad.

• Know the woes of genetically modified Chickens.

To meet the demand of the growing population, chickens are fed hormones and other drugs to make them grow faster and fat, especially the meat in the breast area. Because of this, the chickens cripple under their own weight. They suffer terribly…

• Children should be allowed to use electronics like mobile, notebooks etc. during breaks. (Students)

Using electronics during class is certainly bad and for a number of reasons. But break times belong to the students. Breaks are for recreation. If students choose to enjoy electronics, what is wrong with that?

• Teachers, too, should keep their mobiles in silent during class.

Class time is for teaching and learning. Students should keep their mobile in silence so as to not disturb the class. But, so should the teacher. They shouldn’t pick up their call during class.

• Humans are consuming way more salt than necessary. (Health)

Sodium is important. But the larger amount of sodium intake has often been associated with an increase in blood pressure that leads to strokes. 1500 to 2300mg is the maximum amount per day.

• Benefits of donating blood.

Donating blood is the right thing to do. It saves lives. There are a few moral reasons as such to donate blood but do you know that you are not losing anything either? Donating blood is good for your own health too…

• Why become an organ donor?

Perfectly healthy people die when trying to donate their organs to their loved ones. Even if they survive, they may have to face complications and they are now, somehow, deficient. If an organ could be got…

• Original organic fruits taste better than the hybrids.

Hybrid fruits are larger and juicer but it lacks in terms of taste. The taste tastes diluted…

• Why people who have should give.

Many people suffer from poverty. They have a hard time meeting basic needs like food, shelter, and clothes.

• Why suicide over ‘love troubles’ is stupid. (Students)

Life moves on. Time heals. Things will happen if you continue to live. But the exaggerated fictional idea of love that the movies market has…

• Why women should earn irrespective of their husband’s economic status. (Feminism)

Be independent. Money is power. Do not let anyone have an upper hand and be vulnerable to possible abuse…

• Recycle e-waste. (Environment)

E-waste contains many recoverable materials such as aluminum, copper, gold, silver etc. Reusing this will take a load off of natural resources. E-waste also contains toxins like mercury, lead, beryllium, and others that will inevitably infuse into soil and water.

• Do not tolerate abuse, speak out. (Feminism)

Certainly, nobody enjoys abuse? Then why do women continue to stay in abusive relationship despite being educated and holding a good job? Why do they tolerate other kinds of abuse as well? There are many reasons for this…

• Every citizen should be required to, at least, pass high school. (School)

Up to high school, the education is basic. Imagine needing to stop ocean pollution. An educated person would be more easily persuaded or would know why ocean pollution is bad. Or. There are good and bad people. Education will teach the good how to be good and may persuade the bad…

• Hostels, is it good or bad for children? (Parenting)

Hostels teach children independence. They learn to do a lot in their own. Or. No one can take better care of children than their parents. Children need parents’ love and support. Away in the hostel, surrounded by children no wiser than themselves…

• Teachers should discuss among themselves to avoid giving too much homework. (School)

After studying for hours in school, spending all the hours in-home doing homework will mentally tire the student. Homework should be very light. But light homework of all the teachers added will take up all of the students’ time. So…

• Importance of clubs in school or colleges. (School)

School and college clubs are the best way to learn different valuable skills in. In school and college-level clubs, the eligibility for membership is less strict and one gets to learn from the more skilled seniors.

• Should plastic surgery be so commercial?

Everyone wants to look good. When accidents or attacks disfigure us, we can turn to plastic surgery to try and gain back our lost selves. But intentionally altering ourselves to…

• Online piracy should be monitored more strictly.

People have a right to their intellectual property. It is so easy to find and download pirated materials that it seems non-criminal…

• Are single-sex schools better than coed? (School)

According to research done in Korea, students from single-sex schools scored better than those from coed and had more chances of pursuing college-level education. However, this is from a general viewpoint. When considering students at an individual level, it really depends on what kind of environment that particular student does better in.

• Spaying or neutering pets is good or bad? (Animal right)

Some say that neutering or spaying pets have a lot of benefits, both for the animal and the owner. Others say that neutering or spaying does not change much but only invites diseases upon the poor animal.

• Are master’s degree or doctorate really necessary? (Students)

High School teaches us the basics and a bachelor is more career-oriented. We can get a good job after bachelor and hone our skills for a better position. Is a master’s and higher degree really important when we can learn more in the field?

• Who is more responsible for poaching? Poachers or buyers? (Animal right)

This may be an ‘egg first or chicken question. Scientists have now found out that chickens come first but the question ‘Poacher or buyers’ remains.

• What kind of food should school or college canteen offer? (Student)

From unhealthy commercial food items to unappetizing bland gibberish; can school or college canteens not offer an in-between option? What would be best for the students?

• What age is proper to talk about the birds and the bees? (Parenting)

From the time a child starts asking about sex is the time from when to start talking about the birds and the bees. Children as young as 4-5 years old are curious about where a baby comes from. Answer them truthfully but avoid being graphic. Also, answer only what they ask.

• Fee for facilities aside, the tuition fee should be fixed by the government. (Student)

Schools and colleges take a ridiculous amount of tuition fees. It is understandable that according to the facilities provided, the fee may be less or more but the tuition fee, at least, should be a fixed amount that greedy schools cannot increase as they wish.

• How long should a drunk driver lose his license for?

Drinking and driving can be fatal to both the driver and an innocent passerby. But people do not take it seriously. They think they can handle their liquor and end up causing accidents. This is absolute carelessness.

• The amount of water one should drink per day. (Health)

About 60% of the human body is water. We continually lose this water through skin and urine. This causes dehydration…

• Aliens exist. (Paranormal)

There have been many UFO sightings and stories of alien abduction. Even in the old age paintings, cave paintings, Sanskrit scrolls, the extraterrestrial life form is evident. Scientists have found other habitable planets. An intelligent life form somewhere other than Earth is no longer an idea of a fantasist…

• White meat over red meat or the other way around? (Health)

White meat is less fatty but red meat contains more vitamins like zinc, iron, and B vitamins…

• Why religion and science should go hand in hand. / Why religion should evolve with scientific discoveries. (Philosophy)

Science explores the universe for answers while religion makes claims about it. Science is open to change, it acknowledges that it can err and backs its claims with evidence. Religion on the other hand is a ‘belief’ system

• Should astrologers, mediums and the likes be arrested for fraud? (Paranormal)

Do heavenly bodies really affect our personality or future? Do dead ones really become spirits and can be contacted through mediums? Or are these all just a big hoax?

• Cats or dogs?

Are you a cat person or a dog person? Say why a dog is better than a cat as a pet or that cat makes a better pet.

• Benefits of eating fruit over drinking its juice. (Health)

There is a whole fruit and we throw away more than half of the substance when choosing to drink its juice even though eating the fruit itself is healthier because of the fiber it contains.

• Women shouldn’t have to change their last name after marriage. (Feminism)

Having to change our last name after marriage is sexist. It confirms the power males hold over the women in our patriarchal society.

• Internet promotes communication, not kill it.

Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, messenger, and others keep us in contact with many friends that we would otherwise have forgotten. It is an easy means of communication…

• Does pressure build or break a person?

Pressure is healthy. It drives us. Or. Yes. Pressure drives us. It drives us nuts.

• Hiring volunteers on zero pay is cruel.

Volunteers are those who want to donate labor. They need not be paid for their work but what about their expenses like transportation and others? These kinds of expenses, at least, should be covered.

• Learning multiple language widens our perception of the world.

There are always those words that cannot be exactly translated to another language. This is because that way of thinking does not exist in that other language. It is like the egg of Cristopher. We discover a new way of expressing ourselves, one we couldn’t think of in the limitation of our own language.

• Oceans are not trash bins. (Environment)

Tons of human waste are thrown into the ocean. This is creating a big problem in the ocean ecosystem…

• Killing for fun is inhuman, hunting is inhuman. (Animal rights)

How to have fun with animals? By playing with them, baby talking to them, watching them in their weird but fun action. Not by chasing them down and killing them.

• Cigarette, alcohol or drugs are not the answer for stress or other problems in life.

People tend to depend on harmful substances like cigarettes, alcohol, or drugs when faced with a problem or when under stress. These substances do not cure stress but could be a self-harming method of coping with problems. People under stress tend to show more unhealthy behaviors such as these…

• Music heals.

On hearing good music, the brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is an essential chemical that plays a number of important roles in the brain and body. Music has also proven effective against stress…

• Why breakfast is the important meal of the day. (Health)

Breakfast is the first meal after a long gap during the night. It provides us with vital nutrients like calcium, vitamins, minerals, and energy…

• Fairytales should be re-written for the next generation children.

Fairytales often star a damsel in distress who not only ‘waits’ for a handsome rescuer but also possesses subjugating qualities like obedience, daintiness, etc. It imparts sexist values in young minds…

• How a time table can help manage our daily lives.

People do not realize how time table can make our day-to-day lives much more manageable and therefore fruitful or efficient. Some find it tedious and some pretentious…

• Everyone should learn swimming.

Swimming is not just for fun like cycling. It could save someone’s life. It is an important survival skill that everyone should know of.

• Good thoughts lead to good actions.

Our actions result from our thoughts. Action is a mind’s reflection…

• Benefits of meditation. (Health)

Meditation has a lot of benefits, both on body and mind. It reduces stress, improves concentration, reduces irritability, increases perseverance, etc…

• Zoos are not big enough for wild animals. (Animal rights)

How large can you make a zoo? And how can it mimic nature when different animals are confined separately. Wild animals belong in the wild.

Some more Persuasive Speech Topics:

• Why is adopting a pet better than buying one?
• How does having a pet better your everyday life?
• Having a snake as a pet is as cool as it sounds
• Should you get rid of a pet that harms another person?
• Is breeding pets for sale unethical?
• Selfies with animals in tourist locations should be made equal
• A dog is the perfect pet
• Why a pet is essential for a growing child
• Owning a pet makes you healthier
• Slaughterhouses are unethical
• Animals are facing extinction, we should do something about it
• Why wild animals should be left in the wild
• Petting exotic animals should be made illegal
• Why dolphin farming is horrific
• The Yulin Dog festival displays one of the worst sides of humans
• Why neutering your pets is wrong
• Advantages of owning a horse(besides looking fantastic)
• People need to stop fueling pug markets.
• Is animal slaughter for religious purposes ethical?
• Manual drivers are unnecessarily aggressive about their cars
• Why you should not drive without a kid seat
• Why sports cars are not worth it
• If you can’t call while driving, then why is there a hands-free mode?
• New ideas for lessons drivers have to take before getting a license
• Should you charge people for driving tests?
• Why cycling is cooler than driving
• Why traffic rules are designed against bike rides
• Driving licenses should need a renewal every 5 years
• Why co-ed education is the best way to teach
• GPA isn’t everything
• 9.30 is too early
• Why teachers need to be recertified
• Listening to music during exams should be allowed
• Should sports and arts be mandatory?
• Does our school curriculum need obligatory life skill classes?
• Phones in classes are beneficial and convenient
• Every student should be encouraged to take a gap year
• Cyber-bullying should be punished the same as bullying
• Why art classes are just as important as science
• School canteens need to serve healthier alternatives
• More institutes should promote nternational exchange programs
• Curriculums should be designed with the job market in mind
• Textbooks are overpriced and should be replaced with digital alternatives
• Should religion be taught in schools?
• Is repeating classes beneficial for underperforming students?
• Students should not have to ask to use the restroom
• Is having a handwriting class beneficial?
• Is there a point to giving homework?
• Education needs to be available in prisons
• We are being overcharged for education
• Online learning should be held to equal importance as schools
• Are teachers paid enough?
• Is there room for commercial advertisement in schools?
• Are study halls still relevant?
• Are our children safe at school?
• School trips are a waste of money
• Educational institutes should be more welcoming to technological changes
• Schools should teach multiple languages
• Public schools are better than private schools
• Why meditation should be included in the daily curriculum
• Are scholarships reaching the right people?
• Current environmental laws are insufficient
• Green energy is the future
• The environmental impact of palm oil
• The environmental impact of single-use bags
• Fishing restrictions need to be stricter
• Oil spills are deadly to marine life
• Leaving fossil fuels behind
• Pollution has reached alarming levels
• Garden owners should be allowed to grow exotic plants
• Switch to hybrid cars to help the environment
• Rainforests are going extinct at an alarming rate
• Why natural resources are quickly going extinct
• Alternative energy sources should be pushed by governments
• Euthanasia should be legalized
• Why eating meat does not make me a bad person
• Can true equality ever really be achieved?
• Is messing with unborn children’s genetics ethical?
• Stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason
• Animal testing is a necessary part of production
• Why we need to stop producing and buying fur
• Prostitution should be legalized
• Doping and it’s place in sports 
• Why workplace relationships should be avoided
• Is religion a cult?
• Should prayers be included in schools?
• Parents should not be able to choose the sex of their unborn child
• Donating to charities is a scam
• Aborting fetuses with birth defects is not immoral
• Wars have positive consequences as well
• Why genital mutilation in infants needs to be stopped
• Conventional beauty standards are misleading
• China’s One-child policy was a good idea for population control
• Animal testing and why it is immoral
• Why banning cigarettes and alcohol from advertisements is not effective
• Sugar is added to everything we eat
• Children should be taught to cook
• Why growing your own food will help both you and the environment
• Peanuts: The secret superfood
• We should be more open to genetically engineered food products
• The proper way to dispose your food waste
• The loopholes in labelling laws
• Keto goes against the natural human evolution
• Artificial chemicals in our food products is harming us
• The legal age for contraceptive treatment should be lowered
• Fast food is slowly killing you
• How positive thinking can change your life
• Breakfast isn’t the most important meal of the day
• Stomach stapling should not be normalized
• If you don’t wear a seat belt, you are putting yourself at great risk
• How diabetes can affect your work
• How daily exercise can change your life
• Stress as the leading cause of teen suicide
• Diet pills are a scam
• Body shaming is putting lives at risk
• Contraceptive education is an effective solution for teen pregnancy
• There is such a thing as too much soda
• Free condom distribution at schools is better than teaching about abstinence
• The toothpick you pick matters
• Surrogacy should be more widely accepted
• Why insomnia should be taken as a more serious health concern
• Helmets and seatbeat save lives
• Restaurants need to be more vigilant about handling allergies
• How Big Pharma is controlling your life
• The medical field is criminally underfunded
• We are eating too much salt
• Organ donation should be an opt-out system
• The dangers of an anti-vaxxers movement
• Why fire drills are ineffective
• Why you need to take that vacation
• Good sleep is underrated
• Why vaping is not a better alternative
• Your stress is killing you
• It is not healthy for children to be vegetarians
• Parents don’t need to be informed about underage abortions
• Donating blood should be encouraged early
• How much do you know about what’s in your food

I hope you find the tips for persuasive speech and persuasive speech topics useful. Let me what you think of them by commenting below.

My Speech Class

Public Speaking Tips & Speech Topics

How to Write an Outline for a Persuasive Speech, with Examples

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

Persuasive speeches are one of the three most used speeches in our daily lives. Persuasive speech is used when presenters decide to convince their presentation or ideas to their listeners. A compelling speech aims to persuade the listener to believe in a particular point of view. One of the most iconic examples is Martin Luther King’s ‘I had a dream’ speech on the 28th of August 1963.

In this article:

What is Persuasive Speech?

Here are some steps to follow:, persuasive speech outline, final thoughts.

Persuasive speech is a written and delivered essay to convince people of the speaker’s viewpoint or ideas. Persuasive speaking is the type of speaking people engage in the most. This type of speech has a broad spectrum, from arguing about politics to talking about what to have for dinner. Persuasive speaking is highly connected to the audience, as in a sense, the speaker has to meet the audience halfway.

Persuasive Speech Preparation

Persuasive speech preparation doesn’t have to be difficult, as long as you select your topic wisely and prepare thoroughly.

1. Select a Topic and Angle

Come up with a controversial topic that will spark a heated debate, regardless of your position. This could be about anything. Choose a topic that you are passionate about. Select a particular angle to focus on to ensure that your topic isn’t too broad. Research the topic thoroughly, focussing on key facts, arguments for and against your angle, and background.

2. Define Your Persuasive Goal

Once you have chosen your topic, it’s time to decide what your goal is to persuade the audience. Are you trying to persuade them in favor of a certain position or issue? Are you hoping that they change their behavior or an opinion due to your speech? Do you want them to decide to purchase something or donate money to a cause? Knowing your goal will help you make wise decisions about approaching writing and presenting your speech.

3. Analyze the Audience

Understanding your audience’s perspective is critical anytime that you are writing a speech. This is even more important when it comes to a persuasive speech because not only are you wanting to get the audience to listen to you, but you are also hoping for them to take a particular action in response to your speech. First, consider who is in the audience. Consider how the audience members are likely to perceive the topic you are speaking on to better relate to them on the subject. Grasp the obstacles audience members face or have regarding the topic so you can build appropriate persuasive arguments to overcome these obstacles.

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4. Build an Effective Persuasive Argument

Once you have a clear goal, you are knowledgeable about the topic and, have insights regarding your audience, you will be ready to build an effective persuasive argument to deliver in the form of a persuasive speech. 

Start by deciding what persuasive techniques are likely to help you persuade your audience. Would an emotional and psychological appeal to your audience help persuade them? Is there a good way to sway the audience with logic and reason? Is it possible that a bandwagon appeal might be effective?

5. Outline Your Speech

Once you know which persuasive strategies are most likely to be effective, your next step is to create a keyword outline to organize your main points and structure your persuasive speech for maximum impact on the audience.

Start strong, letting your audience know what your topic is, why it matters and, what you hope to achieve at the end of your speech. List your main points, thoroughly covering each point, being sure to build the argument for your position and overcome opposing perspectives. Conclude your speech by appealing to your audience to act in a way that will prove that you persuaded them successfully. Motivation is a big part of persuasion.

6. Deliver a Winning Speech

Select appropriate visual aids to share with your audiences, such as graphs, photos, or illustrations. Practice until you can deliver your speech confidently. Maintain eye contact, project your voice and, avoid using filler words or any form of vocal interference. Let your passion for the subject shine through. Your enthusiasm may be what sways the audience. 

Topic: What topic are you trying to persuade your audience on?

Specific Purpose:  

Central idea:

• Attention grabber – This is potentially the most crucial line. If the audience doesn’t like the opening line, they might be less inclined to listen to the rest of your speech.
• Thesis – This statement is used to inform the audience of the speaker’s mindset and try to get the audience to see the issue their way.
• Qualifications – Tell the audience why you are qualified to speak about the topic to persuade them.

After the introductory portion of the speech is over, the speaker starts presenting reasons to the audience to provide support for the statement. After each reason, the speaker will list examples to provide a factual argument to sway listeners’ opinions.

• Example 1 – Support for the reason given above.
• Example 2 – Support for the reason given above.

The most important part of a persuasive speech is the conclusion, second to the introduction and thesis statement. This is where the speaker must sum up and tie all of their arguments into an organized and solid point.

• Summary: Briefly remind the listeners why they should agree with your position.
• Memorable ending/ Audience challenge: End your speech with a powerful closing thought or recommend a course of action.
• Thank the audience for listening.

Persuasive Speech Outline Examples

Topic: Walking frequently can improve both your mental and physical health.

Specific Purpose: To persuade the audience to start walking to improve their health.

Central idea: Regular walking can improve your mental and physical health.

Life has become all about convenience and ease lately. We have dishwashers, so we don’t have to wash dishes by hand with electric scooters, so we don’t have to paddle while riding. I mean, isn’t it ridiculous?

Today’s luxuries have been welcomed by the masses. They have also been accused of turning us into passive, lethargic sloths. As a reformed sloth, I know how easy it can be to slip into the convenience of things and not want to move off the couch. I want to persuade you to start walking.

Americans lead a passive lifestyle at the expense of their own health.

• This means that we spend approximately 40% of our leisure time in front of the TV.
• Ironically, it is also reported that Americans don’t like many of the shows that they watch.
• Today’s studies indicate that people were experiencing higher bouts of depression than in the 18th and 19th centuries, when work and life were considered problematic.
• The article reports that 12.6% of Americans suffer from anxiety, and 9.5% suffer from severe depression.
• Present the opposition’s claim and refute an argument.
• Nutritionist Phyllis Hall stated that we tend to eat foods high in fat, which produces high levels of cholesterol in our blood, which leads to plaque build-up in our arteries.
• While modifying our diet can help us decrease our risk for heart disease, studies have indicated that people who don’t exercise are at an even greater risk.

In closing, I urge you to start walking more. Walking is a simple, easy activity. Park further away from stores and walk. Walk instead of driving to your nearest convenience store. Take 20 minutes and enjoy a walk around your neighborhood. Hide the TV remote, move off the couch and, walk. Do it for your heart.

Thank you for listening!

Topic: Less screen time can improve your sleep.

Specific Purpose: To persuade the audience to stop using their screens two hours before bed.

Central idea: Ceasing electronics before bed will help you achieve better sleep.

Who doesn’t love to sleep? I don’t think I have ever met anyone who doesn’t like getting a good night’s sleep. Sleep is essential for our bodies to rest and repair themselves.

I love sleeping and, there is no way that I would be able to miss out on a good night’s sleep.

As someone who has had trouble sleeping due to taking my phone into bed with me and laying in bed while entertaining myself on my phone till I fall asleep, I can say that it’s not the healthiest habit, and we should do whatever we can to change it.

• Our natural blue light source is the sun.
• Bluelight is designed to keep us awake.
• Bluelight makes our brain waves more active.
• We find it harder to sleep when our brain waves are more active.
• Having a good night’s rest will improve your mood.
• Being fully rested will increase your productivity.

Using electronics before bed will stimulate your brainwaves and make it more difficult for you to sleep. Bluelight tricks our brains into a false sense of daytime and, in turn, makes it more difficult for us to sleep. So, put down those screens if you love your sleep!

Thank the audience for listening

A persuasive speech is used to convince the audience of the speaker standing on a certain subject. To have a successful persuasive speech, doing the proper planning and executing your speech with confidence will help persuade the audience of your standing on the topic you chose. Persuasive speeches are used every day in the world around us, from planning what’s for dinner to arguing about politics. It is one of the most widely used forms of speech and, with proper planning and execution, you can sway any audience.

How to Write the Most Informative Essay

How to Craft a Masterful Outline of Speech

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A Comprehensive Guide to Writing a Persuasive Speech

Hrideep barot.

• Speech Writing

The term Persuasion means the efforts to change the attitudes or opinions of others through various means.

It is present everywhere: election campaigns, salesmen trying to sell goods by giving offers, public health campaigns to quit smoking or to wear masks in the public spaces, or even at the workplace; when an employee tries to persuade others to agree to their point in a meeting.

How do they manage to convince us so subtly? You guessed it right! They engage in what is called Persuasive Speech.

Persuasive Speech is a category of speech that attempts to influence the listener’s beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, and ultimately, behavior.

They are used in all contexts and situations . It can be informal , a teenager attempting to convince his or her parents for a sleepover at a friend’s house.

It can also be formal , President or Prime Minister urging the citizens to abide by the new norms.

But not to confuse these with informative speeches! These also aim to inform the audience about a particular topic or event, but they lack any attempt at persuasion.

The most typical setting where this kind of speech is practiced is in schools and colleges.

An effective speech combines both the features of an informative and persuasive speech for a better takeaway from an audience’s point of view.

However, writing and giving a persuasive speech are different in the sense that you as a speaker have limited time to call people to action.

Also, according to the context or situation, you may not be able to meet your audience several times, unlike TV ads, which the audience sees repeatedly and hence believes the credibility of the product.

So, how to write and deliver an effective persuasive speech?

How to start a persuasive speech? What are the steps of writing a persuasive speech? What are some of the tricks and tips of persuasion?

Read along till the end to explore the different dimensions and avenues of the science of giving a persuasive speech.

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND BEFORE WRITING A PERSUASIVE SPEECH

1. get your topic right, passion and genuine interest in your topic.

It is very important that you as a speaker are interested in the chosen topic and in the subsequent arguments you are about to put forward. If you are not interested in what you are saying, then how will the audience feel the same?

Passion towards the topic is one of the key requirements for a successful speech as your audience will see how passionate and concerned you are towards the issue and will infer you as a genuine and credible person.

The audience too will get in the mood and connect to you on an emotional level, empathizing with you; as a result of which will understand your point of view and are likely to agree to your argument.

Consider this example: your friend is overflowing with joy- is happy, smiling, and bubbling with enthusiasm.

Before even asking the reason behind being so happy, you “catch the mood”; i.e., you notice that your mood has been boosted as a result of seeing your friend happy.

Why does it happen so? The reason is that we are influenced by other people’s moods and emotions.

It also means that our mood affects people around us, which is the reason why speaking with emotions and passion is used by many successful public speakers.

Another reason is that other’s emotions give an insight into how one should feel and react. We interpret other’s reactions as a source of information about how we should feel.

So, if someone shows a lot of anxiety or excitement while speaking, we conclude that the issue is very important and we should do something about it, and end up feeling similar reactions.

Meaningful and thought-provoking

Choose a topic that is meaningful to you and your audience. It should be thought-provoking and leave the audience thinking about the points put forward in your speech.

Topics that are personally or nationally relevant and are in the talks at the moment are good subjects to start with.

If you choose a controversial topic like “should euthanasia be legalized?”, or” is our nation democratic?”, it will leave a dramatic impact on your audience.

However, be considerate in choosing a sensitive topic, since it can leave a negative impression on your listeners. But if worded in a neutral and unbiased manner, it can work wonders.

Also, refrain from choosing sensitive topics like the reality of religion, sexuality, etc.

2. Research your topic thoroughly

Research on persuasion conducted by Hovland, Janis, and Kelley states that credible communicators are more persuasive than those who are seen as lacking expertise.

Even if you are not an expert in the field of your topic, mentioning information that is backed by research or stating an expert’s opinion on the issue will make you appear as a knowledgeable and credible person.

How to go about researching? Many people think that just googling about a topic and inferring 2-3 articles will be enough. But this is not so.

For writing and giving an effective speech, thorough research is crucial for you as a speaker to be prepared and confident.

Try to find as many relevant points as possible, even if it is against your viewpoint. If you can explain why the opposite viewpoint is not correct, it will give the audience both sides to an argument and will make decision-making easier.

Also, give credit to the source of your points during your speech, by mentioning the original site, author, or expert, so the audience will know that these are reliable points and not just your opinion, and will be more ready to believe them since they come from an authority.

Other sources for obtaining data for research are libraries and bookstores, magazines, newspapers, google scholar, research journals, etc.

Analyze your audience

Know who comprises your audience so that you can alter your speech to meet their requirements.

Demographics like age group, gender ratio, the language with which they are comfortable, their knowledge about the topic, the region and community to which they belong; are all important factors to be considered before writing your speech.

Ask yourself these questions before sitting down to write:

Is the topic of argument significant to them? Why is it significant? Would it make sense to them? Is it even relevant to them?

In the end, the speech is about the audience and not you. Hence, make efforts to know your audience.

This can be done by surveying your audience way before the day of giving your speech. Short polls and registration forms are an effective way to know your audience.

They ensure confidentiality and maintain anonymity, eliminating social desirability bias on part of the audience, and will likely receive honest answers.

OUTLINE OF A PERSUASIVE SPEECH

Most speeches follow the pattern of Introduction, Body and Conclusion.

However, persuasive speeches have a slightly different pathway.

INTRODUCTION

BODY OR SUPPORTING STATEMENTS( ATLEAST 3 ARGUMENTS)

CONCLUSION OR A CALL TO ACTION

1. INTRODUCTION

Grab attention of your audience.

The first few lines spoken by a speaker are the deciding factor that can make or break a speech.

Hence, if you nail the introduction, half of the task has already been done, and you can rest assured.

No one likes to be silent unless you are an introvert. But the audience expects that the speaker will go on stage and speak. But what if the speaker just goes and remains silent?

Chances are high that the audience will be in anticipation of what you are about to speak and their sole focus will be on you.

This sets the stage.

Use quotes that are relevant and provocative to set the tone of your speech. It will determine the mood of your audience and get them ready to receive information.

An example can be “The only impossible journey is the one you never begin” and then state who gave it, in this case, Tony Robbins, an American author.

Use what-if scenarios

Another way to start your speech is by using what-if scenarios and phrases like “suppose if your home submerges in water one day due to global warming…”.

This will make them the center of attention and at the same time grabbing their attention.

Use personal anecdotes

Same works with personal experiences and stories.

Everyone loves listening to first-hand experiences or a good and interesting story. If you are not a great storyteller, visual images and videos will come to your rescue.

After you have successfully grabbed and hooked your audience, the next and last step of the introduction is introducing your thesis statement.

What is a thesis statement?

It introduces the topic to your audience and is one of the central elements of any persuasive speech.

It is usually brief, not more than 3 sentences, and gives the crux of your speech outline.

How to make a thesis statement?

Firstly, research all possible opinions and views about your topic. See which opinion you connect with, and try to summarize them.

After you do this, you will get a clear idea of what side you are on and this will become your thesis statement.

However, the thesis should answer the question “why” and “how”.

So, for instance, if you choose to speak on the topic of the necessity of higher education, your thesis statement could be something like this:

Although attending university and getting a degree is essential for overall development, not every student must be pushed to join immediately after graduating from school.

And then you can structure your speech containing the reasons why every student should not be rushed into joining a university.

3. BODY OF THE SPEECH

The body contains the actual reasons to support your thesis.

Ideally, the body should contain at least 3 reasons to support your argument.

So, for the above-mentioned thesis, you can support it with possible alternatives, which will become your supporting statements.

The option of a gap year to relax and decide future goals, gaining work experience and then joining the university for financial reasons, or even joining college after 25 or 35 years.

These become your supporting reasons and answers the question “why”.

Each reason has to be resourcefully elaborated, with explaining why you support and why the other or anti-thesis is not practical.

At this point, you have the option of targeting your audience’s ethos, pathos, or logos.

Ethos is the ethical side of the argument. It targets morals and puts forth the right thing or should be.

This technique is highly used in the advertising industry.

Ever wondered why celebrities, experts, and renowned personalities are usually cast as brand ambassadors.?

The reason: they are liked by the masses and exhibit credibility and trust.

Advertisers endorse their products via a celebrity to try to show that the product is reliable and ethical.

The same scenario is seen in persuasive speeches. If the speaker is well-informed and provides information that is backed by research, chances are high that the audience will follow it.

Pathos targets the emotional feelings of the audience.

This is usually done by narrating a tragic or horrifying anecdote and leaves the listener moved by using an emotional appeal to call people to action.

The common emotions targeted by the speaker include the feeling of joy, love, sadness, anger, pity, and loneliness.

All these emotions are best expressed in stories or personal experiences.

Stories give life to your argument, making the audience more involved in the matter and arousing sympathy and empathy.

Visuals and documentaries are other mediums through which a speaker can attract the audience’s emotions.

What was your reaction after watching an emotional documentary? Did you not want to do something about the problem right away?

Emotions have the power to move people to action.

The last technique is using logos, i.e., logic. This includes giving facts and practical aspects of why this is to be done or why such a thing is the most practical.

It is also called the “logical appeal”.

This can be done by giving inductive or deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning involves the speaker taking a specific example or case study and then generalizing or drawing conclusions from it.

For instance, a speaker tells a case study of a student who went into depression as the child wasn’t able to cope with back-to-back stress.

This problem will be generalized and concluded that gap year is crucial for any child to cope with and be ready for the challenges in a university.

On the other hand, deductive reasoning involves analyzing general assumptions and theories and then arriving at a logical conclusion.

So, in this case, the speaker can give statistics of the percentage of university students feeling drained due to past exams and how many felt that they needed a break.

This general data will then be personalized to conclude how there is a need for every student to have a leisure break to refresh their mind and avoid having burned out.

Using any of these 3 techniques, coupled with elaborate anecdotes and supporting evidence, at the same time encountering counterarguments will make the body of your speech more effective.

4. CONCLUSION

Make sure to spend some time thinking through your conclusion, as this is the part that your audience will remember the most and is hence, the key takeaway of your entire speech.

Keep it brief, and avoid being too repetitive.

It should provide the audience with a summary of the points put across in the body, at the same time calling people to action or suggesting a possible solution and the next step to be taken.

Remember that this is your last chance to convince, hence make sure to make it impactful.

 Include one to two relevant power or motivational quotes, and end by thanking the audience for being patient and listening till the end.

Watch this clip for a better understanding.

TIPS AND TRICKS OF PERSUASION

Start strong.

A general pattern among influential speeches is this: all start with a powerful and impactful example, be it statistics about the issue, using influential and meaning statements and quotes, or asking a rhetorical question at the beginning of their speech.

Why do they do this? It demonstrates credibility and creates a good impression- increasing their chance of persuading the audience.

Hence, start in such a manner that will hook the audience to your speech and people would be curious to know what you are about to say or how will you end it.

Keep your introduction short

Keep your introduction short, and not more than 10-15% of your speech.

If your speech is 2000 words, then your introduction should be a maximum of 200-250 words.

Or if you are presenting for 10 minutes, your introduction should be a maximum of 2 minutes. This will give you time to state your main points and help you manage your time effectively.

Be clear and concise

Use the correct vocabulary to fit in, at the same time making sure to state them clearly, without beating around the bush.

This will make the message efficient and impactful.

Answer the question “why”

Answer the question “why” before giving solutions or “how”.

Tell them why is there a need to change. Then give them all sides of the point.

It is important to state what is wrong and not just what ought to be or what is right, in an unopinionated tone.

Unless and until people don’t know the other side of things, they simply will not change.

Suggest solutions

Once you have stated the problem, you imply or hint at the solution.

Never state solutions, suggest them; leaving the decision up to the audience.

You can hint at solutions: “don’t you think it is a good idea to…?” or “is it wrong to say that…?”, instead of just stating solutions.

Use power phrases

Certain power-phrases come in handy, which can make the audience take action.

Using the power phrase “because” is very impactful in winning and convincing others.

This phrase justifies the action associated with it and gives us an understanding of why is it correct.

For instance, the phrase “can you give me a bite of your food?” does not imply attitude change.

But using “may I have a bite of your food because I haven’t eaten breakfast?” is more impactful and the person will likely end up sharing food if you use this power- phrase, because it is justifying your request.

Another power-phrase is “I understand, but…”.

This involves you agreeing with the opposite side of the argument and then stating your side or your point of view.

This will encourage your audience to think from the other side of the spectrum and are likely to consider your argument put forth in the speech.

Use power words

Use power words like ‘incredible’, ‘fascinating’, ‘unquestionable’, ‘most important’, ‘strongly recommend’ in your speech to provoke your audience into awe.

Watch this video of some of the common but effective words that can be used in a persuasive speech.

Give an emotional appeal

Like mentioned earlier as one of the techniques of persuasion called pathos, targeting emotions like joy, surprise, fear, anticipation, anger, sadness, or disgust gives your speech an emotional appeal, and more feel to your content, rather than just neutrally stating facts and reasons.

Hence, to keep your audience engaged and not get bored, use emotions while speaking.

Make use of the non=verbal elements

Actions speak louder than words, and they create a huge difference if used effectively.

There is so much else to a speech than just words.

Non-verbal elements include everything apart from your words.

Maintaining eye contact, matching your body language with your words for effective transmission of the message including how you express your emotions, making use of the visual signs and symbols via a PPT are all important parts of any speech.

Check your paralanguage i.e., your voice intonation, pitch, speed, effective pauses, stressing on certain words to create an impact.

Doing all of these will make your speech more real and effective, and will persuade your audience into taking action.

Give real-life examples

Speak facts and avoid giving opinions.

However, just mentioning hard statistical facts will take you nowhere, as there is a chance that people may not believe the data, based on the possibility of them recollecting exceptions.                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Hence, back up your statistics with real-life examples of situations.

Also, consider using precise numerical data.

For example, using “5487 people die due to road accidents every day”, instead of “approximately 5500 people”.

Have no personal stake

You can lose credibility if the audience feels that you have a personal stake in it.

Suppose that you are speaking for the idea of using reusable plastic products, and you say that you are from a company that sells those goods.

People are likely to perceive your argument as promoting self-interest and will not be ready to change their opinion about reusable plastic products.

Consequently, if you argue against your self-interest, your audience will see you as the most credible. 

So, if you say that you are working in a plastics manufacturing company and have a statistical record of the pollution caused by it; and then promote reusable plastic as an alternative to stop pollution and save the environment, people are likely to accept your point of argument.

The you attitude

Shift your focus to the audience, and chances are high that they are likely to relate the issue to themselves and are most likely to change.

Hence, use the “you attitude” i.e., shifting focus to the listener and giving them what they want to hear and then making subtle additions to what you want them to hear.

Make a good first impression

The first impression is indeed the last. This is the reason why image consultancy is such a growing sector.

A good first impression works wonders on the people around you, including the audience, and makes your work of convincing a lot easier.

Avoid appearing shabby, ill-mannered, and refrain from using uncourteous and biased language.

Doing these will reverse the effect you want from the audience and will drive them away from your opinion.

HOW TO MAKE A GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION?

If you are the type who gets nervous easily and have fear of public speaking, practice till you excel in your task.

I used to dread speaking in front of people, and partly still do.

Earlier, unless and until someone called my name to state my opinion or start with the presentation, I didn’t even raise my hand to say that I have an opinion or I am left to present on the topic.

I had to do something about this problem. So, I made a plan.

2 weeks before the presentation, I wrote the script and read it over and over again.

After reading multiple times, I imagined my room to be the classroom and practiced in front of a mirror.

The main thing I was concerned about was keeping my head clear on the day of my presentation. And that’s what happened.

Since my mind was clear and relaxed, and I had practiced my speech over and over again, presenting came more naturally and confidently.

You might ask what is the purpose of impression management?

Impressions are used for Ingratiation i.e., getting others to like us so that they will be more than willing to accept or agree to your point.

If you like someone, you are drawn towards them and are likely to agree on what they agree or say.

TIP- Try to come early to the venue, and dress appropriately to the needs of the occasion. And don’t forget to smile!

PERSUASIVE SPEECH EXAMPLES

1. wendy troxel – why school should start later for teens.

Almost all the important elements of a persuasive speech are found in this TED talk by Wendy Troxel.

Take a closer look at how she starts her introduction in the form of a real-life personal story, and how she makes it relevant to the audience.

Humor is used to hook the audience’s attention and in turn their interest.

She is also likely to be perceived as credible, as she introduces herself as a sleep researcher, and is speaking on the topic of sleep.

Thesis of how early school timings deprive teenagers of their sleep and its effects is introduced subtly.

The speaker supports her statements with facts, answers the question “why” and most importantly, presents both sides of an argument; effects of less to lack of sleep and its consequences and the effects of appropriate and more sleep on teenagers.

The use of non-verbal elements throughout the speech adds value and richness to the speech, making it more engaging.

The use of Pathos as a persuasive technique appeals to the audience’s emotions; at the same time backing the argument with Logos, by giving scientific reasons and research findings to support the argument.

Lastly, the speech is meaningful, relevant, and thought-provoking to the audience, who are mostly parents and teenagers.

2. Crystal Robello- Being an introvert is a good thing

In this example, Crystal Robello starts by giving personal experiences of being an introvert and the prejudices faced.

Notice how even without much statistics the speech is made persuasive by using Ethos as a technique; and how credibility is achieved by mentioning leaders who are introverts.

3. Greta Thunberg- School strike for climate

One of my favorite speeches is the above speech by Greta Thunberg.

She uses all the techniques; pathos, ethos and logos.

Also notice how the speaker speaks with emotions, and uses body and paralanguage efficiently to create a dramatic impact on the audience.

Her genuine interest is clearly reflected in the speech, which makes the audience listen with a level of concern towards the topic, climate change.

To sum up, we looked at the things to keep in mind before writing a speech and also became familiar with the general outline or the structure of a persuasive speech.

We also looked at some of the tips and tricks of persuasion, and lastly, got introduced to 3 amazing persuasive speech examples.

So, now that you know everything about persuasion, rest assured and keep the above-mentioned things in mind before starting your next speech!

Also, check out related posts:

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100 Persuasive Speech Topics for Students

• Homework Tips
• Learning Styles & Skills
• Study Methods
• Time Management
• Private School
• College Admissions
• College Life
• Graduate School
• Business School
• Distance Learning
• M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
• B.A., History, Armstrong State University

If you are planning a persuasive speech, you should think about a topic that can engage your audience. For this reason, you may want to consider a few topics before settling on the one that allows you to be more descriptive and entertaining.

Another important factor when picking a persuasive speech topic is to choose one that can provoke your audience. If you stir up a little emotion in your audience members, you'll keep their attention.

The list below is provided to help you brainstorm. Choose a topic from this list, or use it to generate an idea of your own. It could even be an idea that opposes the proposed example. For instance, instead of arguing American workers should be guaranteed a three-day weekend by law, you could argue why this shouldn't be the case.

How to Pick a Good Persuasive Speech Topic

Persuasive speeches are generally meant to convince an audience to agree with an idea you present. The topics can range from political to scientific or societal, and professional to personal—or even fun. They can be almost anything.

Just remember, a persuasive speech is different than a persuasive essay because you are presenting to an audience. So as you decide on a topic, think about your audience and decide on a subject matter that will be appropriate, compelling, and engaging to discuss. Perhaps it's a timely issue attracting a lot of news coverage, or maybe you want to be motivational and encourage a healthy activity. Whatever it is, structure your argument with a hook to capture attention , a clear definition of the topic or issue, and finally, your proposed solution or opinion.

100 Examples of Persuasive Speech Topics

• Studying martial arts is good for mind and health.
• Competitive sports can teach us about life.
• Reality shows are exploiting people.
• Community service should be a graduation requirement for all high school students.
• The characteristics that make a person a hero.
• It's important to grow things in a garden.
• Violent video games are dangerous.
• Lyrics in a song can impact our lives.
• Traveling and studying abroad are positive experiences.
• Journal writing is therapeutic.
• You should spend time with your grandparents.
• A laptop is better than a tablet.
• Religion and science can go hand in hand.
• School uniforms are good.
• All-female colleges and all-male colleges are bad.
• Multiple-choice tests are better than essay tests .
• We should not spend money on space exploration.
• Open-book tests are as effective as closed-book tests.
• Security cameras keep us safer.
• Parents should have access to students' grades.
• Small classes are better than big classes.
• You need to start saving for retirement now.
• Credit cards are harmful to college students.
• We should have a royal family.
• We should protect endangered animals.
• Texting while driving is dangerous.
• You can write a novel.
• Recycling should be required in the U.S.
• State colleges are better than private colleges.
• Private colleges are better than state colleges.
• We should do away with penny coins.
• Fast food containers hurt the environment.
• Plastic straws are harmful to the environment.
• You can eat and enjoy healthy snacks.
• You can become a millionaire.
• Dogs are better pets than cats.
• You should own a bird.
• It's unethical to keep birds in cages.
• Liberal arts degrees prepare graduates to be better workers than other degrees.
• Hunting animals should be banned.
• Football is a dangerous sport.
• School days should start later.
• Night school is better than day school.
• Technical training is better than a college degree.
• Immigration laws should be more lenient.
• Students should be able to choose their schools.
• Everyone should learn to play a musical instrument.
• Grass lawns should be prohibited.
• Sharks should be protected.
• We should do away with cars and go back to horse and carriage for transportation.
• We should use more wind power.
• We should pay more taxes.
• We should do away with taxes.
• Teachers should be tested like students.
• We should not interfere in the affairs of other countries.
• Every student should join a club.
• Homeschooling is better than traditional schooling.
• People should stay married for life.
• Smoking in public should be illegal.
• College students should live on campus .
• Parents should let students fail.
• Giving to charity is good.
• Education makes us happier people.
• T​he ​ death penalty should be outlawed.
• Bigfoot is real.
• We should increase train travel to save the environment.
• We should read more classic books.
• Fame is bad for young children.
• Athletes should stay loyal to teams.
• We should reform our prisons.
• Juvenile offenders should not go to boot camps.
• Abraham Lincoln was the best president.
• Abraham Lincoln gets too much credit.
• Students should be allowed to have cell phones in elementary, middle, and high school.
• College student-athletes should be paid for playing.
• Elderly citizens on fixed income should receive free public transportation.
• Colleges and universities should be free to attend.
• All American citizens should complete one year of community service.
• Students should be required to take Spanish language classes.
• Every student should be required to learn at least one foreign language .
• Marijuana should be legal for recreational use nationwide.
• Commercial testing of products on animals should no longer be allowed.
• High school students should be required to participate in at least one team sport.
• The minimum drinking age in the U.S. should be 25.
• Replacing fossil fuels with cheaper alternative energy options should be mandated.
• Churches need to contribute their share of taxes.
• The Cuba embargo should be maintained by the U.S.
• America should replace income taxes with a nationwide flat tax.
• Once they reach the age of 18, all U.S. citizens should be automatically registered to vote .
• Doctor-assisted suicide should be legal.
• Spammers—people who bombard the internet with unsolicited email—should be banned from sending junk mail.
• Every automobile driver should be required to take a new driver's test every three years.
• Electroshock treatment is not a humane form of therapy.
• Global warming is not real.
• Single-parent adoption should be encouraged and promoted.
• Gun companies should be held accountable for gun crimes.
• Human cloning is not moral.
• Religion does not belong in public education.
• Juveniles should not be tried as adults.
• American workers should be guaranteed a three-day weekend by law.
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Persuasive Speech Examples: Taking A Stand In Speech

Persuasive speeches have been used throughout history to shape public opinion and shape behavior, and examples abound. Persuasive speech examples include virtually any topic – voting, racism, school uniforms, safety, organ donation, recycling, and so on.

From a teenager asking his parents to go out with friends to an aspiring politician convincing voters to choose him, many people use a persuasive speech to convince their audience members to do something. A successful persuasive speech entails getting someone to take action and be swayed to the speaker’s side.

Table of Contents

What Is A Persuasive Speech?

While an informative speech aims to enlighten the audience about a particular subject, a persuasive speech aims to influence the audience — and convince them to accept a particular point of view. 

The central idea is to persuade, whether discussing a persuasive essay or ‌public speaking. This form of communication is a call to action for people to believe in and take action upon something.

Throughout history, persuasive speech ideas and their communicators have played a vital role in driving change, whether on a personal, community, societal, national, or even global level. 

We’ve seen leaders and important figures sway public opinions and spark movements. Persuasive speech has been there to raise awareness about a specific issue (e.g., labor rights, gender equality). People have been using such speeches to establish authority, negotiate, and, ultimately, urge the audience to join their side.

What Are Some Examples Of A Persuasive Speech Topic?

There’s a wide range of good persuasive speech topics . To give you an idea, here’s a list of persuasive speech topics:

• Social media is taking a toll on young people’s mental health
• Cell phones and too much screen time are making people lazier
• Violent video games make people more aggressive
• Why authorities must ban fast food for children
• Schools and workplaces should take more action to curb obesity rates
• Why public schools are better than private ones
• College athletes should undergo steroid tests
• There’s more to high school and college students than their GPAs
• Should award-giving bodies rely on the popular vote or the judges’ vote?
• There’s a need to regulate the use of painkillers more heavily
• Cloning must not be legalized
• More government budget should be allocated to health care
• Why businesses must invest in renewable energy
• Should military units be allowed to use drones in warfare?
• How freedom of religion is affecting society
• Libraries are becoming obsolete: A step-by-step guide on keeping them alive
• Should euthanasia be allowed in hospitals, clinical settings, and zoos?
• Developing countries must increase their minimum wage
• Global warming is getting more intense
• The death penalty must be abolished

What Is An Example Of How Start Of A Persuasive Speech?

Persuasion is an art. And when you’re given the chance to make a persuasive speech, one of the first things you must do is to settle down with a thesis statement. Then, you must identify at least two main points, pre-empt counterarguments, and organize your thoughts with a ‌persuasive speech outline.

Remember that your opening (and closing) statements should be strong. Right at the start, you must captivate your audience’s attention. You can give an impactful factual statement or pose a question that challenges conventional views. 

The success of a speech doesn’t only end with writing a persuasive one. You must also deliver it with impact. This means maintaining eye contact, keeping your posture open, and using a clear voice and an appropriate facial expression.

What Are The 3 Points To Persuasive Speech?

There are three pillars of a persuasive speech. First is ethos, which taps into the audience’s ethical beliefs. To convince them and establish your credibility, you must resonate with the morals they uphold. 

The second one is pathos, which refers to the emotional appeal of your narrative. One approach is to share an anecdote that your audience can relate to. To effectively appeal to your audience’s emotions, you must also use language, tone, diction, and images to paint a better picture of your main point.

On other other hand, logos appeals to logic. This is why it’s important to pepper your speech with facts.

How Are Persuasive Speeches Used?

You may know persuasive speeches as those stirring speeches delivered by politicians and civil rights and business leaders. In reality, you yourself could be using it in everyday life.

There are different types of persuasive speeches. While some mobilize bigger movements, others only persuade a smaller audience or even just one person.

You can use it in a personal context . For example, you’re convincing your parent to extend your curfew or eat at a certain restaurant. In grander ways, you can also use it to advocate for social and political movements. If you’re in business, marketing, or sales, you can use persuasive speech to promote your brand and convince others to buy your product or service. 

For example, a teen might try to persuade a parent to let them stay out beyond curfew, while a civil rights leader might use persuasion to encourage listeners to fight racism.

No matter the context of your speech, an effective persuasive speech can compel someone or a group of people to adopt a viewpoint, take a particular action, and change a behavior or belief.

What Are Persuasive Speech Examples?

This AI-created speech about walking shows how a persuasive speech is laid out, using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence (i.e., attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and call to action) to convey the message that walking can overcome the risks of modern life

The introduction sets up the speech:

“Let’s be honest, we lead an easy life: automatic dishwashers, riding lawnmowers, T.V. remote controls, automatic garage door openers, power screwdrivers, bread machines, electric pencil sharpeners… We live in a time-saving, energy-saving, convenient society. It’s a wonderful life. Or is it?”

Unfortunately, lack of exercise leads to health problems. Walking can overcome the effects of lack of exercise, lethargy, and poor diet. The body of the speech delves into this concept in detail and then concludes with a call to the audience to walk more.

AI pick up the pattern that many living persons have perfected over the year.

Maya Angelou, an American poet and civil rights activist, delivered this compelling poem as a persuasive speech . The performance concludes with this inspiring message about overcoming hardship and discrimination: “Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise/ Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear, I rise/ Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave/ I am the dream and the hope of the slave/ I rise, I rise, I rise.” 

What Are Some Historical Examples Of Persuasive Speech?

Maya Angelou is just one of the important figures who have delivered powerful speeches etched in history. These individuals have risen and relayed impactful messages, championing advocacies that would resonate with people during their time — and beyond.

Below are more moving examples of a persuasive speech:

The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

Context: In November 1863, during the American Civil War, US President Abraham Lincoln delivered this speech in commemoration of the dedication of the Gettysburg National Ceremony (also known as the Soldiers’ National Ceremony).

Snippet: “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety, do. 

“ But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow, this ground, The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here. 

“ It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The Finest Hour by Winston Churchill

Context: In his nearly 40-minute long speech in June 1940, over a month since Winston Churchill became the British Prime Minister, he sparked hope that they could win the impending Battle of Britain during the Second World War. 

Snippet: “What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. 

If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us, therefore, brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

I Have a Dream by Mary Wollstonecraft

Context: In her 1792 speech, the British writer and women’s rights advocate shared her dream — that a day will come when women will be treated as rational human beings.

Snippet: “These may be termed utopian dreams. – Thanks to that Being who impressed them on my soul, and gave me sufficient strength of mind to dare to exert my own reason, till, becoming dependent only on him for the support of my virtue, I view, with indignation, the mistaken notions that enslave my sex. 

“ I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real or usurped, extends not to me unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then, the submission is to reason and not to man. In fact, the conduct of an accountable being must be regulated by the operations of its own reason; or on what foundation rests the throne of God?”

These snippets of their persuasive speech capture the very essence of this form of communication: to convince the audience through compelling and valid reasoning, evoking their feelings and moral principles, and motivating them to act and join a movement, big or small. 

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50 Topics for a Persuasive Speech

• 5-minute read
• 13th January 2023

Some find writing a persuasive speech to be intimidating, but it’s an opportunity to share your position on a topic you care about and to invite listeners to support (or at least appreciate) your way of thinking. You’ll benefit from a clear position, credible evidence, and careful consideration of your audience.

Your first step is to pick a topic. Whether you’re a teacher creating an assignment or a student deciding what to speak about, our list of 50 suggested persuasive speech topics and tips are a good starting place.

Choosing a Topic

●  It’s more enjoyable to research and write a speech about a topic that genuinely holds your interest. It’ll make for better delivery, too. Passion is contagious! On the other hand, boredom and a lack of enthusiasm come through easily in vocal tone.

●  Avoid tired, overdone issues. If you’ve heard it all before, there’s a good chance your audience has, too. Pick something current and relevant to your listeners . If you go with a popular topic, try to approach it from a fresh angle.

●  Issues that contain multiple viewpoints are preferable to simplistic good/bad debates. Most reasonable people would agree that “bullying is bad.” But they might learn something new if you share recent research on bullying and offer different approaches to tackling it.

Let’s look at some interesting speech topics, categorized by subject.

Should free speech on the internet be restricted?

At what age should children have access to smartphones?

Does texting hinder interpersonal skills?

Should parents limit their children’s screen time?

Should laws prohibit using devices while driving?

Is there a link between device usage and decreased mental health?

Should the number of US Supreme Court Justices be increased?

Should voting be compulsory?

Should Election Day in the US change from Tuesday to the weekend?

Should the electoral college system be abolished?

Should election procedures be standardized in all states?

Should the Senate filibuster be abolished?

Should the death penalty be legal?

Should states be allowed to have different abortion laws?

Should the legal age to own an assault rifle be raised?

Should the US conduct a voluntary gun buyback program?

Are governments doing enough to address climate change?

Is student loan forgiveness fair?

Should the US invest in high-speed rail similar to those in Japan and Europe?

Should plastic bags be banned in grocery stores?

What is the greatest threat to international stability?

What can be done to prevent cyber threats?

Is the two-party political system of the US failing?

Should the US adopt a single-payer universal health care system?

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Should minimum wage be a factor in the cost of health care?

Is healthcare a human right?

Should access to abortion be required by healthcare providers?

Do school shooter drills damage students’ mental health?

Should vaccinations be required for students to attend public school?

Should employers offer incentives and bonuses to employees who bike or walk to work?

Do school uniforms offer any advantages?

Are school dress codes gender biased?

Are standardized test scores given too much importance in schools?

Do college entrance exams privilege those with higher socio-economic status?

Should teachers be allowed to keep firearms in their classrooms as protection against active shooters?

Should indigenous languages be taught in schools?

Should immigrants have access to free language classes?

Should books ever be banned in schools?

Should elementary schools be required to teach a foreign language?

Should schools be cellphone free?

Should volunteering before graduation be compulsory?

Should school cafeterias serve more plant-based foods?

Should parents let their children play tackle football?

Should college sports teams receive less money?

Should there be more female priests or pastors of churches?

Should churches and other religious organizations pay taxes?

Should all priests be allowed to marry?

Should prayer be permitted in public schools?

On balance, does religion create more conflict or foster peace?

Should there be exceptions to the freedom to practice any religion?

Persuasion Isn’t All or Nothing

People often think persuasion means getting others to agree with you, but persuasion is more nuanced than that. You might persuade someone to go beyond sympathy and act. You might highlight the gray areas of a typically black and white debate.

When total agreement is out of reach, you can settle for agreement in part. Consider your audience thoughtfully when you decide on your goals and remember that you have options.

Step Up with Confidence

We hope these suggested persuasive speech topics have the wheels of your mind turning. Whether it’s for a speech or an argumentative essay , getting your ideas on paper and editing them is a necessary part of the process. Our editors are here to help you confidently put out your best work. Submit a free sample today .

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Persuasive Speech: How to Write an Effective Persuasive Speech

Most often, it actually causes the other person to want to play “Devil’s advocate” and argue with you. In this article, we are going to show you a simple way to win people to your way of thinking without raising resentment. If you use this technique, your audience will actually WANT to agree with you! The process starts with putting yourself in the shoes of your listener and looking at things from their point of view.

Background About How to Write a Persuasive Speech. Facts Aren’t Very Persuasive.

Most people think that a single fact is good, additional facts are better, and too many facts are just right. So, the more facts you can use to prove your point, the better chance you have of convincing the other person that you are right. The HUGE error in this logic, though, is that if you prove that you are right, you are also proving that the other person is wrong. People don’t like it when someone proves that they are wrong. So, we prove our point, the other person is likely to feel resentment. When resentment builds, it leads to anger. Once anger enters the equation, logic goes right out the window.

In addition, when people use a “fact” or “Statistic” to prove a point, the audience has a natural reaction to take a contrary side of the argument. For instance, if I started a statement with, “I can prove to you beyond a doubt that…” before I even finish the statement, there is a good chance that you are already trying to think of a single instance where the statement is NOT true. This is a natural response. As a result, the thing that we need to realize about being persuasive is that the best way to persuade another person is to make the person want to agree with us. We do this by showing the audience how they can get what they want if they do what we want.

You may also like How to Design and Deliver a Memorable Speech .

A Simple 3-Step Process to Create a Persuasive Presentation

The process below is a good way to do both.

Step One: Start Your Persuasive Speech with an Example or Story

When you write an effective persuasive speech, stories are vital. Stories and examples have a powerful way to capture an audience’s attention and set them at ease. They get the audience interested in the presentation. Stories also help your audience see the concepts you are trying to explain in a visual way and make an emotional connection. The more details that you put into your story, the more vivid the images being created in the minds of your audience members.

This concept isn’t mystical or anything. It is science. When we communicate effectively with another person, the purpose is to help the listener picture a concept in his/her mind that is similar to the concept in the speaker’s mind. The old adage is that a “picture is worth 1000 words.” Well, an example or a story is a series of moving pictures. So, a well-told story is worth thousands of words (facts).

By the way, there are a few additional benefits of telling a story. Stories help you reduce nervousness, make better eye contact, and make for a strong opening. For additional details, see Storytelling in Speeches .

I’ll give you an example.

Factual Argument: Seatbelts Save Lives

• 53% of all motor vehicle fatalities from last years were people who weren’t wearing seatbelts.
• People not wearing seatbelts are 30 times more likely to be ejected from the vehicle.
• In a single year, crash deaths and injuries cost us over $70 billion dollars.

These are actual statistics. However, when you read each bullet point, you are likely to be a little skeptical. For instance, when you see the 53% statistic, you might have had the same reaction that I did. You might be thinking something like, “Isn’t that right at half? Doesn’t that mean that the other half WERE wearing seatbelts?” When you see the “30 times more likely” statistic, you might be thinking, “That sounds a little exaggerated. What are the actual numbers?” Looking at the last statistic, we’d likely want to know exactly how the reporter came to that conclusion.

As you can see, if you are a believer that seatbelts save lives, you will likely take the numbers at face value. If you don’t like seatbelts, you will likely nitpick the finer points of each statistic. The facts will not likely persuade you.

Example Argument: Seatbelts Save Lives

When I came to, I tried to open my door. The accident sealed it shut. The windshield was gone. So I took my seatbelt off and scrambled out the hole. The driver of the truck was a bloody mess. His leg was pinned under the steering wheel.

The firefighters came a few minutes later, and it took them over 30 minutes to cut the metal from around his body to free him.

A Sheriff’s Deputy saw a cut on my face and asked if I had been in the accident. I pointed to my truck. His eyes became like saucers. “You were in that vehicle?”

I nodded. He rushed me to an ambulance. I had actually ruptured my colon, and I had to have surgery. I was down for a month or so, but I survived. In fact, I survived with very few long-term challenges from the accident.

The guy who hit me wasn’t so lucky. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The initial impact of the accident was his head on the steering wheel and then the windshield. He had to have a number of facial surgeries. The only reason he remained in the truck was his pinned leg. For me, the accident was a temporary trauma. For him, it was a life-long tragedy.

The Emotional Difference is the Key

As you can see, there are major differences between the two techniques. The story gives lots of memorable details along with an emotion that captures the audience. If you read both examples, let me ask you a couple of questions. Without looking back up higher on the page, how long did it take the firefighters to cut the other driver from the car? How many CDs did I have? There is a good chance that these two pieces of data came to you really quickly. You likely remembered this data, even though, the data wasn’t exactly important to the story.

However, if I asked you how much money was lost last year as a result of traffic accidents, you might struggle to remember that statistic. The CDs and the firefighters were a part of a compelling story that made you pay attention. The money lost to accidents was just a statistic thrown at you to try to prove that a point was true.

The main benefit of using a story, though, is that when we give statistics (without a story to back them up,) the audience becomes argumentative. However, when we tell a story, the audience can’t argue with us. The audience can’t come to me after I told that story and say, “It didn’t take 30 minutes to cut the guy out of the car. He didn’t have to have a bunch of reconstructive surgeries. The Deputy didn’t say those things to you! The audience can’t argue with the details of the story, because they weren’t there.

Step 2: After the Story, Now, Give Your Advice

When most people write a persuasive presentation, they start with their opinion. Again, this makes the listener want to play Devil’s advocate. By starting with the example, we give the listener a simple way to agree with us. They can agree that the story that we told was true. So, now, finish the story with your point or your opinion. “So, in my opinion, if you wear a seatbelt, you’re more likely to avoid serious injury in a severe crash.”

By the way, this technique is not new. It has been around for thousands of years. Aesop was a Greek slave over 500 years before Christ. His stories were passed down verbally for hundreds of years before anyone ever wrote them down in a collection. Today, when you read an Aesop fable, you will get 30 seconds to two minutes of the story first. Then, at the conclusion, almost as a post-script, you will get the advice. Most often, this advice comes in the form of, “The moral of the story is…” You want to do the same in your persuasive presentations. Spend most of the time on the details of the story. Then, spend just a few seconds in the end with your morale.

Step 3: End with the Benefit to the Audience

So, the moral of the story is to wear your seatbelt. If you do that, you will avoid being cut out of your car and endless reconstructive surgeries .

Now, instead of leaving your audience wanting to argue with you, they are more likely to be thinking, “Man, I don’t want to be cut out of my car or have a bunch of facial surgeries.”

The process is very simple. However, it is also very powerful.

How to Write a Successful Persuasive Speech Using the “Breadcrumb” Approach

Once you understand the concept above, you can create very powerful persuasive speeches by linking a series of these persuasive stories together. I call this the breadcrumb strategy. Basically, you use each story as a way to move the audience closer to the ultimate conclusion that you want them to draw. Each story gains a little more agreement.

So, first, just give a simple story about an easy to agree with concept. You will gain agreement fairly easily and begin to also create an emotional appeal. Next, use an additional story to gain additional agreement. If you use this process three to five times, you are more likely to get the audience to agree with your final conclusion. If this is a formal presentation, just make your main points into the persuasive statements and use stories to reinforce the points.

Here are a few persuasive speech examples using this approach.

An Example of a Persuasive Public Speaking Using Breadcrumbs

Marijuana Legalization is Causing Huge Problems in Our Biggest Cities Homelessness is Out of Control in First States to Legalize Marijuana Last year, my family and I took a mini-vacation to Colorado Springs. I had spent a summer in Colorado when I was in college, so I wanted my family to experience the great time that I had had there as a youth. We were only there for four days, but we noticed something dramatic had happened. There were homeless people everywhere. Keep in mind, this wasn’t Denver, this was Colorado City. The picturesque landscape was clouded by ripped sleeping bags on street corners, and trash spread everywhere. We were downtown, and my wife and daughter wanted to do some shopping. My son and I found a comic book store across the street to browse in. As we came out, we almost bumped into a dirty man in torn close. He smiled at us, walked a few feet away from the door, and lit up a joint. He sat on the corner smoking it. As my son and I walked the 1/4 mile back to the store where we left my wife and daughter, we stepped over and walked around over a dozen homeless people camped out right in the middle of the town. This was not the Colorado that I remembered. From what I’ve heard, it has gotten even worse in the last year. So, if you don’t want to dramatically increase your homelessness population, don’t make marijuana legal in your state. DUI Instances and Traffic Accidents Have Increased in Marijuana States I was at the airport waiting for a flight last week, and the guy next to me offered me his newspaper. I haven’t read a newspaper in years, but he seemed so nice that I accepted. It was a copy of the USA Today, and it was open to an article about the rise in unintended consequences from legalizing marijuana. Safety officials and police in Colorado, Nevada, Washington, and Oregon, the first four state to legalize recreational marijuana, have reported a 6% increase in traffic accidents in the last few years. Although the increase (6%) doesn’t seem very dramatic, it was notable because the rate of accidents had been decreasing in each of the states for decades prior to the law change. Assuming that only one of the two parties involved in these new accidents was under the influence, that means that people who aren’t smoking marijuana are being negatively affected by the legalization. So, if you don’t want to increase your chances of being involved in a DUI incident, don’t legalize marijuana. (Notice how I just used an article as my evidence, but to make it more memorable, I told the story about how I came across the article. It is also easier to deliver this type of data because you are just relating what you remember about the data, not trying to be an expert on the data itself.) Marijuana is Still Largely Unregulated Just before my dad went into hospice care, he was in a lot of pain. He would take a prescription painkiller before bed to sleep. One night, my mom called frantically. Dad was in a catatonic state and wasn’t responsive. I rushed over. The hospital found that Dad had an unusually high amount of painkillers in his bloodstream. His regular doctor had been on vacation, and the fill-in doctor had prescribed a much higher dosage of the painkiller by accident. His original prescription was 2.5 mg, and the new prescription was 10 mg. Since dad was in a lot of pain most nights, he almost always took two tablets. He was also on dialysis, so his kidneys weren’t filtering out the excess narcotic each day. He had actually taken 20 MG (instead of 5 MG) on Friday night and another 20 mg on Saturday. Ordinarily, he would have had, at max, 15 mg of the narcotic in his system. Because of the mistake, though, he had 60 MGs. My point is that the narcotics that my dad was prescribed were highly regulated medicines under a doctor’s care, and a mistake was still made that almost killed him. With marijuana, there is really no way of knowing how much narcotic is in each dosage. So, mistakes like this are much more likely. So, in conclusion, legalizing marijuana can increase homelessness, increase the number of impaired drivers, and cause accidental overdoses.

If you use this breadcrumb approach, you are more likely to get at least some agreement. Even if the person disagrees with your conclusion, they are still likely to at least see your side. So, the person may say something like, I still disagree with you, but I totally see your point. That is still a step in the right direction.

For Real-World Practice in How to Design Persuasive Presentations Join Us for a Class

Our instructors are experts at helping presenters design persuasive speeches. We offer the Fearless Presentations ® classes in cities all over the world about every three to four months. In addition to helping you reduce nervousness, your instructor will also show you secrets to creating a great speech. For details about any of the classes, go to our Presentation Skills Class web page.

For additional details, see Persuasive Speech Outline Example .

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Free Persuasive Speech Generator

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💬 What Is Persuasive Speech?

📍 how to write a persuasive speech, 💡 top 20 persuasive speech topics, 📝 4 world-famous persuasive speech examples, 🔗 references.

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As the name suggests, a persuasive speech influences listeners’ behavior, attitudes, beliefs, and values.

In this speech, a speaker seeks a favorable response that aligns with their convictions or position on a matter.

An orator uses arguments to convince their audience to see a particular issue from their preferred perspective. Convincing arguments incorporate different elements to urge listeners to favor a speaker’s stand.

They follow a three-prong strategy incorporating:

A claim is a statement requiring support through evidence. Your speech should also include a thesis statement, your speech’s overarching idea from which other smaller ideas spring.

Informative vs. Persuasive Speech

An informative speech differs from a persuasive one in many ways.

So, how do you write a great persuasive speech that makes listeners adopt your preferred position on a matter?

Below are steps to drafting a great convincing speech.

Know Your Audience

Start by familiarizing yourself with your listeners before moving by knowing their needs, tastes, and ability to understand your desired topic.

This way, you will be better positioned to customize your speech to suit their needs and not parade your vast knowledge.

Familiarize Yourself with Your Topic

Get to know your topic to ensure it suits your audience’s needs. If you aren’t familiar with the topic, research it thoroughly to present your readers with facts.

This way, you will be better positioned to present your listeners with sufficient facts to persuade them.

Determine Your Speech’s Goal

A speech is not only about organizing facts in a logical manner; it is usually meant to persuade the audience and deliver a specific message across .

You, as a speaker, should focus on that message and find appropriate means to get it across.

Select the Best Persuasive Approach

Determine the best approach to persuade your listeners. You may lean on either ethos, logos, or pathos to achieve your desired goal. You can also use all of these approaches.

The final selection will depend on your audience.

Outline Your Key Ideas

You need to outline your best points before presenting them to your audience.

This way, you are better placed to know which argument to present first and last.

Start on a Strong Footing

You must begin your speech with a strong, attractive hook to capture your audience’s attention.

Your opening needs a catchy title that whets your audience’s appetite to listen to your speech.

Give Convincing Evidence

Your speech’s main body should include the points you want to use to convince listeners to side with your position.

Give your audience convincing examples and reasons to buy into your perspective.

Address Counter-arguments

Don’t forget to address opposing arguments because others have a right to hold contrary views and not accept your point right away.

While this may not be necessary, you can bolster your case by anticipating and discussing opposing views.

Finish with a Call to Action

Since you defined your speech’s goal, don’t forget to make a relevant call to action .

Remember, this part is like your landing pad.

Below are carefully selected persuasive speech topics to inspire you.

• Martial arts benefit the mind.
• Competitive sports have many mental benefits.
• Games have many positive social benefits.
• Make community service mandatory for college graduation.
• Traits that make up real heroes.
• Letter grades should be replaced with pass or fail .
• The real secret to success.
• Public libraries should filter internet pornography .
• Video games promote violence.
• Should abortions be illegal as a form of homicide ?
• Dirty music promotes immorality.
• Beauty pageants for children should be banned .
• Parents should spend more time with their children.
• Why junk food should cost more than healthy food .
• Tablets are better than laptops.
• Why should there be a four-day workweek ?
• Ban school uniforms.
• The internet should remain open source .
• Security cameras violate privacy.
• Vote by mail: should it be allowed ?

Below are the top four world-famous persuasive speeches to get inspiration from.

I Have a Dream by MLK

This speech embodies the black community’s search for equality. Martin Luther King voiced his opposition to the segregation against Africans when white supremacists sought to keep Africans in inferior positions using the backdoor. The leader envisioned a society where equality would replace racial discrimination.

Ain’t I A Woman by Sojourner Truth

This speech by an African woman embodied the quest for equal human rights during the season when oppression and slavery were at their peak. Truth was one of the leading advocates who fought for women’s rights in the 19th century. She delivered this speech at an 1851 Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

I Am Prepared to Die by Nelson Mandela

This Nelson Mandela speech echoes the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. Mandela risked his life to fight state-sponsored discrimination against Africans. Mandela was prepared to die for this just cause.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

This famous speech by the son of a Kenyan student who made it to become a US President shows the power of transformational hope. The speech is based on Obama’s focus on patriotic optimism and determination as change catalysts. This speech catapulted him into the limelight and led to his popular election as America’s first black and youngest president.

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This free AI-powered persuasive speech generator will quickly create a sample speech for you. All you need to do is add the necessary details so that the result matches your requirements. Moreover, on this page, you’ll learn what a persuasive speech is and how to write one quickly.

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11.2 Persuasive Speaking

Learning objectives.

• Explain how claims, evidence, and warrants function to create an argument.
• Identify strategies for choosing a persuasive speech topic.
• Identify strategies for adapting a persuasive speech based on an audience’s orientation to the proposition.
• Distinguish among propositions of fact, value, and policy.
• Choose an organizational pattern that is fitting for a persuasive speech topic.

We produce and receive persuasive messages daily, but we don’t often stop to think about how we make the arguments we do or the quality of the arguments that we receive. In this section, we’ll learn the components of an argument, how to choose a good persuasive speech topic, and how to adapt and organize a persuasive message.

Foundation of Persuasion

Persuasive speaking seeks to influence the beliefs, attitudes, values, or behaviors of audience members. In order to persuade, a speaker has to construct arguments that appeal to audience members. Arguments form around three components: claim, evidence, and warrant. The claim is the statement that will be supported by evidence. Your thesis statement is the overarching claim for your speech, but you will make other claims within the speech to support the larger thesis. Evidence , also called grounds, supports the claim. The main points of your persuasive speech and the supporting material you include serve as evidence. For example, a speaker may make the following claim: “There should be a national law against texting while driving.” The speaker could then support the claim by providing the following evidence: “Research from the US Department of Transportation has found that texting while driving creates a crash risk that is twenty-three times worse than driving while not distracted.” The warrant is the underlying justification that connects the claim and the evidence. One warrant for the claim and evidence cited in this example is that the US Department of Transportation is an institution that funds research conducted by credible experts. An additional and more implicit warrant is that people shouldn’t do things they know are unsafe.

Figure 11.2 Components of an Argument

The quality of your evidence often impacts the strength of your warrant, and some warrants are stronger than others. A speaker could also provide evidence to support their claim advocating for a national ban on texting and driving by saying, “I have personally seen people almost wreck while trying to text.” While this type of evidence can also be persuasive, it provides a different type and strength of warrant since it is based on personal experience. In general, the anecdotal evidence from personal experience would be given a weaker warrant than the evidence from the national research report. The same process works in our legal system when a judge evaluates the connection between a claim and evidence. If someone steals my car, I could say to the police, “I’m pretty sure Mario did it because when I said hi to him on campus the other day, he didn’t say hi back, which proves he’s mad at me.” A judge faced with that evidence is unlikely to issue a warrant for Mario’s arrest. Fingerprint evidence from the steering wheel that has been matched with a suspect is much more likely to warrant arrest.

As you put together a persuasive argument, you act as the judge. You can evaluate arguments that you come across in your research by analyzing the connection (the warrant) between the claim and the evidence. If the warrant is strong, you may want to highlight that argument in your speech. You may also be able to point out a weak warrant in an argument that goes against your position, which you could then include in your speech. Every argument starts by putting together a claim and evidence, but arguments grow to include many interrelated units.

Choosing a Persuasive Speech Topic

As with any speech, topic selection is important and is influenced by many factors. Good persuasive speech topics are current, controversial, and have important implications for society. If your topic is currently being discussed on television, in newspapers, in the lounges in your dorm, or around your family’s dinner table, then it’s a current topic. A persuasive speech aimed at getting audience members to wear seat belts in cars wouldn’t have much current relevance, given that statistics consistently show that most people wear seat belts. Giving the same speech would have been much more timely in the 1970s when there was a huge movement to increase seat-belt use.

Many topics that are current are also controversial, which is what gets them attention by the media and citizens. Current and controversial topics will be more engaging for your audience. A persuasive speech to encourage audience members to donate blood or recycle wouldn’t be very controversial, since the benefits of both practices are widely agreed on. However, arguing that the restrictions on blood donation by men who have had sexual relations with men be lifted would be controversial. I must caution here that controversial is not the same as inflammatory. An inflammatory topic is one that evokes strong reactions from an audience for the sake of provoking a reaction. Being provocative for no good reason or choosing a topic that is extremist will damage your credibility and prevent you from achieving your speech goals.

You should also choose a topic that is important to you and to society as a whole. As we have already discussed in this book, our voices are powerful, as it is through communication that we participate and make change in society. Therefore we should take seriously opportunities to use our voices to speak publicly. Choosing a speech topic that has implications for society is probably a better application of your public speaking skills than choosing to persuade the audience that Lebron James is the best basketball player in the world or that Superman is a better hero than Spiderman. Although those topics may be very important to you, they don’t carry the same social weight as many other topics you could choose to discuss. Remember that speakers have ethical obligations to the audience and should take the opportunity to speak seriously.

You will also want to choose a topic that connects to your own interests and passions. If you are an education major, it might make more sense to do a persuasive speech about funding for public education than the death penalty. If there are hot-button issues for you that make you get fired up and veins bulge out in your neck, then it may be a good idea to avoid those when speaking in an academic or professional context.

Choose a persuasive speech topic that you’re passionate about but still able to approach and deliver in an ethical manner.

Michael Vadon – Nigel Farage – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Choosing such topics may interfere with your ability to deliver a speech in a competent and ethical manner. You want to care about your topic, but you also want to be able to approach it in a way that’s going to make people want to listen to you. Most people tune out speakers they perceive to be too ideologically entrenched and write them off as extremists or zealots.

You also want to ensure that your topic is actually persuasive. Draft your thesis statement as an “I believe” statement so your stance on an issue is clear. Also, think of your main points as reasons to support your thesis. Students end up with speeches that aren’t very persuasive in nature if they don’t think of their main points as reasons. Identifying arguments that counter your thesis is also a good exercise to help ensure your topic is persuasive. If you can clearly and easily identify a competing thesis statement and supporting reasons, then your topic and approach are arguable.

Review of Tips for Choosing a Persuasive Speech Topic

• Not current. People should use seat belts.
• Current. People should not text while driving.
• Not controversial. People should recycle.
• Controversial. Recycling should be mandatory by law.
• Not as impactful. Superman is the best superhero.
• Impactful. Colleges and universities should adopt zero-tolerance bullying policies.
• Unclear thesis. Homeschooling is common in the United States.
• Clear, argumentative thesis with stance. Homeschooling does not provide the same benefits of traditional education and should be strictly monitored and limited.

Adapting Persuasive Messages

Competent speakers should consider their audience throughout the speech-making process. Given that persuasive messages seek to directly influence the audience in some way, audience adaptation becomes even more important. If possible, poll your audience to find out their orientation toward your thesis. I read my students’ thesis statements aloud and have the class indicate whether they agree with, disagree with, or are neutral in regards to the proposition. It is unlikely that you will have a homogenous audience, meaning that there will probably be some who agree, some who disagree, and some who are neutral. So you may employ all of the following strategies, in varying degrees, in your persuasive speech.

When you have audience members who already agree with your proposition, you should focus on intensifying their agreement. You can also assume that they have foundational background knowledge of the topic, which means you can take the time to inform them about lesser-known aspects of a topic or cause to further reinforce their agreement. Rather than move these audience members from disagreement to agreement, you can focus on moving them from agreement to action. Remember, calls to action should be as specific as possible to help you capitalize on audience members’ motivation in the moment so they are more likely to follow through on the action.

There are two main reasons audience members may be neutral in regards to your topic: (1) they are uninformed about the topic or (2) they do not think the topic affects them. In this case, you should focus on instilling a concern for the topic. Uninformed audiences may need background information before they can decide if they agree or disagree with your proposition. If the issue is familiar but audience members are neutral because they don’t see how the topic affects them, focus on getting the audience’s attention and demonstrating relevance. Remember that concrete and proxemic supporting materials will help an audience find relevance in a topic. Students who pick narrow or unfamiliar topics will have to work harder to persuade their audience, but neutral audiences often provide the most chance of achieving your speech goal since even a small change may move them into agreement.

When audience members disagree with your proposition, you should focus on changing their minds. To effectively persuade, you must be seen as a credible speaker. When an audience is hostile to your proposition, establishing credibility is even more important, as audience members may be quick to discount or discredit someone who doesn’t appear prepared or doesn’t present well-researched and supported information. Don’t give an audience a chance to write you off before you even get to share your best evidence. When facing a disagreeable audience, the goal should also be small change. You may not be able to switch someone’s position completely, but influencing him or her is still a success. Aside from establishing your credibility, you should also establish common ground with an audience.

Build common ground with disagreeable audiences and acknowledge areas of disagreement.

Chris-Havard Berge – Shaking Hands – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Acknowledging areas of disagreement and logically refuting counterarguments in your speech is also a way to approach persuading an audience in disagreement, as it shows that you are open-minded enough to engage with other perspectives.

Determining Your Proposition

The proposition of your speech is the overall direction of the content and how that relates to the speech goal. A persuasive speech will fall primarily into one of three categories: propositions of fact, value, or policy. A speech may have elements of any of the three propositions, but you can usually determine the overall proposition of a speech from the specific purpose and thesis statements.

Propositions of fact focus on beliefs and try to establish that something “is or isn’t.” Propositions of value focus on persuading audience members that something is “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “desirable or undesirable.” Propositions of policy advocate that something “should or shouldn’t” be done. Since most persuasive speech topics can be approached as propositions of fact, value, or policy, it is a good idea to start thinking about what kind of proposition you want to make, as it will influence how you go about your research and writing. As you can see in the following example using the topic of global warming, the type of proposition changes the types of supporting materials you would need:

• Proposition of fact. Global warming is caused by increased greenhouse gases related to human activity.
• Proposition of value. America’s disproportionately large amount of pollution relative to other countries is wrong .
• Proposition of policy. There should be stricter emission restrictions on individual cars.

To support propositions of fact, you would want to present a logical argument based on objective facts that can then be used to build persuasive arguments. Propositions of value may require you to appeal more to your audience’s emotions and cite expert and lay testimony. Persuasive speeches about policy usually require you to research existing and previous laws or procedures and determine if any relevant legislation or propositions are currently being considered.

“Getting Critical”

Persuasion and Masculinity

The traditional view of rhetoric that started in ancient Greece and still informs much of our views on persuasion today has been critiqued for containing Western and masculine biases. Traditional persuasion has been linked to Western and masculine values of domination, competition, and change, which have been critiqued as coercive and violent (Gearhart, 1979).

Communication scholars proposed an alternative to traditional persuasive rhetoric in the form of invitational rhetoric. Invitational rhetoric differs from a traditional view of persuasive rhetoric that “attempts to win over an opponent, or to advocate the correctness of a single position in a very complex issue” (Bone et al., 2008). Instead, invitational rhetoric proposes a model of reaching consensus through dialogue. The goal is to create a climate in which growth and change can occur but isn’t required for one person to “win” an argument over another. Each person in a communication situation is acknowledged to have a standpoint that is valid but can still be influenced through the offering of alternative perspectives and the invitation to engage with and discuss these standpoints (Ryan & Natalle, 2001). Safety, value, and freedom are three important parts of invitational rhetoric. Safety involves a feeling of security in which audience members and speakers feel like their ideas and contributions will not be denigrated. Value refers to the notion that each person in a communication encounter is worthy of recognition and that people are willing to step outside their own perspectives to better understand others. Last, freedom is present in communication when communicators do not limit the thinking or decisions of others, allowing all participants to speak up (Bone et al., 2008).

Invitational rhetoric doesn’t claim that all persuasive rhetoric is violent. Instead, it acknowledges that some persuasion is violent and that the connection between persuasion and violence is worth exploring. Invitational rhetoric has the potential to contribute to the civility of communication in our society. When we are civil, we are capable of engaging with and appreciating different perspectives while still understanding our own. People aren’t attacked or reviled because their views diverge from ours. Rather than reducing the world to “us against them, black or white, and right or wrong,” invitational rhetoric encourages us to acknowledge human perspectives in all their complexity (Bone et al., 2008).

• What is your reaction to the claim that persuasion includes Western and masculine biases?
• What are some strengths and weaknesses of the proposed alternatives to traditional persuasion?
• In what situations might an invitational approach to persuasion be useful? In what situations might you want to rely on traditional models of persuasion?

Organizing a Persuasive Speech

We have already discussed several patterns for organizing your speech, but some organization strategies are specific to persuasive speaking. Some persuasive speech topics lend themselves to a topical organization pattern, which breaks the larger topic up into logical divisions. Earlier, in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , we discussed recency and primacy, and in this chapter we discussed adapting a persuasive speech based on the audience’s orientation toward the proposition. These concepts can be connected when organizing a persuasive speech topically. Primacy means putting your strongest information first and is based on the idea that audience members put more weight on what they hear first. This strategy can be especially useful when addressing an audience that disagrees with your proposition, as you can try to win them over early. Recency means putting your strongest information last to leave a powerful impression. This can be useful when you are building to a climax in your speech, specifically if you include a call to action.

Putting your strongest argument last can help motivate an audience to action.

Celestine Chua – The Change – CC BY 2.0.

The problem-solution pattern is an organizational pattern that advocates for a particular approach to solve a problem. You would provide evidence to show that a problem exists and then propose a solution with additional evidence or reasoning to justify the course of action. One main point addressing the problem and one main point addressing the solution may be sufficient, but you are not limited to two. You could add a main point between the problem and solution that outlines other solutions that have failed. You can also combine the problem-solution pattern with the cause-effect pattern or expand the speech to fit with Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.

As was mentioned in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , the cause-effect pattern can be used for informative speaking when the relationship between the cause and effect is not contested. The pattern is more fitting for persuasive speeches when the relationship between the cause and effect is controversial or unclear. There are several ways to use causes and effects to structure a speech. You could have a two-point speech that argues from cause to effect or from effect to cause. You could also have more than one cause that lead to the same effect or a single cause that leads to multiple effects. The following are some examples of thesis statements that correspond to various organizational patterns. As you can see, the same general topic area, prison overcrowding, is used for each example. This illustrates the importance of considering your organizational options early in the speech-making process, since the pattern you choose will influence your researching and writing.

Persuasive Speech Thesis Statements by Organizational Pattern

• Problem-solution. Prison overcrowding is a serious problem that we can solve by finding alternative rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.
• Problem–failed solution–proposed solution. Prison overcrowding is a serious problem that shouldn’t be solved by building more prisons; instead, we should support alternative rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.
• Cause-effect. Prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to lesser sentences for violent criminals.
• Cause-cause-effect. State budgets are being slashed and prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to lesser sentences for violent criminals.
• Cause-effect-effect. Prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to increased behavioral problems among inmates and lesser sentences for violent criminals.
• Cause-effect-solution. Prisons are overcrowded with nonviolent offenders, which leads to lesser sentences for violent criminals; therefore we need to find alternative rehabilitation for nonviolent offenders.

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence is an organizational pattern designed for persuasive speaking that appeals to audience members’ needs and motivates them to action. If your persuasive speaking goals include a call to action, you may want to consider this organizational pattern. We already learned about the five steps of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in Chapter 9 “Preparing a Speech” , but we will review them here with an example:

• Hook the audience by making the topic relevant to them.
• Imagine living a full life, retiring, and slipping into your golden years. As you get older you become more dependent on others and move into an assisted-living facility. Although you think life will be easier, things get worse as you experience abuse and mistreatment from the staff. You report the abuse to a nurse and wait, but nothing happens and the abuse continues. Elder abuse is a common occurrence, and unlike child abuse, there are no laws in our state that mandate complaints of elder abuse be reported or investigated.
• Cite evidence to support the fact that the issue needs to be addressed.
• According to the American Psychological Association, one to two million elderly US Americans have been abused by their caretakers. In our state, those in the medical, psychiatric, and social work field are required to report suspicion of child abuse but are not mandated to report suspicions of elder abuse.
• Offer a solution and persuade the audience that it is feasible and well thought out.
• There should be a federal law mandating that suspicion of elder abuse be reported and that all claims of elder abuse be investigated.
• Take the audience beyond your solution and help them visualize the positive results of implementing it or the negative consequences of not.
• Elderly people should not have to live in fear during their golden years. A mandatory reporting law for elderly abuse will help ensure that the voices of our elderly loved ones will be heard.
• Call your audience to action by giving them concrete steps to follow to engage in a particular action or to change a thought or behavior.
• I urge you to take action in two ways. First, raise awareness about this issue by talking to your own friends and family. Second, contact your representatives at the state and national level to let them know that elder abuse should be taken seriously and given the same level of importance as other forms of abuse. I brought cards with the contact information for our state and national representatives for this area. Please take one at the end of my speech. A short e-mail or phone call can help end the silence surrounding elder abuse.

Key Takeaways

• Arguments are formed by making claims that are supported by evidence. The underlying justification that connects the claim and evidence is the warrant. Arguments can have strong or weak warrants, which will make them more or less persuasive.
• Good persuasive speech topics are current, controversial (but not inflammatory), and important to the speaker and society.
• When audience members agree with the proposal, focus on intensifying their agreement and moving them to action.
• When audience members are neutral in regards to the proposition, provide background information to better inform them about the issue and present information that demonstrates the relevance of the topic to the audience.
• When audience members disagree with the proposal, focus on establishing your credibility, build common ground with the audience, and incorporate counterarguments and refute them.
• Propositions of fact focus on establishing that something “is or isn’t” or is “true or false.”
• Propositions of value focus on persuading an audience that something is “good or bad,” “right or wrong,” or “desirable or undesirable.”
• Propositions of policy advocate that something “should or shouldn’t” be done.
• Persuasive speeches can be organized using the following patterns: problem-solution, cause-effect, cause-effect-solution, or Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.
• Getting integrated: Give an example of persuasive messages that you might need to create in each of the following contexts: academic, professional, personal, and civic. Then do the same thing for persuasive messages you may receive.
• To help ensure that your persuasive speech topic is persuasive and not informative, identify the claims, evidence, and warrants you may use in your argument. In addition, write a thesis statement that refutes your topic idea and identify evidence and warrants that could support that counterargument.
• Determine if your speech is primarily a proposition of fact, value, or policy. How can you tell? Identify an organizational pattern that you think will work well for your speech topic, draft one sentence for each of your main points, and arrange them according to the pattern you chose.

Bone, J. E., Cindy L. Griffin, and T. M. Linda Scholz, “Beyond Traditional Conceptualizations of Rhetoric: Invitational Rhetoric and a Move toward Civility,” Western Journal of Communication 72 (2008): 436.

Gearhart, S. M., “The Womanization of Rhetoric,” Women’s Studies International Quarterly 2 (1979): 195–201.

Ryan, K. J., and Elizabeth J. Natalle, “Fusing Horizons: Standpoint Hermenutics and Invitational Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31 (2001): 69–90.

Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

15 Persuasive Speeches

Speeches that Make a Change

In this chapter . . .

For many public speeches, the specific purpose is to convince the audience of a particular opinion or claim or to convince them to take some action in response to the speech. When your intention is to affect change in your audience (not just the acquisition of knowledge) then you are delivering a persuasive speech. In this chapter you will learn about the elements of persuasion, why persuasion is difficult, and how to overcome people’s resistance to change by using effective and ethical methods.

Although a persuasive speech involves information—even as much as an informative speech—the key difference is that a persuasive speech is designed for “creating, reinforcing, or changing people’s beliefs or actions” (Lucas, 2015. p. 306). A persuasive speech makes something happen. In other words, it performs a job.

Traditional Views of Persuasion

In the fourth century BCE, the classic philosopher Aristotle took up the study of the public practices of the ruling class in Athenian society. For two years he observed the  rhetoric  (the art of persuasion) of the men who spoke in the assembly and the courts. In the end, he developed a theory about persuasiveness that has come down to us in history as a treatise called Rhetoric. Among his many ideas was the identification of three elements essential to persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos. In short, they mean credibility, reasonability, and emotion.

Ethos has come to mean speaker character and credentials. It is the element that establishes the audience’s trust in you as a speaker. A speaker’s credibility is based on who the speaker is and what they know: experience, education, expertise, and background. If you’re delivering a persuasive speech about adopting a pet from a shelter and you have raised several shelter dogs, then you have credibility through experience and should share that fact about yourself with the audience to enhance their trust in your persuasive argument. Another way to establish your credibility is through research sources. You may not be an expert in climate change, but if you were giving a persuasive speech about it, you can cite reliable authoritative sources.

The word ethos looks very much like the word “ethics,” and there are many close parallels to the trust an audience has in a speaker and their honesty and ethical stance. In terms of ethics, it goes without saying that your speech will be truthful.

In addition to expertise and truthfulness is your personal involvement in the topic. Ideally you have chosen the topic because it means something to you personally. Audiences will have more trust in you if they feel you have something as stake or something personal in the subject. For example, perhaps your speech is designed to motivate audience members to take action against bullying in schools, and it’s important to you because you work with the Boys and Girls Club organization and have seen how anti-bullying programs can have positive results. Sharing your own involvement and commitment is key to establishing your credibility on this topic.

Logos is the second key element in Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric. Related to our word “logic,” the Greek term logos in persuasion means presenting ideas that appeal to logic or reason. Logos in a speech pertain to arguments that the audience would find acceptable. Imagine a speech, for example, which has the goal of persuading an audience to adopt healthier eating habits. Would the speech be effective if the arguments focused on how expensive organic foods are? Of course not.

Logic and reason are persuasive not only as matters of content.  Logos  pertains to organization, as well. An effective persuasive speech presents arguments in an organized fashion.

In words like “empathy,” “sympathy,” and “compassion” we see the root word behind the Greek word pathos. Pathos, for Aristotle, meant exciting emotions such as anger, joy, hate, love, and desire to persuade the audience of the rightness of a proposition. In a positive sense, appealing to the emotions of the audience is a highly effective persuasive tool. In the earlier example of a speech designed to encourage an audience to take action against bullying in schools, including a touching story about a student experiencing bullying would make the audience more likely to support your call for action.

However, we recognize that pathos can be used in a negative way. Emotional appeals that use anger, guilt, hatred, inflammatory language like name-calling, or that try to frighten the audience with horrible images, are counter-productive and even unethical. They might incite emotion in the audience, but they are poor uses of pathos.

One negative emotion used frequently by persuasive speakers is fear. Candidates for political office, for example, often try to provoke fear to move us to vote for them. Intense, over-the-top fear appeals, based on factual falsehoods or cherry-picking, and/or including shocking photos, are not ethical and are often dismissed by discerning audience members. Appealing to the emotion of fear can be ethical if it’s managed carefully. This means being strictly factual and avoiding extremes.

Persuasion and the Audience

It makes sense that if a speaker wants to affect the audience’s beliefs or actions, then the speaker must be perfectly clear about their expectations. If you were listening to a persuasive speech call for your audience to support animals, wouldn’t you want to know exactly what “support” the speaker was talking about? Giving money to charities? Volunteering at an animal shelter? Writing state legislators and urging them to change laws? Your job as a persuasive speaker is to be clear about what you want to create, reinforce, or change in your audience.

For your speech to have persuasive power, you must also consider your audience and choose a goal that is feasible for them. Persuasion isn’t an on/off switch. It’s more like a thermometer. Skillful persuasive speakers respect and identify a persuasive goal that is calibrated to the audience. Think of persuasion as a continuum or line going both directions. At one end is strong disagreement. At the other end is strong agreement. Your audience members, either as a group or individually, are sitting somewhere on that line in relation to your central idea statement, or what we are going to call a proposition in this chapter.

For example, your speech proposition might be something like “The main cause of climate change is human activity.” You are claiming that climate change is due to the harmful things that humans have done to the environment. To be an effective persuasive speaker, one of your first jobs after choosing this topic would be to determine where your audience “sits” on the continuum.

+ 3 means strongly agree to the point of making lifestyle choices to lessen climate change (such as riding a bike instead of driving a car, recycling, eating certain kinds of foods, and advocating for government policy changes). + 2 means agree but not to the point of acting upon it or only acting on it in small ways. + 1 as mildly agrees with your proposition; that is, they think it’s probably true, but the issue doesn’t affect them personally. 0 means neutral, no opinion, or feeling too uninformed to decide. – 1 means mildly opposed to the proposition but willing to listen to those with whom they disagree. – 2 means disagreement to the point of dismissing the idea pretty quickly. – 3 means strong opposition to the point that the concept of climate change itself isn’t even listened to or acknowledged as a valid subject.

Since everyone in the audience is somewhere on this line or continuum, you can accept the fact that any movement toward +3 or to the right is a win. Trying to change an audience from -3 (strong disagreement) to +3 (strong agreement) in a single speech would be quite impossible. When you understand this, you can make strategic choices about the content of your speech.

In this example, if you knew that most of the audience was at -2 or -3, your speech could focus on opening their minds to the possibility of climate change and provide the science behind human causes. On the other hand, if you knew your audience was at +1 or +2, you could focus on urging them to take bold steps, like giving up their gasoline-powered vehicles.

A proposition is assumed to be in some way controversial, or a “stretch” for the audience. Some people in the audience will disagree with your proposition or at least have no opinion; they are not “on your side.”

There will be those in the audience who disagree with your proposition but who are willing to listen. Some members of the audience may already agree with you, although they don’t know why. Both groups could be called the  target audience . At the same time, another cluster of your audience may be extremely opposed to your position to the degree that they probably will not give you a fair hearing. They probably can’t be persuaded. Focus on your target audience, they are the one you can persuade.

Why is Persuasion Hard?

Persuasion is hard mainly because we have a bias against change. We go out of our way to protect our beliefs, attitudes, and values. We selectively expose ourselves to messages that we already agree with, rather than those that confront or challenge us. We find it uncomfortable to be confronted with conflicting information or viewpoints.

Additionally, during a persuasive speech the audience members are holding a mental dialogue with the speaker or at least the speaker’s content. The processes that the human mind goes through while it listens to a persuasive message is like a silent conversation. In their minds, audience members are producing doubts or reservations about your proposal. If we could listen in on one of these conversations, it might go something like this:

Speaker: Switching to a plant-based diet is the best action you can take to support a reduction in the CO-2 emissions harming the climate. Audience Member Mind: Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, but eating like that won’t give me enough protein.

The audience member has a doubt or reservation about the speaker’s proposal. We can call these doubts “yeah, buts” because the audience members are thinking, “Yeah, but what about—?”  It’s a skill of good persuasion speechwriting to anticipate reservations.

Solutions to the Difficulty of Persuasion

With these reasons for the resistance audience members have to persuasion, what is a speaker to do? Here are some strategies.

First, choose a feasible goal for the persuasive action you want the audience to take. Going back to our continuum, trying to move an audience from -3 to +2 or +3 is too big a move. Having reasonable persuasive goals is the first way to meet resistance. Even moving someone from -3 to -2 is progress, and over time these small shifts can eventually result in a significant amount of persuasion.

Secondly, as speakers we must address reservations. While speechwriters aren’t mind-readers, we can easily imagine reservations about our proposition and build a response to those reservations into the speech. Using the example above, a speaker might say:

Switching to a plant-based diet is the best action you can take to support a reduction in the CO-2 emissions harming the climate. I urge all of you to consider this important dietary change. Perhaps you are thinking that a plant-based diet won’t provide enough protein. That is a common concern. Nutritionists at the website Forks Over Knives explain how the staples of a PB diet—whole grains, legumes, and nuts—provide ample protein.

Here, the speaker acknowledges a valid reservation and then offers a rebuttal. This is called a two-tailed argument. The speaker articulates a possible argument against their proposition and then refutes it.

The third strategy is to keep in mind that since you are asking the audience to change something, they must view the benefits of the change as worth the stress of the change. In effect, audiences want to know: “What’s in it for me?” (WIIFM). As a speaker, you should give thought to that question and in your speech address the benefit, advantage, or improvement that the audience will gain by taking the action you propose.

Structure of a Persuasive Speech

A persuasive speech shares with an informational speech the same four elements for a strongly structured speech: introduction, body, conclusion, and connectors. Like informative speeches, preparation requires thoughtful attention to the given circumstances of the speech occasion, as well as audience analysis in terms of demographic and psychographic features. That said, there are some elements unique to a persuasive speech.

General and Specific Purpose General Purpose: To Persuade Specific Purpose: To motivate my audience of campus administrators to provide LGBTQ+ safe spaces on campus.

This looks familiar up to this point. The general purpose is one of the three broad speech goals (to instruct, to persuade, to inspire or entertain). The specific purpose statement follows a clear T.W.A.C. pattern:

T o +  W ord: To convince A udience: campus administrators C ontent: LGBTQ+ safe spaces

What is unique to persuasive speeches is what comes next, the proposition.

Propositions

Informational speeches require a thesis. This is the central idea of the speech; its “takeaway.” Persuasive speeches equally require a strong focus on the main idea, but we call this something else: a  proposition . A proposition is a statement that expresses a judgement or opinion about which you want audience in agreement. Remember that propositions must be something that can be argued. To say, “The earth is round” isn’t a proposition. “The earth is flat” is a proposition.

• Converting to solar energy saves homeowners money.
• A vegan diet is the most ethical way to eat.
• Universities should provide on-line learning options for all classes.
• The Constitution’s Second Amendment does not include possession of automatic weapons for private use.

Like a thesis statement for an informative speech, a proposition statement is best when it not only clearly states the judgment or opinion for which you seek audience agreement, but also provides a succinct preview of the reasons for that judgement.

Universities should provide LGBTQ+ safe spaces on campus to promote visibility, build community, and protect well-being for LGBTQ+ students and their allies.

Types of Propositions

If you take a closer look at the propositions above, you’ll notice that they suggest several types of persuasion. In fact, there are several broad categories of propositions, determined by their primary goal. These are: a) propositions of fact, b) propositions of value, c) propositions of policy, and d) propositions of definition.

Proposition of Fact

Speeches with this type of proposition attempt to establish the truth of a statement. The core of the proposition isn’t whether something is morally right or wrong, only that a statement is supported by evidence or not. These propositions are not facts such as “the chemical symbol for water is H20.” Rather, propositions of fact are statements over which people disagree and there is evidence on both sides. Some examples of propositions of fact are:

• Experiments using animals are essential to the development of many life-saving medical procedures.
• Climate change has been caused by human activity.

Notice that in none of these are any values—good or bad—mentioned. The point of these propositions is to prove with evidence the truth of a statement.

Proposition of Value

Propositions of fact have the primary purpose of arguing that something exists in a particular way. Propositions of value, on the other hand, have as their primary purpose to argue that one thing is better than another. When the proposition has a word such as “good,” “bad,” “best,” “worst,” “just,” “unjust,” “ethical,” “unethical,” “moral,” “immoral,” “beneficial,” “harmful,” “advantageous,” or “disadvantageous,” then it’s a proposition of value. Some examples include:

• Hybrid cars are the best form of automobile transportation available today.
• Mascots that involve Native American names, characters, and symbols are unjust.

Propositions of value require a first step: defining the “value” word. If you are trying to convince your audience that something is “unjust,” you will have to make clear what you mean by that term. For different people, “best” might mean “safest,” “least expensive,” “most environmentally responsible,” “stylish,” “powerful,” or “prestigious.” Obviously, in the case of the first proposition above, it means “environmentally responsible.” It’s the first job of the speaker, after introducing the speech and stating the proposition, to explain what “best form of automobile transportation” means. Then the proposition would be defended with separate arguments.

Proposition of Policy

These propositions are easy to identify because they almost always have the word “should” in them. These propositions call for a change in policy or practice (including those in a government, community, or school), or they can call for the audience to adopt a certain behavior.

• The federal government should act to ensure clean water standards for all citizens.
• Universities should eliminate attendance requirements.
• States should lower taxes on food.

The proposition determines the approach to the speech, especially the organization. The exact phrasing of the proposition should be carefully done to be reasonable, positive, and appropriate for the context and audience.

Propositions of Definition

Propositions of definitions argue that a word, phrase, or concept has a particular meaning. Lawyers, legislators, and scholars often write briefs, present persuasive speeches, or compose articles to define terms that are vital to defendants, citizens, or disciplines. Some examples might be:

• The Second Amendment to the Constitution does not include possession of automatic weapons for private use.
• Alcoholism should be considered a disease because…
• Thomas Jefferson’s definition of inalienable rights did not include a right to privacy.

In each of these examples, the proposition is that the definition of these things needs to be changed or viewed differently, but the audience isn’t asked to change an attitude or action.

These are not strict categories. A proposition of value most likely contains elements of facts and definitions, for example. However, identifying the primary category for a persuasive speech focuses the speaker on the ultimate purpose of the speech.

Pro-Arguments

Once you know your proposition, the next step is to make your case for your judgement or opinion through clear and distinct points. These are the main points of the body of your persuasive speech. We call these the “pro” or “for” arguments. You should present at least three distinct arguments in favor of your proposition. Expanding on the example above,

General Purpose: To Persuade Specific Purpose:  To motivate my audience of campus administrators to provide LGBTQ+ safe spaces on campus. Proposition: Universities should provide LGBTQ+ safe spaces on campus in order to promote visibility, build community, and protect well-being for LGBTQ+ students and their allies.

Three pro-arguments for the proposition are:

Pro-Argument #1: Creating a safe space makes LGBTQ+ community more visible and central to campus life, instead of marginalized. Pro-Argument #2: Safe spaces create a place where LGBTQ+ and their allies learn to build networks, friendship, and support circles. Pro-Argument #3: With a safe and centralized space bringing together this community, instances of bias or harassment can be brought to counselors, making for a safer community.

Two-Tailed Arguments

There is one more crucial element following pro-arguments. These are unique to persuasive speeches. As discussed above, it’s essential to anticipate and address audience reservations about your propositions. These are the two-tailed arguments that articulate the reservation and then address it or refute it. In the example we’re using, such a statement might look like this:

“Perhaps you are thinking that an LGBTQ+ safe space isn’t necessary on campus because there are already places on campus that provide this function. I understand that concern. However, a space that is officially provided by the University provides access to resources with trained personnel. The national organization CampusPride provides training to university facilitators for exactly this reason.”

There are some techniques for rebuttal or refutation that work better than others. You would not want to say, “If you are one of the people who believe this about my proposition, you are wrong.” It’s better to say that their reservations are “misconceptions,” “myths,” or “mistaken ideas” that are commonly held about the proposition.

Building Upon Your Persuasive Speech’s Arguments

Once you have constructed the key arguments, it’s time to be sure the main points are well supported with evidence.

First, your evidence should be from sources that the audience will find credible. If you can find the same essential information from two sources but know that the audience will find the information more credible from one source than another, use and cite the information from the more credible one. For example, if you find the same statistical data on Wikipedia and the US Department of Labor’s website, cite the US Department of Labor. Audiences also accept information from sources they consider unbiased or indifferent. Gallup polls, for example, have been considered reliable sources of survey data because unlike some organizations, Gallup does not have a cause (political or otherwise) it’s supporting.

Secondly, your evidence should be new to the audience. New evidence is more attention-getting, and you will appear more credible if you tell the audience something new (as long as you cite it well) than if you use the “same old, same old” evidence they have heard before.

Third, in order to be effective and ethical, your supporting evidence should be relevant and not used out of context, manipulated, or edited to change its meaning.

After choosing the evidence and apportioning it to the correct parts of the speech, you will want to consider the use of metaphors, quotations, rhetorical devices, and narratives that will enhance the language and “listenability” of your speech. Narratives are especially good for introduction and conclusions, to get attention and to leave the audience with something dramatic. You might refer to the narrative in the introduction again in the conclusion to give the speech a sense of finality.

Lastly, you will want to decide if you should use any type of presentation aid for the speech. The decision to use visuals such as PowerPoint slides or a video clip in a persuasive speech should take into consideration the effect of the visuals on the audience and the time allotted for the speech. The charts, graphs, or photographs you use should be focused and credibly done.

Organization of a Persuasive Speech

You can see that the overall structure of a persuasive speech follows a common model: introduction, body (arguments and support), two-tailed arguments, and conclusion. Study the example at the end of this chapter to see this structure in action.

In speechwriting, you can think of a speech structure like the building of a house and organization like the arrangement of the rooms within it. As with other speeches, persuasive speeches can be organized topically, chronologically, or spatially. However, persuasive speeches often follow a problem-solution or problem-cause-solution pattern.

Organization for a proposition of fact

If your proposition is one of fact or definition, it will be best to use a topical organization for the body of your speech. That means that you will have two to four discrete, separate topics in support of the proposition.

Proposition: Converting to solar energy saves homeowners money.

• (Pro-Argument 1) Solar energy can be economical to install.
• (Pro-Argument 2) The government awards grants for solar.
• (Pro-Argument 3) Solar energy reduces power bills.
• (Pro-Argument 4) Solar energy requires less money for maintenance.

Organization for a proposition of value

A persuasive speech that incorporates a proposition of value will have a slightly different structure. A proposition of value must first define the “value” word for clarity and provide a basis for the other arguments of the speech. Then the pro-arguments for the proposition based on the definition.

Proposition: Hybrid cars are the best form of automotive transportation available today.

• (Definition of value) Automotive transportation that is best meets three standards: dependable, economical, and environmentally responsible.
• (Pro-Argument 1) Studies show that hybrid cars are durable and dependable.
• (Pro-Argument 2) Hybrid cars are fuel-efficient.
• (Pro-Argument 3) Hybrid cars are environmentally responsible.

Organization for a propositions of policy

The most common type of outline organizations for speeches with propositions of policy is problem-solution or problem-cause-solution. Typically, we don’t feel any motivation to change unless we are convinced that some harm, problem, need, or deficiency exists, and even more, that it affects us personally. Therefore, the organization of a speech about policy needs to first explain the problem and its cause, followed by the solution in the form of 3-5 pro-arguments.

Proposition: Universities should provide on-line learning options for all classes.

• (Problem) Regular attendance in a physical classroom is no longer possible for all students.
• (Cause) Changes brought about by the COVID pandemic have made guaranteed classroom attendance difficult.
• (Pro-Argument 1) Providing on-line learning options protects the health of students.
• (Pro-Argument 2) On-line learning serves students who cannot come to campus.
• (Pro-Argument 3) Access to on-line learning allows students to maintain employment while still going to school.

To complete this outline, along with introduction and conclusion, your pro-arguments should be supported with fact, quotations, and statistics.

Your persuasive speech in class, as well as in real life, is an opportunity to share a passion or cause that you believe will matter to society and help the audience live a better life. Even if you are initially uncomfortable with the idea of persuasion, we use it all the time in diverse ways. Choose your topic based on your commitment and experience, look for quality evidence, craft your proposition so that it will be clear and audience appropriate, and put the finishing touches on it with an eye toward enhancing your logos , ethos , and pathos .

Media Attributions

• Persuasion Scale © Mechele Leon is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license

Public Speaking as Performance Copyright © 2023 by Mechele Leon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How to Write an Introduction for a Persuasive Speech

Last Updated: October 2, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Gale McCreary and by wikiHow staff writer, Kyle Hall . Gale McCreary is the Founder and Chief Coordinator of SpeechStory, a nonprofit organization focused on improving communication skills in youth. She was previously a Silicon Valley CEO and President of a Toastmasters International chapter. She has been recognized as Santa Barbara Entrepreneurial Woman of the Year and received Congressional recognition for providing a Family-Friendly work environment. She has a BS in Biology from Stanford University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 153,387 times.

A persuasive speech is meant to convince an audience to agree with your point of view or argument relating to a specific topic. While the body of your persuasive speech is where the bulk of your argument will go, it’s important that you don’t overlook the introduction. A good introduction will capture your audience’s attention, which is crucial if you want to persuade them. Fortunately, there are some simple rules you can follow that will make the introduction to your persuasive essay more engaging and memorable.

Organizing Your Introduction

• For example, if your speech is about sleep deprivation in the workplace, you could start with something like “Workplace accidents and mistakes related to sleep deprivation cost companies $31 billion every single year.”
• Or, if your speech is about animal rights, you could open with a quote like “The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham once said, ‘The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?’”
• For a speech about unpaid internships, you could start with a relevant anecdote like “In 2018, Tiffany Green got her dream internship, unpaid, working for a rental company. Unfortunately, a few months later Tiffany returned home from work to find an eviction notice on the door of her apartment, owned by that same rental company, because she was unable to pay her rent.

• For example, your thesis statement could look something like “Today, I’m going to talk to you about why medical marijuana should be legalized in all 50 states, and I’ll explain why that would improve the lives of average Americans and boost the economy.”

• For example, if you’re a marine biologist who’s writing a persuasive speech about ocean acidification, you could write something like “I’ve studied the effects of ocean acidification on local marine ecosystems for over a decade now, and what I’ve found is staggering.”
• Or, if you’re not an expert on your topic, you could include something like “Earlier this year, renowned marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson published a decade-long study on the acidification of our oceans, and what she found is deeply concerning.”

• For example, you could sum up your conclusion by writing something like, “To show you that a shorter work week would benefit not only employees but also their employers, first I will touch on the history of the modern average work week. Then, I’ll discuss the mental and physical toll that a long work week can take on a person. Finally, I’ll wrap up by going over fairer, better systems that we as a society could implement.”

• For example, if you time yourself giving your speech (introduction included) and it takes you 5 minutes, your introduction should only take up about 45 seconds of your speech.
• However, if you were giving a speech that’s 20 minutes long, your introduction should be around 3 minutes.
• On average, you’ll want about 150 words for every 1 minute you need to speak for. For example, if your introduction should be 2 minutes, you’d want to write around 300 words.

Tip: If you know how long your speech is going to be before you write it, make the first draft of your introduction the right length so you don’t have to add or delete a lot later.

Polishing Your Writing

• To make your writing more conversational, try to use brief sentences, and avoid including jargon unless you need it to make your point.
• Using contractions, like “I’ll” instead of “I will,” “wouldn’t” instead of “would not,” and “they’re” instead of “they are,” can help make your writing sound more conversational.

Tip: An easy way to make your writing more concise is to start your sentences with the subject. Also, try to limit the number of adverbs and adjectives you use.

• For example, if your audience will be made up of the other students in your college class, including a pop culture reference in your introduction might be an effective way to grab their attention and help them relate to your topic. However, if you’re giving your speech in a more formal setting, a pop culture reference might fall flat.

• For example, you could write something like, “I know a lot of you may strongly disagree with me on this. However, I think if you give me a chance and hear me out, we might end up finding some common ground.”
• Or, you could include a question like “How many of you here tonight have ever come across plastic that's washed up on the beach?” Then, you can have audience members raise their hands.

• You can even record yourself reading your introduction to get a sense of how you'll look delivering the opening of your speech.

Example Introduction for a Persuasive Speech

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/chapter/11-2-persuasive-speaking/
• ↑ https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/public-speaking-practice-and-ethics/s12-introductions-matter-how-to-be.html
• ↑ https://www.middlesex.mass.edu/ace/downloads/tipsheets/persvsargu.pdf
• ↑ https://www.speechanddebate.org/wp-content/uploads/Tips-for-Writing-a-Persuasive-Speech.pdf
• ↑ https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/chapter/14-1-four-methods-of-delivery/
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html
• ↑ https://www.gvsu.edu/speechlab/connecting-with-the-audience-26.htm
• ↑ https://www.gvsu.edu/speechlab/practicing-presentations-33.htm

About This Article

To write an introduction for a persuasive speech, start with a hook that will grab your audience's attention, like a surprising statistic or meaningful quote. Then, introduce your thesis statement, which should explain what you are arguing for and why. From here, you'll need to demonstrate the credibility of your argument if you want your audience to believe what you're saying. Depending on if you are an expert or not, you should either share your personal credentials or reference papers and studies by experts in the field that legitimize your argument. Finally, conclude with a brief preview of the main points you'll cover in your speech, so your audience knows what to expect and can follow along more easily. For more tips from our co-author, including how to polish your introduction, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Introductory Speech

Introductory speech generator.

It would be considered rude if the speaker of the seminar was not introduced properly to the audience. How else would the crowd know on who this gentleman or lady really is and what his or her background is on that particular subject. By giving an introductory speech of the guest speaker tonight, you are allowing the audience know who he or she is as a person and what he or she has accomplished or achieved in his or her life. You may also see speech examples in pdf

These kinds of speeches are like PRs, they only tell the good parts about you and never the negative or bad parts about you. As the person assigned to give the introductory speech about the person, your only job is to provide basic background information about that person, the speaker will take care of the rest. But giving an introductory speech would be useless if you are afraid of public speaking. It is important that you learn to conquer your fears and rise above the challenge at hand. You may also check out introduction speech examples  to provide you with a better idea on how to write these kinds of speeches.

The job of an introduction speech is to:

• introduce your guest speaker
• create a welcoming, attentive ready-and-motivated-to-listen anticipation in the audience

Just like the appetizer, your job is to entice the crowd and keep them happy before feasting on the main course. Try your best to wow the audience in order for them to get hyped when the main speaker arrives. Although you have your speech laid out for you, try to add some humor and wit and maybe some jokes as an impromptu as a way to break the ice. You may also like presentation speech examples & samples

To prepare your introduction speech you’ll need:

1. the guest speaker’s name.

When you get the full name of the guest speaker, try to make sure that it is correct cause there are times that the spelling might be wrong. After getting their name, ask for the correct pronunciation of the name. Who would like to hear their mispronounced name, right? You may also check out motivational speech examples & samples

2. The guest speaker’s biography

Aside from knowing just the guest speaker’s name, you got to introduce who he really is as a person and why he or she is the right person to talk about this certain topic. State his or her credentials and what he or she has achieved. Let the audience know who they are listening to and why he or she matter. You may also see informative speech examples & samples

3. A surprise

As mentioned before, it is best to keep things in a very light manner. Nothing too serious should even be said when it is just an introductory speech. Add some jokes, laugh a bit, add humor and wit. Whatever you think that will manage to get the audience’s attention, go for it. You may also like speech examples in doc

How to organize your material

• Build excitement or interest by piling one piece of information after another.
• Make the name of the speech and the speaker, the climax and end of your speech.

Let’s pretend, for the sake of showing you how it’s done, that we’ve already gathered up all the material we need to introduce a guest speaker. You may also check out appreciation speech examples & samples

Introduction Speech Example

1. let’s put this speech in context to help you make sense of it.

The setting for this introduction speech is a conference for an organization called “ Women in Leadership” . The audience are primarily women drawn together through an interest in leadership roles. At the end of the speech, the speaker will lead the clapping as the guest takes center stage. You may also see award speech examples

2. Now here’s the speech text

She’s been a stalwart member of “Women in Leadership” for the last fifteen years. Over that time she’s served in every office: secretary, treasurer, chairperson, chief fundraiser, education officer, chief executive officer to name a few and in some roles several times over. You may also like welcome speech examples & samples

Her passionate dedication and commitment to promoting public speaking as an important component of empowerment is simply amazing and inspiring. We estimate that she has personally mentored at least 200 new speakers and has set an extraordinary “yes, you can” philosophy for many more. You may also check out valedictorian speech examples & samples

We see her as capable, confident and fluent – never at a loss for words. But what you probably don’t know is that this woman was once weak, shy, stuttered, broken and damaged. 

How she got from awkward tongue tied silence to an eloquent front line spokesperson is the story she will share with us tonight. Ladies, I give you … Katherine Watson!” You may also see persuasive speech examples & samples

3. Say the speech out loud! Use it as a template!

Try saying it out loud to get the flow of it. If you like it, use it as a model for the introduction speech you need to write.

Tips to make your introduction speech successful

1. consider tone and language use.

How are you going to build up audience interest if you do not seem motivated and interested to talk about him or her in the first place? While drafting your speech, try to consider the use of language. Is it going to be the same as every introductory speech or are you going to try and spice it up a bit? Remember that in this case, the audience matters as well. Learn on who you are talking to and how you make use of language to gauge your audience is up to you. You may also like  speech outline examples & samples

2. Check the length of your speech

Pertinent and pithy – short and sweet is what you want. One to two minutes should be enough. Try it out loud with a timer. Remember that you are simply the appetizer and not the main course. This is not your time, but the time for the guest speaker. You may also check out orientation speech examples & samples

3. Resist exaggerating or “puffing up” the speaker’s achievements

Try not to exaggerate the guest speaker’s achievements. Try no to sugarcoat the truth just to make him or her look good. It should simply be enough so that the audience can get a quick background of the speaker.

4. Always check your facts

Avoid stating on anything that the speaker is not. It will end very badly for you if you do so. If there are some sensitive issues that you know about the speaker, make sure that you ask him or her permission first before stating it out loud for the whole world to hear. You may also see inspirational speech examples

5. Remember you are the support act!

Cover only enough in your introduction to make the coming speech eagerly anticipated. Do not stray into telling the audience what the guest speaker’s speech will cover in detail.

6. Rehearse

Practice makes perfect. Try practicing in front of a mirror or in front of your family and friends so that they can judge you as to see how you are doing. Sometimes, just winging it is not enough. You have to work on it to develop the confidence you need to improve on your delivery and tone more. You can also see self-introductory speech examples to analyze on how this whole different speech is being framed and written.

Usain Bolt Introductory Speech Example

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning.

Today, it is both my honor and privilege to be able to introduce you to a role model of the athletic world, a man of distinction – Usain Bolt.

Born on August 21, 1986 in Jamaica, he has distinguished himself as a world class sprinter and he currently holds the Olympic and World Records for the 100 meters in 9.69 seconds and the 200 meters in 19. 30 seconds . Wow. Amazing. I wish I could run that fast. You may also like student council speech examples

What makes his achievements all the more remarkable is the fact that they were all set at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He eventually became the first man to win all three events in one of the categories in the Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984 and the first man in history to set world records in all three events at a single Olympics. His name and his achievements in sprinting have earned him the media nickname “Lightning Bolt”. You may also check out commencement speech examples

I am sure that you all know a great deal about his public sprinting life, but there is more to him than just running.

What you don’t know about the “Lightning Bolt” is that he enjoys dancing and is often characterized as a laid-back and relaxed character . Did you know that before sprinting, his first interested sport was cricket? He said and I quote: “that if he was not a sprinter, he would be a fast bowler instead.” But then, he wouldn’t be known as the “Lightning Bolt”, but something else. You may also see special occasion speech examples & samples

Please give a warm welcome to none other than Usain “Lightning” Bolt to share with you some words of wisdom on not giving up.

Even if you are simply the person assigned to give the introductory speech, you are still required to give it your all and be the best at what you do so that it will leave a good impression to the audience that you have respect for the work that you do and that you take it seriously. You may also like examples of writing a short speech

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Write an Introductory Speech for an academic seminar series.

Opinion The problem with diversity statements — and what to do about them

DEI statements have too often led to self-censorship and ideological policing.

As the United States reckoned with racial inequality during and after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, many saw Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs as a way to address the issues in higher education. As part of the trend, many schools began requiring candidates for teaching positions to submit DEI statements. In these statements, potential hires explain how they would advance diversity, equity and inclusion in their teaching and research activities. One 2021 study found that about one-third of job postings at elite universities required them.

Now, however, some in academia are starting to express second thoughts about this practice. In April, Harvard Law School professor Randall L. Kennedy urged abolition of DEI statements, arguing that they amount to “compulsion” and “ideological litmus tests.” Not long after Mr. Kennedy’s article appeared, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became the first top university to voluntarily end their use. The decision came after extensive consultations among all six of the school’s academic deans. MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, explained : “We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work.”

In doing away with DEI statements, MIT was not abandoning the goals of greater diversity, equity and inclusion, which remain not only valid but also vital. DEI programs can have an important place. They should not be abolished or undermined — as red states such as Florida and Texas have done, by forbidding the use of state funds for DEI in public universities. Reshaping universities via such a heavy-handed use of state power could set a dangerous precedent for academic freedom more generally.

And yet as a specific policy, DEI statements advance their declared objectives at too high a cost. In fact, they stoke what Mr. Kennedy, a self-described “scholar on the left,” who formerly served as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall, called “intense and growing resentment” among academics. Not surprisingly, 90 percent of self-described conservative faculty view the statements as political litmus tests, but so do more than 50 percent of moderates and even one-quarter of liberals, according to a survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan watchdog group specializing in campus free speech issues.

Because the criteria for acceptable DEI statements are often vague, jobseekers must do the work of anticipating the ideological and political preferences of university administrators and faculty, who are disproportionately left-leaning . The MIT Communication Lab, for instance, explained that a diversity statement is an “opportunity to show that you care about the inclusion of many forms of identity in academia and in your field, including but not limited to gender, race/ethnicity, age, nationality, sexual orientation, religion, and ability status” and notes “it may be appropriate to acknowledge aspects of your own marginalized identity and/or your own privilege.” Harvard University’s Bok Center for Teaching and Learning included a list of guiding questions including, “Do you seek to identify and mitigate how inequitable and colonial social systems are reinforced in the academy by attending to and adjusting the power dynamics in your courses?”

Yet jobseekers who disagree with the ideological premises of such inquiries have an overwhelming incentive to suppress their true beliefs, or pretend to have the “right” ones, lest they be eliminated from consideration. It’s a dilemma, especially given the high stakes: As the University of California at Davis’s vice chancellor for DEI explained, “In these searches, it is the candidate’s diversity statement that is considered first; only those who submit persuasive and inspiring statements can advance for complete consideration.” In one faculty search at University of California at Berkeley, around 75 percent of applicants were screened out of consideration — irrespective of criteria such as teaching ability and research skills. Small wonder that many applicants engage in what Daniel Sargent, a history professor at UC Berkeley, calls “ performative dishonesty .”

The last thing academia — or the country — needs is another incentive for people to be insincere or dishonest. The very purpose of the university is to encourage a free exchange of ideas, seek the truth wherever it may lead, and to elevate intellectual curiosity and openness among both faculty and students. Whatever their original intent, the use of DEI statements has too often resulted in self-censorship and ideological policing. Fundamentally reconsidering them could actually strengthen DEI, by placing it on a more sustainable basis — intellectually and politically. MIT is one of the first to tackle the issue; here’s hoping it won’t be the last.

The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board

Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through discussion among members of the Editorial Board , based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.

Members of the Editorial Board: Opinion Editor David Shipley , Deputy Opinion Editor Charles Lane and Deputy Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg , as well as writers Mary Duenwald, Shadi Hamid , David E. Hoffman , James Hohmann , Heather Long , Mili Mitra , Eduardo Porter , Keith B. Richburg and Molly Roberts .

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How We Got to Pay-for-Play in College Sports

Pat forde | 13 hours ago.

We are entering a new era, where college athletes finally have been granted access to their athletic departments’ well-stocked ATMs . The wealthy administrators at the NCAA and power-conference schools got here with a bayonet point digging into their spines, pushed to enlightenment by the likelihood of extending their long losing streak in court. But, hey, all that really matters is that they’re here.

The very things that earned SMU a death penalty in the 1980s, and hundreds of other schools lesser NCAA sanctions, are now institutionally blessed and available to star football and basketball players. The irony comes in the shorthand appellation of the landmark lawsuit that got us here: The named plaintiff in “House vs. the NCAA” is Arizona State Sun Devils swimmer Grant House, and his sport is one of the most jeopardized by the diverting of funds to pay this multibillion-dollar settlement. Be careful what you sue for.

It’s tempting, in this new world, to drop Ferris Bueller’s “life comes at you fast” line here. Except, no, that’s not true at all. This chapter of life came at us very slowly, until it gained sudden speed at the end.

This was a 70-year buildup and teardown of castle amateurism. And these are the money-grabbing milestones along the way that brought us to this point:

Walter Byers and ‘student-athletes’ 

The first executive director of the NCAA coined that term in response to a worker’s compensation suit filed by the family of Ray Dennison, a football player at Fort Lewis A&M who died shortly after an in-game injury in 1955. The goal was to position college athletes as non-employees and amateurs, compensated by scholarship only. Dennison’s family lost the suit, and an entire industrial ethos evolved around the “student-athlete” term.

Byers ran the NCAA for 37 years, from 1951 to ’88. He helped make the NCAA tournament a cultural phenomenon—and a cash cow. (Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, then Patrick Ewing and Michael Jordan, then Hakeem Olajuwon and Danny Manning, did a lot of the heavy lifting without being compensated. But Byers sat atop the org chart.)

Toward the end of Byers’s buttoned-down tenure, the association lost a landmark Supreme Court decision that wrested control of TV rights and revenue away from the NCAA and gave it, in a roundabout way, to the conferences and individual universities. That set in motion the explosion of media-rights money—which, dovetailed with the advent and evolution of ESPN, opened up new vistas of broadcast availability and profitability.

But a largely unnoticed internal change was afoot at the same time: Byers turned against the “student-athlete” ideal he created and helped fortify. From a 1986 Sports Illustrated profile by Jack McCallum : “Asked about the NCAA’s problems at the time, Byers skillfully turned the interview away from critical questions about his administration to his own probing thoughts about an ‘open division’ in college athletics, an idea that meant a dismantling of the present concept of amateurism to accommodate the big-money climate of the ’80s. It was heavy stuff, especially coming from a steadfast proponent of amateurism.”

In 1995, Byers wrote a memoir that questioned everything he and the NCAA had built and stood for. Unsportsmanlike Conduct posited athletes should have the same access to the free market as their coaches and the schools raking in the TV money. It was a starting turn that never gained much traction.

SEC expansion and innovation, in three acts

In 1990, Southeastern Conference commissioner Roy Kramer started what has been (for now) a three-act arc of seismic change under three different leaders. 

Perhaps spurred on by a clandestine December 1989 push in the Big Ten to add the Penn State Nittany Lions, Kramer plotted his own course of expansion. In ’90, the league announced it was bringing onboard the Arkansas Razorbacks and South Carolina Gamecocks as its 11th and 12th members, with a new structure and postseason plan. The SEC would split the league into two divisions and create the concept of a conference championship game. The rest of FBS eventually followed that template.

Twenty years later, Kramer’s successor, Mike Slive, added the Texas A&M Aggies and Missouri Tigers and birthed the SEC Network. Slive also championed the idea of a playoff, garnering enough popular and institutional support to eventually wear down and win over obstinate traditionalists.  

Less than a decade after that, Kramer’s successor, Greg Sankey, took his turn at implementing massive change. He brought aboard football bluebloods, the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners, then spearheaded the charge to a 12-team playoff. 

The SEC took over college football competitively. It also prospered financially, with commensurate stadium expansions and salary explosions. But just as Byers wondered, amid the revenue gusher, whether resolute resistance to at least a semi-professional model was feasible or ethical, SEC leadership began coming around to a new reality. 

As early as 2010, Slive started publicly theorizing about college athletes perhaps having agents. The idea, just like Byers’s change of heart, didn’t gain much national traction.

The ACC wounds, then essentially kills, Big East football

In 2003, the Atlantic Coast Conference pirated the two most successful football programs from the Big East, the Miami Hurricanes and Virginia Tech Hokies. It also added the Boston College Eagles, which added little and were a geographic outlier (a decision that still hasn’t worked out very well for either the league or the school). 

Eight years later, amid roiling realignment negotiations nationwide, the ACC all but finished off the Big East as a viable football league by grabbing the Pittsburgh Panthers and Syracuse Orange.

The realignment spasms of 2010 to ’12 made clear that college sports had lost its own alleged plot. It was impossible to argue that major decisions shredding geography and tradition were not solely based on maximizing profit. And if the overriding principle was finding more cash, then it became harder to justify cutting the athletes out of the deal.

Jim Delany births the Big Ten Network

This was the true media revenue game-changer, as the commissioner turned his league into a TV network and kept all those profits within the conference. BTN hit the air in 2007, just in time to broadcast the Appalachian State Mountaineers’ historic upset of the Michigan Wolverines, and a foothold was gained despite limited initial distribution. Every other conference with the capability of creating its own network—in conjunction with a major broadcasting partner—would eventually do so.

Delany had already pioneered the concept of fracturing conference math with the addition of Penn State, as the Big Ten became 11. More were on the way. To help feed the cable-subscription beast, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were added to the West. Then, the Maryland Terrapins and Rutgers Scarlet Knights were added to the East. What the league mostly lacked in terms of national champions in football and men’s basketball, it compensated for with the highest revenues in college sports.

Delany was a business visionary but a reform reactionary. He was a playoff obstructionist before finally acquiescing, and one of the most important defenders of the amateurism status quo. As Big Ten profits soared, Delany very much wanted to keep that money from trickling down to the athletes.

Among his quotes from the witness stand in 2014 in the O’Bannon vs. NCAA antitrust suit: 

• “There wouldn’t be a Rose Bowl if either they or we were operating in a very different wavelength in terms of paying players.”
• “These games are owned by the institution, and the notion of paying athletes for participation in these games is foreign to the notion of amateurism.”
• “There is no athlete’s share of broadcast rights.”

The Longhorn Network goes on the air

ESPN bestowed Most Favored Nation status on Texas by creating the school’s own network, further upsetting the balance of power in the Big 12 and setting the stage for more realignment. 

The station flickered to life in August 2011. Nebraska had already announced its departure from the league, in no small part because it was fed up with Texas. Texas A&M and Missouri would follow, and the conference added geographic outlier West Virginia. 

Ten years after the Longhorn Network added to the destabilizing of the Big 12, Texas and Oklahoma did more damage by clandestinely agreeing to join the SEC. That kicked over other massive realignment dominoes: the USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins to the Big Ten in 2022, then the complete destruction of the Pac-12 in ’23. The ACC is now on the clock.

Taylor Branch, Sonny Vaccaro and Ed O’Bannon pull back the curtain

Vaccaro, the sneaker salesman/impresario who helped turn the athletic shoe business into a massive industry, had been an amateurism antagonist for years. In 2009, he helped make O’Bannon—a star on UCLA’s 1995 national championship basketball team—the named plaintiff in one of the first lawsuits that would hammer cracks into the foundation of castle amateurism.

Branch, a Pulitzer Prize–winning civil rights author, took heed of what Vaccaro was saying and doing. In 2011, he wrote a powerful story in The Atlantic that coincided with his book, The Cartel , which assailed the NCAA and its amateurism rules as corrupt. Branch led the Atlantic story with Vaccaro calling out the hypocrisy of college sports. Branch’s piece might not have been as important and dramatic as Walter Cronkite turning hearts and minds against the Vietnam War, but it was persuasive and influential.

Meanwhile, the O’Bannon case went to trial in 2014 and judge Claudia Wilken ruled that the NCAA violated antitrust laws in withholding payments to athletes. The ruling at the time called for the now-quaint sum of less than $6,000 to be made available to athletes for each year of their eligibility.

The NCAA appealed, doubling down on a doomed hand and continuing what would be a remarkable string of legal defeats. In June 2021, the Supreme Court slapped a 9–0 shutout of the NCAA in ruling on the appeal of the O’Bannon decision. In July of that year, name, image and likeness (NIL) compensation for athletes was officially ushered into college athletics.

House vs. NCAA

Three years into an admittedly chaotic immersion in the world of NIL and frequent transfers, here is what hasn’t happened: College sports has not collapsed. Despite decades of doomsaying about the consequences of paying the players, fans are still watching and attending in massive numbers. 

In fact, it can be argued that college athletics as a whole has never been more popular. The advent of the 12-team College Football Playoff this fall is expected to be another injection of interest and enthusiasm. Oh, and revenue.

Against that backdrop, and facing its 97th consecutive loss in court, the NCAA and the power conferences settled House on Thursday . There are some objectionable aspects to it, most notably the strong-arming of the 27 non-power leagues into paying a disproportionate amount of the multibillion-dollar damages . And there are vast swaths of details to work out, with only vague concepts being publicly discussed at present.

As significant as this moment is in college sports, it’s likely also just a way station along the path to even more change. It remains quite possible the leaders will screw the whole thing up irreparably.

But this is no time for a requiem. It’s time for an acknowledgement of hard-earned new reality. It only took 70 years of assailing the ivory tower walls of castle amateurism to get to this point; give it a chance to live and breathe and grow.

Pat Forde covers college sports, the Olympics and horse racing for Sports Illustrated. Pat wrote two books and was nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. In addition to his work at SI, Pat is also the co-host of the College Football Enquirer podcast. He is an analyst for the Big Ten Network and contributes to national radio shows. In a career spanning more than three decades, Pat has worked at Yahoo! Sports, ESPN and the Louisville Courier-Journal. 

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Bret Stephens

Opinion Columnist

What’s Spanish for ‘Chutzpah’?

This week’s announcements by the governments of Ireland, Norway and Spain that they will recognize a Palestinian state are drawing predictable reactions from predictable quarters. Some see them as useful rebukes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war strategy in Gaza that will further isolate Israel. Others, including me, view them as feckless gestures that reward Hamas’s terrorism.

That’s a column for another day. For now, it’s enough to note the Spanish government’s sheer nerve.

Though Spanish public opinion overwhelmingly supports swift recognition of Palestinian statehood, it’s another story when it comes to Spain’s own independence movements. In 2017 the regional government of Catalonia held a referendum, declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court , on the question of Catalan independence. Though turnout was low — in part because Spanish police forcibly blocked voting — the Catalan government said nearly 90 percent of voters favored independence.

The central government in Madrid responded by dismissing the Catalan government, imposing direct rule. Two years later, under the current left-wing government of Pedro Sánchez, Spain sentenced nine Catalan independence leaders to prison on charges of sedition, though they were later pardoned. This year the lower house of the Spanish Parliament voted to grant amnesty to those involved in the 2017 campaign as part of a deal to prop up Sánchez’s government, despite a Senate veto. Seventy percent of the Spanish public opposes the amnesty .

Catalans aren’t the only ethnic minority in Spain that has sought independence, only to encounter violent suppression. In the 1980s the Spanish Interior Ministry under a socialist government responded to the long-running Basque separatist movement with state-sponsored death squads, notoriously responsible for a string of kidnappings, tortures and assassinations. The Spanish government called the separatists terrorists — as indeed some were — though their tactics look tame compared with Hamas’s. By the time the conflict ended in 2011, it had claimed more than 1,000 lives.

Spain possesses two cities on the African continent, Ceuta and Melilla, both of which are claimed by Morocco and have been stormed by African migrants seeking entry into the European Union. They are protected by extensive border fences and fortifications strikingly reminiscent of Israel’s breached border fence with Gaza.

There are many other independence movements throughout Europe, from Scotland to Flanders to Corsica and the Balkans. Many of these movements tend to have affinities with Palestinians, for reasons that are obvious. More difficult to explain are governments that suppress independence seekers at home while applauding those abroad. Some might call it deflection. To others, it looks like hypocrisy.

Brent Staples

Editorial Board Member

Fixing the Calamity in U.S. Math Knowledge Starts With Algebra

The federal government made a disastrous choice a decade ago when it abandoned an accountability system (known as No Child Left Behind) that required schools to focus intently on helping the lowest-performing students catch up with their peers. Since then, the already alarming achievement gaps that separate poor and wealthy children have only widened.

Math scores have plummeted, raising fears that the United States is destined to fall permanently behind its competitor nations when it comes to preparing young people for careers in science, technology and engineering.

As Troy Closson of The Times wrote this week , some school systems have opted for policies that disguise the achievement gap without remedying it. A decade ago, for example, the San Francisco public schools responded to high failure rates and achievement gaps by moving algebra — which is foundational to the study of math — from eighth grade to ninth grade, meaning that no one was allowed to take the course in eighth grade simply because some students struggled with it.

This system wrote off poor students who might have benefited from exposure to new material and denied well-prepared children the opportunity to forge ahead in their studies. Not surprisingly, the policy failed to achieve its central goal, which was to close racial gaps in the taking of advanced math courses. Chastened by parental outrage, San Francisco reversed course .

Only about a quarter of American students study algebra in eighth grade . That proportion needs to grow. Fortunately a few states, including North Carolina and Texas , are adopting systems under which children who meet specified performance levels on state exams are automatically channeled into advanced math classes.

In Dallas there are no hoops to jump through. As The Dallas Morning News reported last year , young people no longer have to wait for counselors to recommend them or for parents who know little about how schools operate to sign them up. Students who were unaware that honors courses even existed are now being enrolled.

The gravest challenge facing the country today is redressing the devastating learning losses that children suffered during the Covid pandemic. Among other things, solving this problem will mean equipping teachers to manage classrooms that include students of different preparation levels.

One new study offers reason for optimism. It shows that students who would ordinarily be tracked into remedial work can perform well in algebra classes that include higher-performing peers — and experience broader academic success — when teachers are trained to handle heterogeneous groups and are given more time to prepare.

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Michelle Cottle

Opinion Writer

In the Bronx, Trump Imagines His New York Glory Days

Donald Trump is still such a New Yorker.

Rarely has this been clearer than at Thursday evening’s rally in the Bronx. Sure, his speech featured his usual campaign folderol: the “rigged election” lies, the claims of legal persecution, the scaremongering about migrants and, of course, the wild claims of how, during his presidency, America was richer, stronger, smarter, safer, more respected, more peaceful, more beautiful, sexier — all the things — than at any other point in the history of the planet.

But the parts that were a little different and that the former president clearly enjoyed the most were his rose-colored reminiscences about his years as a player in his hometown — back when most New Yorkers thought he was a harmless joke rather than a serious threat to American democracy.

Trump went on and on about the local landmarks he had worked to renovate and the big ol’ buildings he built, and he could not stop talking about his dealings with the city’s rough and tough contractors. “These are killers!” he gushed. “By comparison, talking to world leaders is, I believe, easier.” Or how about this bit of schmaltz? “I knew that if I could build a skyscraper in Manhattan, I could do anything.”

These tales of his past heroism and genius tended to be rambling to the point of incoherent and probably confused many people with their utter irrelevance to the presidential race at hand. But the guy was obviously having so much fun with them, he was practically glowing.

This was all history according to Trump, of course, meaning his many and varied business failures didn’t make the cut. The whole display was kinda goofy. But it was also a shrewd play to New Yorkers’ sense of exceptionalism.

The dark side of this was Trump’s false hyperbole about how his beloved city has become a dirty, crime-ridden hellhole — that only he can fix, of course. Which goes for the rest of the nation as well, he told the crowd: “If a New Yorker can’t save this country, no one can.”

Aww. How adorable. But what this country really needs is someone to save it from this particular New Yorker.

Frank Bruni

Contributing Opinion Writer

Haley as Veep? Don’t Bet on It

Touched, amused, baffled — none of those words precisely captures my reaction to many people’s surprise at Nikki Haley’s announcement that she’d vote for Donald Trump . Did they think that Haley, who’d so recently pantomimed a principled stand against Trump, actually stood on principle? How quaint. How amnesic. She has always wobbled like a Weeble . The only real suspense is whether she’ll wobble onto the Republican presidential ticket.

I’m betting not, but then my record in the casino of American politics is a spotty one.

Haley would say yes if Trump asked her to be his running mate. Of that much I’m confident. Her overwhelming defeat in the Republican presidential primaries, the polls that show Trump beating President Biden and other developments over the past few months have clearly convinced her that the only path to viability in the Republican Party right now is the one that leads to the doorstep of Mar-a-Lago, where a supplicant must arrive on bended knee.

So here she is, performing her genuflection — despite having called Trump “totally unhinged,” despite her expressions of disgust at his fealty to Vladimir Putin, despite dozens of ways in which Trump contradicts her putative convictions, despite having warned us emphatically that another Trump presidency would be ruinous folly. Never mind! She has personal ambitions to attend to, a future to blaze.

In a post on Truth Social a week and a half ago, Trump stated that he was not considering Haley as his choice for vice president. But he would hardly feel bound by that. He wants to win, period. If she’s the way, it would be her all the way.

She’s not, though. Many of the Republican primary voters who chose her over Trump aren’t likely to follow her into the Trump camp. They were opposing and defying him more than they were supporting and deifying her, and they would recoil from the stench of rank opportunism surrounding a Haley-Trump partnership.

While she arguably complements Trump, she inarguably complicates his anti-establishment message. Picking her would be in cynical league with presidential politics as usual. What’s more, the media coverage of her vice-presidential candidacy would be dominated by her past denunciations of Trump, by all the U-turns and switchbacks on the rocky road of their relationship. It’s not the story line he wants.

He’d be wise, though, to figure out some other prize to dangle before her. You never know when she might wobble in an unhelpful direction.

Biden’s Powerful Reminder of Trump’s Racist History

Just how worried is the Biden campaign about its standing with Black men?

Worried enough, apparently, that it has rolled out an unusually blunt campaign ad reminding the group that President Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is an inveterate racist.

“Donald Trump disrespecting Black folk is nothing new,” a male voice, clearly Black-coded, booms in the spot, following a 1989 clip of Trump saying, “Of course I hate these people,” referring to the Central Park Five, who were wrongly convicted.

He was sued for refusing to rent his apartments to Black families, and called for the execution of five innocent Black and brown teenagers. It’s why Trump stood with violent white supremacists, warned of a blood bath if he loses the next election, and if he is president again vowed to be a dictator who wants revenge on his enemies. Now, who do you think that is?

Black voters are more likely to support Biden than voters of any other race. But polls in recent months have suggested that support may be softening, especially among Black men.

Heavy-handed ads like this one from the Biden campaign might help reacquaint lower-information Black voters (but especially men) with Trump’s loathsome racial attitudes. There’s value in that, particularly in what could be a very close election.

And yet, most Black voters already hold strong negative views of Trump and have no trouble recognizing his abhorrent views on race. The possibility that a sizable portion of these voters are considering voting for Trump anyway should provoke a flurry of soul-searching in the Democratic Party, as well as outreach and relationship building.

Black voters appear to be at least somewhat open to the idea of finding a new political home. The real task before the Biden campaign, and the Democratic Party, is to give them good reasons to stay. That’s something no 30-second spot can buy.

Zeynep Tufekci

A Blistering Congressional Hearing Forces Accountability on Covid Origins

The unraveling of a high-level attempt to avoid transparency about the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic began with a single email uncovered via a Freedom of Information Act request published last year.

Dr. David Morens, a senior adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had emailed a small group of outspoken scientists who opposed the idea that a lab leak was the source of Covid-19. “I always try to communicate on my Gmail,” he wrote , “because my N.I.H. email is FOIA’d constantly.”

If he had to email the group from his N.I.H. email, he promised, “I will delete anything I don’t want to see in The New York Times.”

When the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic subpoenaed those emails, it found that Morens advised his colleagues to avoid oversight requirements and that he intimated he would delete emails related to Covid origins.

Many of those conversations involved EcoHealth Alliance — a nonprofit that collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology , often criticized for its risky research and lax biosafety standards — and Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s president. The Trump administration had terminated an EcoHealth grant, but as these emails showed, Morens was working to reverse that decision. (The termination was eventually reversed, but last week the Biden administration barred EcoHealth from all federal funding, after a hearing in which the organization was scorched by lawmakers from both parties for misrepresenting its work with Chinese virologists.)

After Morens rebuffed the committee’s request for a voluntary interview, it subpoenaed him to testify.

Morens told the committee he used a private email account because he was merely trying to avoid having his personal correspondence with Daszak, whom he described as a longtime friend, become public information. However, the subpoenaed emails revealed Morens advised Daszak on how to publicly respond to the termination of EcoHealth’s grant and demeaned other scientists who worried about biosafety lapses.

Morens wrote to Daszak, “We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did, we wouldn’t put them in emails, and if we found them we would delete them.”

Representative Raul Ruiz, a physician who is the committee’s ranking Democrat, told Morens his actions were a “stain on the legacy” of his colleagues. Representative Debbie Lesko, Republican of Arizona, read email after email from Morens on his avoidance techniques and snapped, “When you say, ‘Oh, I didn’t know this. I didn’t intentionally use my Gmail,’ are you kidding me?”

Morens replied to that and many other pointed questions with a version of “I don’t remember,” drawing strong rebukes from members of both parties.

The only way to reassure the public that smoking guns weren’t deleted is proper transparency.

Farah Stockman

The Importance of a Personal Bridge Between the U.S. and China

There aren’t a lot of things that make me optimistic about U.S.-China relations these days, but Nicholas Burns’s speech on Wednesday to graduating students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government came close. Burns wasn’t speaking in his capacity as the U.S. ambassador to Beijing. His role that day was as a professor who taught at the Kennedy School, with its remarkably international student body, for 13 years.

He made a point of meeting with 25 of the Chinese citizens studying there and told them in his speech, “We’re proud of you, too.”

“Thank you for being 25 of the 300,000 Chinese students in the United States,” he said. “You’re very welcome in our country.”

He also spoke about bumping into his former students in Beijing, including at church during an Easter Sunday Mass.

“There’s a point in the Catholic Mass where you turn to the person beside you when you say, ‘Peace be with you,’” he recalled. “I turned to my left and before I could say anything, this young woman said: ‘Professor Burns, peace be with you. I was in your Great Powers class in 2014.’”

It struck me as he spoke that it is a fortuitous thing that our man in Beijing has personal relationships with some of China’s best and brightest. When ties between the two governments get strained to the brink, he can still see his Chinese counterparts as human beings, with all the complexity and nuance that entails.

It also means that he knows what’s at stake when negotiating agreements with China, including the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement , which has been the basis of scientific cooperation since 1979. That pact, which was once renewed every five years without much debate, has been living on life support, with short-term six-month extensions.

There are good reasons to renegotiate it, and the terms of the U.S.-China relationship itself. China has changed, and we must change, too. But let’s work to preserve what we can of these people-to-people ties and make sure that our interactions are characterized by knowledge of one another, and ideally, mutual respect.

Opinion Researcher

When Antitrust Law Rescues Olivia and Taylor Fans

On a Friday afternoon last fall, Jonathan Kanter, the Department of Justice’s head of antitrust enforcement, met with Times Opinion. I should have been paying attention, but I was staring at a cursed Ticketmaster countdown for Olivia Rodrigo tickets. I never got them.

I later showed Kanter my screen, pointing out the struggle that I (along with teenage girls across America) had endured — indifferent customer service and exorbitant fees. Taylor Swift fans, too, had lodged their Ticketmaster complaints with the D.O.J. after their disastrous experience of buying tickets to the Eras Tour. Kanter assured me he was on the case.

On Thursday, the D.O.J. and dozens of state governments finally filed a suit against Live Nation Entertainment, a corporate glob of revenue streams encompassing music venues, concert promotion, tour merchandise and, of course, Ticketmaster. Kanter stated that all this made Live Nation an “illegal monopoly.” Live Nation called this allegation “absurd” and blamed scalpers and increased demand for high prices.

Live Nation functions both as the middleman and the supplier for a concert’s needs — shuttling both concertgoers and musicians to its own venues, vendors and promoters, while setting the prices and fees as it sees fit. In a news conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland, also a Swiftie , said “it is time to restore competition and innovation in the entertainment industry.”

The net effect of this is an industry strangled by a parasite. We all know how frustrating the concert-ticket experience is for consumers, but the effects of this monopoly on performers is also often disastrous. The musician Clyde Lawrence wrote a guest essay for The Times in 2022 about how the company’s perverse incentives were able to take a cut of nearly every one of his band’s revenue streams. He said if someone paid $42 to Ticketmaster to see his band, Lawrence, perform, the band ended up with $6.

Today’s suit against Live Nation appears to be part of the Biden administration’s broader antitrust playbook, which chooses targets for antitrust suits based on issues like market structure and capacity for innovation, rather than just exorbitant prices. Yes, the “Ticketmaster tax” is high, but the true target of the suit is the power that this company exercises over a large majority of the concert experience. Breaking up Live Nation, as the suit prescribes, might stimulate competition in an industry that has had too little of it for far too long.

Until then, as Olivia Rodrigo would put it , “God, it’s brutal out here.”

Katherine Miller

Opinion Writer and Editor

Nikki Haley, Ever Pragmatic, Tries to Keep Her Options Open

Nikki Haley’s announcement on Wednesday that she’s going to vote for Donald Trump wasn’t that much of a surprise. Eight years ago, she basically did the same thing: She was critical of him before he got the nomination, then once he did, said she’d vote for him and sort of faded into the background, before her surprise arrival in the administration.

She’ll probably end up in the vice-presidential conversation again, even though Trump already said she won’t be, partly because he seems to like the curveball consideration.

I wrote a lot in the winter about what Haley would do after she lost, specifically how much her plans hung over her campaign long before she lost, and then how for a month she subverted those expectations. And, of course, she has now done what many of the skeptics thought she’d do: say she’d vote for Trump.

But part of the reason I wrote a good deal about this topic is that, to me, it always seemed the after-the-loss phase would be much less interesting for Haley and almost everyone else in the Republican field. Most of the failed candidates would probably say they were voting for Trump, as most Republican officials you can think of have been saying they would do for years — and the far more active issue would be that Trump would be the nominee.

The value proposition was entirely in winning and moving past the Trump era by default. Haley wanted to win, she didn’t, she probably wants to run again as a Republican, and here she is preserving some optionality. That’s probably profoundly disappointing to some people who were invested in her campaign. Maybe they had hoped she would just never say anything about voting this year, as it’s not eight years ago; a lot of dark stuff has happened since 2016.

Haley, as a political figure, is not especially focused on moral cases. The larger ones she made against Trump centered on electability and Ukraine in an ideological sense. Even in the late stages of her presidential campaign, she did not frame her criticism of Trump around Jan. 6 or anything similar but more around his recent behavior.

This is a practical politician who is used to winning and seemed to envision a fusion path to victory that didn’t quite congeal. There are various reasons for that. One is that the segment of Republican voters who want to move past the Trump era is just a small fraction of the party. That might make her a bit of an inverse Pat Buchanan 30 years later, articulating the opposite ideological view and representing only a quarter of the party — the bookend to an era that’s really over or the faint strands of a different era we’ll be able to see only long in the future.

Ariel Kaminer

Opinion Editor for Ideas and Investigations

Why Congress Loves Toying With University Presidents

When the heads of Northwestern University, Rutgers University and U.C.L.A. arrived on Capitol Hill on Thursday morning to answer questions about antisemitism on their campuses, they faced what may be the scariest end-of-term exam on record. But they had a bountiful study guide, in the testimony of the other university leaders the House of Representatives had called on.

The transcripts of those encounters amount to a powerful syllabus of what not to do.

As you may recall, in early December, Claudine Gay, then the president of Harvard; Elizabeth Magill, then the president of the University of Pennsylvania; and Sally Kornbluth, the president of M.I.T., were hauled — er, invited — to congressional hearings about campus protests over the war in Gaza. It didn’t go well .

In response to questions about what they were doing to protect Jewish students, the presidents produced responses only a very bad lawyer could love. You had to wonder what kinds of questions they had expected. They certainly weren’t brought there for their scholarly expertise, little of which was on display anyway. It seemed more likely that they were there so that critics of academia — particularly those on the right — could score one very big point. The presidents played along beautifully, if unwittingly. Only one of them still has her job.

In April, Nemat Shafik , the president of Columbia, came much better prepared, clearly determined not to make the same mistakes. But her testimony, though it pleased her interrogators, might have been even more damaging. Dutifully reassuring Representative Rick Allen, Republican of Georgia, that no, she definitely did not want “Columbia University to be cursed by God,” eagerly agreeing to punish outspoken faculty members in defiance of the institution’s rules for due process, Dr. Shafik — who capped her testimony by summoning the New York Police Department to dismantle the encampments and arrest scores of protesters — looked like someone frantically throwing ballast overboard to keep from sinking. Well, it worked. For now, she still has her job.

Today’s witnesses, and those who follow, need a better way to navigate this moment. Because critics in Congress have a winning formula, and they’re not going to tire of it any time soon.

Neel V. Patel

Opinion Staff Editor

Does New York City Really Need More Smoke Shops?

When it comes to weed, I’m not a crank. But I am getting cranky.

Legalized marijuana is a good thing. I live in New York City, and New York State legalized recreational cannabis in the spring of 2021. Since then, I have seen an explosion of shops that sell marijuana products. Some are licensed, but many, many more are not. Ten years ago, I could walk down the block to a dry cleaner or hardware store or a favorite coffee shop for a pastry. Now I’m relearning my neighborhood because these stores have become the umpteenth cannabis shops — legal or otherwise — within a five-minute stroll.

The city was supposed to prevent this from happening, but it botched the rollout of marijuana licenses during legalization. Now the city is flooded with black-market sellers , contributing to an aggravating sense that there is too much marijuana floating around.

And it’s not just New Yorkers: A new report by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 17.7 million people are using marijuana daily or nearly every day, which is three million more than those who report the same frequency of drinking alcohol.

No, marijuana is not nearly as dangerous as other Schedule 1 substances like heroin. But our understanding of the health effects of very frequent cannabis use is still unsettled . Most of us can accept it’s generally not good to be recreationally consuming mind-altering substances every day.

This week, Maia Szalavitz argued in Times Opinion for balanced policies regulating the probable federal legalization of marijuana. I’d add that we need to think deeper about a psychological balance for our society. It’s wonderful to see marijuana use destigmatized and decriminalized. But it feels as though New York City is tripping over itself to sell us the idea that the whole world is toking up now — and that you should be, too.

How our neighborhoods look should be defined by the things we do and the services we need every day. Having every dry cleaner I know replaced by a front for weed isn’t making our day-to-day lives better.

Thomas L. Friedman

Western Europe Is Starting to Send a Vital Warning to Israel

The decision by Spain, Norway and Ireland on Wednesday to recognize an independent Palestinian state marks the latest brick in the wall of rejection being built around Israel’s current far-right government, which is asking the world to let it destroy Hamas in Gaza while refusing to work on a new future with non-Hamas Palestinians.

More than 140 countries and the Holy See have recognized the right of Palestinians to have a state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. What is noteworthy about this latest move, though, is that major Western European countries, and the United States, had resisted going there, arguing that peace should be worked out between the two parties. Until today.

My focus is always on the practical: Will these recognitions of a nonexistent Palestinian state with undefined borders lead to the only sustainable solution — a real-life peace between two states for two indigenous communities — Jews and Palestinians? The answer is yes and no.

In the short term, these diplomatic recognitions from fellow democracies will not move the Israeli public, Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, told me. In the wake of the horrific murders, rapes and kidnappings perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, he said, Europeans telling Israel that it must accept a Palestinian state — “without even mentioning that it must be demilitarized or any obligations on the part of Palestinians to reject Hamas” — will be “rejected” by the Israeli silent majority.

In the long term, though, it is precisely these kinds of diplomatic shocks that could lead the opposition leaders in Israel to finally escape from the gravitational pull of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who dominates what is or is not permissible to say on this subject — and start calling for two states on terms Israel can live with. One can already see signs of that.

If that does not transpire, though, Israel is heading for a world of hurt. Those recognitions of a Palestinian state by European nations “are a huge straw in the wind, that will grow into a hurricane if Israel does not change course,” Craig Charney , a pollster who was a member of Nelson Mandela’s polling team in the 1990s, told me.

Charney explained that the isolation of South Africa’s apartheid regime started with a voluntary arms embargo in the 1960s, which after the Soweto uprising morphed in the 1970s into a formal U.N. arms embargo, which grew into a popular cause on campuses and in boardrooms in the early 1980s, which grew into a broader economic, military and travel embargo in the mid-1980s — until two great leaders, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk, finally emerged to end apartheid. “But it was a very painful journey,” he said.

David Firestone

Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board

I’m Donald Trump, and I Disapprove of the Message I Just Posted

In the distant and innocent year of 2002, lawmakers really thought they could cut back on negative and corrosive political advertising with one simple trick: Making candidates personally stand behind their ads. Within a year of passage of the McCain-Feingold Act, politicians started appearing at the end of their ads mouthing much-mocked platitudes like, “I’m John Kerry, and I approve this message!”

Though the requirement is technically still in effect, it seems fantastically quaint now. The law never applied to independent or super PAC ads, which drenched the airwaves in mud, and the “stand by your ad” requirements never applied to internet ads, which would soon become one of the dominant ways in which candidates misled voters.

More crucially, the requirement apparently had little effect on the era of Donald Trump. That was evident as recently as Monday , when Trump reposted a video in which he precelebrated his 2024 victory and answered the question of “what’s next for America?” with an image containing the words: “the creation of a unified Reich.”

It was clear in Trump’s first presidential campaign that this level of cartoonish outrageousness would help him get the attention he craved. As Jim Rutenberg of The Times wrote in 2018 , the campaign law never stopped Trump or other Republican candidates from advertising blatant lies and overt racism; being crudely aggressive and openly authoritarian, in fact, had become a useful tool.

Former Representative David Price of North Carolina, an architect of the “stand by your ad” provision in 2002, summed up the new attitude this way 16 years later: “I’m the baddest, meanest, most politically incorrect guy in town and will say whatever pops into my head and I regard that as a political virtue.”

The “stand by your ad” law couldn’t prevent this attitude, but if it had been more effective, it might at least have spared the country the embarrassing spectacle of blaming bad ads on some low-level staff member somewhere. In 2015, when Trump retweeted a dumb post mocking Iowa voters for preferring Ben Carson, he later deleted the tweet and put full responsibility on an intern , who he said had apologized. (Trump himself, of course, almost never apologizes.)

In the case of the Reich video, the campaign said it was created by a “random account online” and reposted “by a staffer,” though the posting was done in Trump’s own name. (The campaign took it down the next day, after the inevitable outcry.) Too bad Congress didn’t prohibit blaming the help for a candidate’s deeply offensive messages.

Jonathan Alter

An Attack on Justice Merchan Is an Attack on the Rule of Law

No fair-minded person sitting in the courtroom of the Trump felony trial can doubt that Justice Juan Merchan is a wise, impartial and fair judge. He proved it again on Tuesday when he held an important “charging conference” to determine how he will instruct the jury before it begins deliberating next week.

That’s why I was so appalled to see House Speaker Mike Johnson standing outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse last week denouncing the trial as a “travesty of justice.” Echoing Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called the judge “corrupt” and the whole thing “rigged,” the speaker said he was “disgusted” by the trial, though he clearly knows almost nothing about it.

This kind of talk is not only wrong, it’s a threat to the integrity of the American judiciary, which, for all its faults, is the crown jewel of our constitutional system. Johnson, second in line to the presidency, is using some kind of authoritarian playbook when he assaults another branch of government. When an independent judiciary dies, so does democracy.

Inside the courtroom, my go-to guy is Judge George Grasso, retired from the New York bench, who is attending the trial as a spectator.

“This judge is evenhanded,” Grasso told me at the end of the day. “He makes rulings sometimes for the benefit of one side, sometimes for the other. He’s very careful on the facts and everyone has the opportunity to be heard. Even if he’s decided already,” Grasso said, referring to pretrial motions, “he’s willing to listen.”

I got up to leave but Grasso, a former deputy New York police commissioner, wasn’t finished yet, adding: “To attack him is to attack the rule of law.”

Merchan’s Solomonic nature was in evidence Tuesday as he discussed with lawyers for both sides how he will instruct the jury.

On the critical issue of “accessorial liability” — how responsible Trump should be given his distance from the Trump Organization’s bookkeeping department — Merchan said he would instruct the jurors that they “need not to be unanimous on whether the defendant” is liable on each element of the case, though they do have to be unanimous on the overall verdict. This was a win for the prosecution. So was his ruling that the jury will be instructed that “intent to defraud can extend beyond economic concerns.”

At the same time, Merchan seemed to be leaning toward the defense in limiting how far the prosecution could go in pushing accessorial liability. When the district attorney’s office sought to broaden the concept, Merchan said that would mean a “material change” in the state statute and he would not use it in his instructions. And he reserved judgment on the extent to which Trump’s violations of tax laws can be brought into the case.

We won’t know until later this week exactly what the judge’s instructions to the jury will be. But we do know this: When you trash a judge like Merchan, you’re trashing America.

Charles M. Blow

The Viral Defiance of Jasmine Crockett

Why, exactly, was Marjorie Taylor Greene’s dig at Jasmine Crockett’s fake eyelashes so upsetting?

The two members of the House Oversight Committee tore into each other last week in a verbal assault that was widely seen as a new low for personal relationships in this polarized Congress. Greene began the descent by saying to Crockett that her “fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”

For Crockett, it was about much more than a rules violation for attacking another member’s physical appearance. For her, it was an insinuation of inferiority.

As Crockett told me, “It triggered me because MAGA is constantly on social media doing all these wild memes about my lashes and talking about my nails.” She continued, “They call me ghetto trash and D.E.I. hire.”

Greene, in that moment, became the personification of her online harassment, Crockett said.

“I interpreted that as not, ‘oh girl, you don’t need to wear lashes because you’re more than enough and you’re beautiful,’” she said, “I interpreted that as, ‘you’re basically like, oh, you ghetto piece of trash.’”

So, Crockett shot back with her one insult about Greene’s appearance, asking the committee chairman, “I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”

The alliteration became a viral sensation. People made songs about it. Crockett herself is making apparel featuring the phrase, and she moved to trademark the term.

Crockett has gained a reputation for producing such moments. But the incident also speaks to the nature of the modern Congress, in which spectacle generates its own form of power, in which being a social media clip star is just as important as being an advancer of legislation.

This is not to defend Greene in any way. She is a bully who has proved to be a bona fide stunt queen, exploiting outrage for personal advancement. I think Crockett was right when she told me, “People have really been waiting on someone to put her in her place, because she’s been so out of place and so outlandish this entire time.”

And yet, going toe to toe and tit for tat with someone like Greene is also to descend into chaos, and ultimately into indecorous absurdities, because that is precisely where Greene is most comfortable.

Even Crockett concedes that the clipbait-ification of Congress is a bad thing, saying, “I really dislike that social media and virality is playing a part in legislating.”

But she offered an explanation for her own actions: “I don’t try to create these moments, but I think that what’s happening is that Democrats have been craving someone who would be responsive in the moment to misinformation and disinformation and do it in a very forceful way.”

In her view, it is the motivation that matters most: standing for truth vs. standing for institutional and societal degradation.

The problem is that the country has been lied to so often and for so long that many people can only see their party’s representatives on the noble side of that equation.

Scarlett Johansson’s Voice Isn’t the Only Thing A.I. Companies Want

When OpenAI introduced its virtual assistant, Sky, last week, many gasped. It sounded just like Scarlett Johansson, who had famously played an artificial intelligence voice assistant in the movie “Her.”

On the surface, the choice made sense: Last year, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, had named it his favorite science fiction movie, even posting the single word “her” around the assistant’s debut .

OpenAI approached Johansson to be the voice for its virtual assistant, and she turned it down. The company approached her again two days before the debut of Sky, but this time, she said in a blistering statement, it didn’t even wait for her official “no” before releasing a voice that sounds so similar to hers that it even fooled her friends and family.

In response to Johansson’s scathing letter, OpenAI claimed that the voice was someone else and “was never intended to resemble hers,” but it took Sky down anyway.

The A.I. industry is built on grabbing our data — the output that humanity has collectively produced: books, art, music, blog posts, social media, videos — and using it to train their models, from which they then make money or use as they wish. For the most part, A.I. companies haven’t asked or paid the people who created the data they grab and whose actual employment and future are threatened by the models trained on it.

Politicians haven’t stepped in to ask why humanity’s collective output should be usurped and monopolized by a handful of companies. They’ve practically let the industry do what it wants for decades.

I am someone who believes in the true upside of technology, including A.I. But amid all the lofty talk about its transformational power, these companies are perpetuating an information grab, a money grab and a “break the rules and see what we can get away with” mentality that’s worked very well for them for the past few decades.

Altman, it seems, liked Johansson’s voice, so the company made a simulacrum of it. Why not?

When you’re a tech industry star, they let you do anything.

Serge Schmemann

Why the Crash in Iran Was Almost Certainly an Accident

When the first reports came out on Sunday that a helicopter carrying the president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, had gone down, the first question on most minds was probably, “Who did it?”

That’s not a far-fetched question. Only last month, several senior Iranian officers were killed in a drone strike on Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus, Syria — a hit broadly attributed to Israel, though Israel rarely acknowledges such things. And in 2020 the United States acknowledged responsibility for the drone strike that killed Qassim Suleimani, a powerful Iranian general.

This time, however, the United States and Israel were quick to say: Not us. Washington even expressed “condolences” after it was confirmed that Raisi had died . Iran was equally quick to declare that the crash, in foggy mountains, was indeed an accident and even reportedly asked the United States for help in locating it.

None of that reflected a change of heart or a disavowal of targeted killing as a clandestine tool or any regret outside Iran over the death of Raisi and his foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who was also killed in the crash. Both were full-blooded members of the Iranian theocracy, dedicated to its ruthless suppression of any dissent and its proxy wars, especially against Israel. Raisi, in fact, was discussed as a likely successor to the 85-year-old supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian exiles were reported to have celebrated their deaths in London and elsewhere.

But Iran, already deeply enmeshed in the Israeli conflict through its support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi rebels in Yemen, only recently risked getting into a major direct war with Israel by launching a massive wave of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel in retaliation for the bombing of its Damascus embassy. Accusing Israel or the United States of the killing of the Iranian president would have risked a far more fateful exchange, which no one wanted at this juncture.

Besides, Raisi and Amir Abdollahian probably did not figure high on the American or Israeli enemies list, even if the president was a candidate for supreme leadership. However repugnant, both were tools of the theocracy, not architects of the nuclear, regional or domestic policies that they brutally enforced.

The broad consensus in the immediate aftermath of their deaths was that nothing much would change. There were plenty of other hard-liners lined up to succeed Khamenei, including his son Mojtaba Khamenei, and none of them suggested a promising future for Iran. The only immediate question was how many — or, more accurately, how few — Iranians would show up for the “election” of the next president picked by the supreme leader.

An earlier version of this article misstated the year of the drone strike that killed Qassim Suleimani. It was 2020, not 2000.

How we handle corrections

Romaissaa Benzizoune

Opinion Editorial Fellow

For Kendrick and Drake, Family Matters

Weeks after the rap battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake began — triggered by competing claims to greatness — listeners are still electrified. There’s a general agreement that Lamar won, whether because of his masterly storytelling, triple entendres that stretch the horizons of meaning, or flow that feels like the sonic equivalent of an ice bath.

There’s also the fact that some of his most successful, emotionally resonant bars argue that his opponent has failed as a father, son and romantic partner. In one of the catchiest verses in “euphoria,” Lamar accuses Drake of knowing nothing about raising a son. He also raps as a sort of warning, while using coded Canadian slang for “bro” : “It can get deep in the family, crodie / Talk about me and my family, crodie? / Someone gon’ bleed in your family, crodie .” Days later, Drake dropped “Family Matters,” in which he questions why Lamar hasn’t married his fiancée. Drake accuses Lamar, without providing evidence, of abusing her.

Lamar counters with the tragic “Meet the Grahams,” a point-by-point takedown through a series of vignettes addressed mostly to Drake’s family members: his son, Adonis; his mother, Sandra; and an unnamed baby girl that Lamar claims is Drake’s daughter.

These digs are so provocative because the rich and powerful are beholden to few things other than family .

Family motifs carry hip-hop and rap. Rappers are obsessed with whether the women they’re involved with are wifey material. Are they capable of mothering, or are they just hos? The rapper Future, notorious for having seven baby mamas, apparently dreams of domestic bliss . Lil Wayne, Offset, DaBaby and Lamar have all featured family members on album covers. Artists grapple meaningfully with family, whether that family abandoned them or supported them on the come up.

In her 2022 book “Abolish the Family,” Sophie Lewis criticizes family as a norm that “makes a prison for adults — especially women — out of their own commitment to children they love.” But because there is no alternative, family is sacred; this is especially true for Black people.

The traditional family is an untouchable symbol. Women, who bleed more for it, are its figureheads. This is why attacking your competition’s family members — especially his partner or mother — becomes the most potent way to dismantle the honor of a man who appears to have everything.

It’s hardly Drake’s fault that Kendrick Lamar did it better.

A Tongue-Lashing for a Defense Witness Isn’t Great News for Trump

Eight times a day during his felony trial, a former president of the United States must stand and honor 12 jurors and six alternates as they walk past, eyes straight ahead or down, casting no glances at him. It’s inspiring to watch these ordinary citizens as sovereign soldiers for justice.

On Monday this calm processional was disrupted, as jurors were forced to hurry out after a witness for the defense mocked the authority of the court. Moments later, Justice Juan Merchan ordered the courtroom immediately cleared, and reporters fled in a frenzy.

The reason for all of this was the testimony of Robert Costello, an astonishingly arrogant former federal prosecutor who has defended the likes of George Steinbrenner and Leona Helmsley, borrowing a little of his nasty affect from each.

Michael Cohen testified earlier that Costello and Rudy Giuliani were assigned by Donald Trump to open a back channel to Cohen to keep him in the Trump fold.

Costello testified before a friendly House subcommittee last week that Cohen was a liar. This apparently impressed Trump and — presto! — Costello was the first important witness the defense called after the prosecution rested.

On direct examination, Costello did next to nothing for the defense beyond landing a few more mostly irrelevant blows on Cohen.

On cross-examination by the prosecution, however, you could almost see steam coming out of Costello’s ears. The temerity of this lowly local female prosecutor asking him questions! Merchan ruled earlier that Costello could testify only on certain subjects. When Merchan sustained several objections from the prosecution and struck a couple of Costello’s answers from the record, Costello decided to play judge.

He muttered “ridiculous” and “strike it” after disliking a question. An enraged Merchan excused the jury and said sharply, “I want to discuss proper decorum in my courtroom.” He continued, “You don’t say, ‘Geez,’ and you don’t say, ‘Strike it.’ And if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side-eye and roll your eyes.”

Merchan apparently didn’t want reporters to hear the rest of his tongue-lashing and cleared the courtroom.

None of this was good for the defense, which struggled all day to build on Thursday’s success in making Cohen seem he was lying about the purpose of his calls to Trump in late October 2016. Cohen looked bad admitting he passed $20,000 in cash in a paper bag to Red Finch, a tech firm that uses algorithms to rig online polls. But Trump looked even worse by directing Red Finch to cheat his way onto CNBC’s list of the most famous business leaders of the 20th century. Classic Trump.

Jurors may conclude that the whole bunch of ’em are liars and reasonably doubt every word out of all of their mouths. At this point, that may be Trump’s best hope of avoiding conviction.

When Michael Cohen’s Lies Help the Case Against Trump

Is it possible to use a lie to illuminate the truth? If the lie is told by the serial liar Michael Cohen in the right context, the answer is yes. Credit the prosecution in the Trump felony trial for pulling off this tricky maneuver.

On Monday, we finally got closer to a key factor in this case: campaign finance law. To convict Donald Trump of a felony, the jury must find that he falsified business records (or directed that they be falsified) with “the intent to commit another crime.” Trump need not be found guilty of any of those other crimes — in this case, it could be tax fraud, intervening in an election or violating campaign finance laws — in order to convict him. But he needs to have crime in mind in at least one of those areas.

Late in the morning, Susan Hoffinger — a prosecution lawyer on her game — drew Cohen’s attention to a letter written by his lawyer, Stephen Ryan, after the Stormy Daniels hush-money story broke in The Wall Street Journal in 2018. At that time, Cohen was still in Trump’s camp, telling the world that he had paid the $130,000 to Daniels on his own. In his letter, Ryan wrote, “The payment in question does not constitute a campaign contribution.”

Hoffinger asked, “Was that a true statement?” Cohen, in his new, polite incarnation, replied, “No, ma’am.” This told the jury: Here goes Cohen, lying again. In other words, because Cohen was such a known liar, it is more plausible than not that he was lying when he said the payment was not a campaign contribution, to protect Trump and himself.

After a sidebar, Justice Juan Merchan turned to the jury and repeated instructions he had already given, during direct examination of Cohen, when the subject of his 2018 guilty plea in the criminal case that sent him to jail for 13 months came up: “Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea is not evidence” of Trump’s guilt.

The judge was basically saying to the jury, “I know you may think these two guys both intended to commit this other crime, but you can’t use Cohen’s guilty plea to convict Trump.”

As Norm Eisen, an expert on campaign finance law, told me during a break, “The jury will listen to the judge, but that’s like saying, ‘Don’t look at the elephant.’”

To emphasize the point further, Hoffinger asked, “Did Mr. Trump approve the substance of these false statements by you?” This brought another “Yes, ma’am.”

The prosecution caught another break when Merchan refused to allow Bradley Smith, a Republican and former chair of the Federal Election Commission, to testify about his conservative interpretation of campaign laws. The judge said if he allowed that testimony — which the defense desperately wants — he would have to let the prosecution call an expert witness with his or her opposing interpretation. Merchan concluded that as judge, it was his job — and his job alone — to interpret how campaign finance law should be regarded by the jury.

All in all, this was an unsexy but significant win for the prosecution.

Nicholas Kristof

Israel’s Denial of Gaza Aid May Lead to an Arrest Warrant

The decision on Monday by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for leaders of Hamas and Israel probably will not result in anyone being put on trial immediately for crimes against humanity. But it does further tarnish Israel’s invasion of Gaza, add to the isolation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and raise questions about President Biden’s steadfast support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

It’s no surprise that the prosecutor, Karim Khan, is seeking to arrest Hamas leaders for their rampage of murder, rape, torture and kidnapping on Oct. 7, which clearly constituted war crimes. Those protesters making excuses for Hamas should read Khan’s statement and understand Hamas’s brutality.

The allegations against Netanyahu seem to focus on the Israeli government’s decision to throttle aid, including food assistance, to civilians in Gaza and thus cause starvation. The very first allegation listed by the prosecutor against Netanyahu is “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

That has always seemed to me a part of the Israeli operation in Gaza that is particularly difficult to justify. My view is that Israel absolutely had a right to strike Gaza militarily after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, to destroy Hamas leadership and to try to recover hostages. I have argued that the military operation should have been far more restrained, calibrated to target Hamas officials rather than to level entire neighborhoods, but bombing targets in Gaza was not inherently wrong or unlawful.

What has seemed utterly indefensible has been the constraints placed on aid entering the territory, so that Gaza is teetering on the edge of famine — even as trucks filled with food are lined up at Gaza’s border, waiting to enter. That is what seemed to galvanize the International Criminal Court.

A panel of international experts convened by the International Criminal Court unanimously backed the prosecutor. “Parties to an armed conflict must not deliberately impede the delivery of humanitarian relief for civilians, including humanitarian relief provided by third parties,” the experts said.

I’m not an expert in international humanitarian law, so I’ll leave it to others to argue about whether a prosecution of Netanyahu is justified. But the court’s efforts underscore the moral stain of the starvation in Gaza, in which the United States is complicit.

America’s highest-priority response needn’t be a flurry of legal arguments, but instead could involve a far greater effort — using all the leverage we have — to persuade Israel to allow more aid into Gaza and to ensure that the aid is actually delivered to starving children. Whether or not one agrees that starving children is criminal, it is unconscionable. And preventable.

Patrick Healy

Deputy Opinion Editor

The Dangerous Political Headwind Facing Biden

Every Monday morning on The Point, we kick off the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

All eyes will be on Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan this week. His lawyers are expected to wrap up their cross-examination of Michael Cohen on Monday, and then will reveal if Trump is going to testify in his own defense before heading to closing arguments, probably on Tuesday. As much as Trump might be tempted to take the stand, he knows very well the lies he has told about Cohen, Stormy Daniels and his business records over the years — lies he could get caught telling under oath. The risk of testifying is enormous for a born liar, and Trump wasn’t born any other way. I don’t see him taking that chance.

For me, this trial has underscored two things: The enthusiasm and loyalty that the Trump base feels for their man, and the dangerous political dynamic that President Biden faces this year. That dynamic, as I see it, is this: Many Americans want change, and while they may respect Joe Biden, they don’t want Joe Biden anymore. Even the Trump criminal trial hasn’t been enough to make Biden look good by comparison, if the latest polls are any measure. My colleague Ezra Klein has a great new column about why this may be , but whatever the reason, the Biden campaign has big choices to make.

The biggest choice to me: His campaign has been focused on getting people to respect Biden — by portraying him as a defender of democracy, a champion of a normal America, a trusted ally to the less fortunate, a more decent man than Trump — rather than on making people want the Biden presidency to continue. He gave a good speech Sunday at Morehouse College in Atlanta about manhood and faith, but given his weak polling in that battleground state, I was surprised he didn’t make a stronger case for why people should want him in office for another four years.

He then headed to another battleground, Michigan, where he is also struggling in the polls. Based on his speech at an N.A.A.C.P. dinner there, I’m sure there was a lot of respect for him in the room, but what’s he doing that’s new or especially persuasive to make more Black voters and others want him for another four years?

On Tuesday, Biden heads to New Hampshire, another traditional battleground where he is polling strongly. As Trump gets closer to a verdict on that day, I’ll be watching New Hampshire to see if Biden and his team demonstrate any new thinking to make the case for why Americans should want another four years of his presidency.