Selecting Good Personal Argumentative Essay Topics

An argumentative essay essentially requires you to try and convince or persuade the reader of a particular point of view. When writing a personal argumentative paper, you may wish to pick a topic that you are personally attached to in some way. The following outlines a selection of ideas and suggestions to help you pick a good topic to write about.

Choosing argumentative topics that are close to you

Whenever a student has to write an argumentative essay it can be a good idea to pick a topic that they are interested in, particularly when writing a personal form of this academic paper. Ideally, you want to choose something that invokes emotions, and enables you to argue passionately about the topic.

You may wish to choose a political topic that has affected you in some way, or something to do with your body - including aspects relating to body modification or even health. In fact, as long as you feel strongly about the argument and it has some impact upon your life then the topic is likely to be suitable.

Using logical arguments to back up any opinions

As tempting as it is to pour all of your emotion into the article that you write, you need to refrain from allowing your emotions to dominate any objective arguments. Therefore, you need to try and use logical arguments, and even facts and statistics, so as to help persuade the reader that your point of view is the most appropriate or relevant one to have.

That is not to say that there is anything wrong with being emotional in your essay; however, you want to ensure that it doesn’t simply come across as a personal rant, but rather reads as a structured and logical argument that supports your views.

To give you some ideas of the kind of topics that you could write about, the following lists several suggestions.

• People with tattoos should not be discriminated against in the work place
• Religion has no place in the educational system
• Obesity-related diseases and health conditions should be paid for by the sufferer
• Smoking should be banned in cars
• Alcohol should come with warning labels on the bottles
• Drunk drivers should be penalised more severely
• Drunk drivers should be charged with murder if involved in fatal crashes
• Paternity rights should be equal to maternity rights
• Airlines should pay more in environmental taxes
• Cyclists should pay road taxes