ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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When you are writing to compare and contrast a couple o’ things… [Woman sits at desk and uses computer]

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…you always want to start with a topic sentence that introduces what you are about to compare

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and contrast.

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It’s like stretching before a workout.

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Skip this all-important step, and you might, uh…pull a hamstring. [Girl running and pulls hamstring]

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Let’s pick something to compare and contrast so we can see how it’s done.

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We’ll compare Ramona and her sister, Beezus. [Ramona and Beezus in a car]

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Something her parents don’t do, hopefully.

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That sort of thing always tends to start fights…

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We might start off our paragraph with a sentence like this:

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“Ramona and Beezus are sisters in the book Ramona Quimby, Age 8, and they are both alike

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and different in many ways.”

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Short, simple, and sets things up nicely.

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Then you want to give examples about how these two things… [Dino teaching about comparing and contrasting]

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in this case, two people… are similar.

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When comparing Ramona and Beezus, we might write:

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“Ramona and Beezus are both girls growing up in the same family.

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They both enjoy spending time with their parents and going to school…most of the time.

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They get annoyed at each other sometimes and end up fighting.”

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By now, a reader should be getting a pretty good sense of what these two girls have in [Beezus and Ramona sitting in an audience]

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common…which helps them see how and why they might care about one another.

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And helps explain how they both picked out the same awful outfit to wear to school on [Beezus and Ramona walk onto school bus]

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Monday.

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Next, we need to explain how they’re different.

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We might write: “Ramona is the younger sister; Beezus is

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the older sister.

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Ramona likes to be silly, while Beezus is more grown up and serious.

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Ramona likes to use her imagination and Beezus is more practical.”

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Having spelled out their differences, a reader can start to wrap their minds [Girl reading Ramona Quimby book]

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around each girl’s individuality.

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Because it would be boring if we were just dealing with a couple of Quimby clones.

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Finally, we wrap it up with a conclusion.

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“Even though Ramona and Beezus are very different, they still love and look out for [Conclusion paragraph about Ramona and Beezus]

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each other.”

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Aww…so sweet we could puke. [Man with thumbs up puking into trash can]

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