4 Comparing and contrasting ideas

Figure 5

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A photograph of two beakers, one with red liquid in it and the other with blue liquid and ice cubes. Each has a thermometer in it. The thermometer in the red liquid shows a much higher temperature than the thermometer in the blue liquid.

Figure 5

University assignments often require students to link ideas by comparing or contrasting them.

When you compare things, the task is to explain how they are similar.

When you contrast them, you explain how they are different.

Whether it concerns a theory, an approach or a procedure, writing about similarities and differences is common to all academic fields.

This section focuses on the effective use of linking words to indicate similarities and differences between things and ideas in a text.