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Showing Contrast In Your Paragraphs
When writing, a basic grasp of correct usage is frequently not enough when you’re working to turn text that effectively gets its message across. Even when you use a grammar software to correct weak points, you’ll still have to make sure you express ideas in a manner that can affect your readers. For the most part, you’ll need to play with relationships among statements in order to clearly illustrate points and ideas.
Contrast, highlighting one aspect by a direct juxtaposition with another, is one of the most important constructs you can use to express complex ideas in your text. By directly contrasting one concept with another the same way black can highlight white, your readers derive a clearer picture of the message you’re trying to impart.
Examples
When you say “I’ve always wanted to own a home but I live in a rented apartment,” it shows a contrast that creates a scene in the mind of the reader. Similarly, explaining the reason for the situation can also be arrived at properly by using contrast, as in “While it’s always been in the back of mind to buy a house, the reality of my financial situation has made it impossible.”
Can you see how contrast worked in these sentences to create a compelling scene instead of an uninspiring one?
Ways To Show Contrast
As with the above examples, sentence connectors are your best bet for showing the relationship between two contrasting ideas in your writing. The first one (using “but”) is called a coordinating conjunction, which bridges two contrasting statements together. Subordinating conjunctions (such as the second example), on the other hand, show one idea while putting forward a secondary one that makes the first a struggle (e.g. whereas, while). Conjunctive adverbs are used when you’d rather force a pause between the two statements (either by a period or a semicolon) and are often accomplished by starting the second statement with “in contrast” or “on the other hand”. Prepositions are the last way to express contrast, often achieved by prefacing the two combined statements with “unlike” or “even though”.
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