The comparative summary provides the essential information from two or more essays which treat the same issue. It outlines the main points of agreement and disagreement between the essays, as well. As its name suggests, this rhetorical structure is concerned with both summarizing and comparing the content of written essays.
In order to immediately alert readers to the topic, the comparative summary usually opens by identifying the issue both authors discuss. This issue statement is then followed by a brief (one or two sentence) summary of each essay. Some writers like to close their opening paragraph with their overall comparative thesis (inductive reasoning), but most like to save the thesis for their conclusion (deductive reasoning).
The body of the comparative summary is concerned with the comparison: identifying the major areas of agreement and disagreement, leading to a conclusion (thesis) on whether the two works in question are essentially similar or fundamentally dissimilar. The agreements/disagreements may be catagorized as disputes over
For many people, the comparative summary ends with the thesis, the overall point of the comparison. Such a conclusion impresses the significance of your study upon the reader.
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