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MLA Formatting and Compare/Contrast Essay. 4-5 pages.Students are asked to respond to the following essay prompt. No outside or secondary sources should be consulted or incorporated. You are encouraged to cite these two memoirs in your work. The assignment is to compare and/or contrast Dorothy Allison?s memoir Two or Three Things I Know For Sure with Marjane Satrapi?s memoir Persepolis(The story of a child). What are the similarities and/or differences in how these authors represent themselves? You must include an outline of your paper! Put your outline after your Works Cited page all on the same document. 1)Comparison and Contrast Essay: Your critical essay assignment requires you compare and/or contrast Allison?s Two or Three Things I Know for Sure and Satrapi?s Persepolis. There is a fairly easy formula for organizing this type of essay. I am grading papers for your ability to incorporate the writing tutorial; in particular, there are two areas I?ll be focusing on when I grade: 1) organization, and 2) signal words that indicate compare/contrast. After I check your papers for MLA formatting, I will look at the outline for your paper to see if you organized your paper according to the tutorial lesson. Then, I will go through your paper looking for signal words. 1. Organizing: There are two basic ways to organize a compare/contrast essay. For example, imagine you are examining bell hooks and Audre Lorde. In brainstorming for your paper, you?ve developed a list of important points of similarity between them. Those points are their motivation for writing autobiographically, their focus on voice, and their feminist perspectives on empowerment for women. (These topics are merely examples, and I do not expect you to use these three topics for your essay.) Call these three points A, B, and C. In general, three is the magic number. While there is no hard-and-fast rule that precludes creating a paper based on two points, or four, or five, a three-point discussion is manageable, especially for complex or abstract subjects. At the same time, a three-point structure helps you avoid oversimplifying. You have decided to compare the two subjects rather than contrast. TIP: It is best to argue that subjects are either different or similar. Pick a perspective! Arguing that they are both similar and different results in a paper that lacks focus and persuasiveness. Here is one way to organize the body of this paper, addressing points A, B, and C for each subject. This paper will follow parallel order?A, B, and then C?for each subject. Again, these topics are merely examples. You do not have to write about motivation, voice, and empowerment. Paragraph 1: Introduction Paragraph 2: hooks? motivation (Point A) Paragraph 3: hooks? focus on voice (Point B) Pargraph 4: hooks? focus on empowerment (Point C) Paragraph 5: Lorde?s motivation (Point A) Pargraph 6: Lorde?s focus on voice (Point B) Pargraph 7: Lorde?s focus on empowerment (Point C) Pargraph 8: Conclusion However, here is another way to organize the same paper, and this way tends to work much better in my experience: Pargraph 1: Introduction Paragraph 2: hooks? motivation (Point A) Paragraph 3: Lorde?s motivation (Point A) Paragraph 4: hooks? focus on voice (Point B) Pargraph 5: Lorde?s focus on voice (Point B) Paragraph 6. hooks? focus on empowerment (Point C) Paragraph 7: Lorde?s focus on empowerment (Point C) Pargraph 8: Conclusion The above is just an example. You have to write a compare and/or contrast paper on "two or tree things i know for sure" by Dorothy Allison and "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi 4. Signaling transitions Learn to use expressions that precisely convey contrast or comparison. These expressions, or transitions, signal contrast: on the contrary on the other hand however otherwise whereas still yet These expressions signal comparison: as well as both like in common with likewise also Signal words such as these help the reader understand the relationships between your sentences, paragraphs, and ideas. In particular, if you are both comparing and contrasting, signal words help sort out what's what. Second only to effective organization, effective use of these expressions will go a long way toward helping produce a good compare/contrast paper. 13.