An excellent persuasive paragraph or essay does not aim to convince people who agree with you but people who disagree with you. As part of that, you have to present the strongest argument of your opponent and then refute it. Essentially, if you simply write, "I believe X," and the other person writes, "I believe Y," you have a disagreement, but not an argument.

Because of that, an argument requires research and the use of reporting verbs to introduce the arguments by other people you may be quoting. Reporting verbs should also be used when reporting data.

An opponent may "claim" or "assert" that something is true, but your argument is framed as a fact, not a claim.

Below is a breakdown of reporting verbs by their relative strength:

Negative (you disagree with this)	Neutral (you are not convinced)	Strong (you agree)
suggests speculates intimates hypothesizes implies posits that	describes asserts reveals argues states indicates	found that demonstrates shows reports emphasizes