Writing to Persuade: How to Bring People Over to Your Side
Trish Hall, Liveright, £18.99
This is a subject close to my heart. One of the few articles I have ever written that I know has changed people’s minds was, oddly enough, on the very subject of how to change people’s minds.
I wrote about why I thought it was a mistake to call Donald Trump a liar. I said that calling anyone a liar is bad journalism because you cannot see into someone’s heart, but also that it is a bad way to persuade people who do not already agree with you.
Most readers who responded did not agree with me to start with and stayed that way. But I was proud that a couple of them let me know that they had changed their mind as a result of reading that article.
So I wanted to see what Trish Hall, former editor of the comment page of The New York Times, had to say was the secret of this mysterious process.
