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Quote susan53  I've looked through about 200 sample sentences and can't find any difference- as long as you're talking just about the forms convince/persuade as active verbs and not related forms like convinced (adj) and so on.
You can both convince/persuade someone to do something and convince/persuade someone that something is true. Maybe there's sometimes a slight difference in meaning : in some (not all) of the examples convince seems to be preferred when the writer is talking about using a logical argument, while in some (not all) others persuade seems to have been chosen to express an emotional argument.
I also considered that maybe if you were convinced to do something you always believed in it, while you might be persuaded without really believing it was a good idea. But Google
I/He/She (etc) persuaded /convinced me/her/him to do it against my (etc) better judgement
and both verbs pop up. So that's out too.
I reckon they're close to synonymous. |
I agree with Susan and would like to add one more variation. I'd use "convince" when I want to change someone's perception about a topic. I'd use "persuade" to get them to do something (i.e. a task).
Convince = to change one's thoughts about something
Persuade = to get someone to do something, but, not necessarily believe in it.
Example sentence - You can convince someone that people can fly, but you cannot persuade them to try and fly.
In that example, the word "convince" cannot be changed out for "persuade".