Writing Science to Persuade: The Op/Ed

An op-ed is a short argumentative essay developed for a broad public audience on an important issue. The genre was named for its original placement in print newspapers (opposite the editorial page), but as today’s op-eds often appear online and in audio radio commentary format, the name is commonly used as an abbreviation for “opinion/editorial.” What hasn’t changed is the genre’s purpose: to persuade an audience to consider the author’s point-of-view.

Examples of op-eds relating to academic and scholarly fields include a whole series of op-eds on evolution and “intelligent design” or on artificial intelligence and the future of the workplace. Some op-eds advocate understanding an issue in public life within the terms of a specific field. For example, an op-ed in the New York Times discussed the usefulness of what the author called “cultural geography” in understanding regional conflict.

For this project, you should be sure that your op-ed relates to your field or discourse community.

The most successful op-eds make a primary claim (policy-, value-, or fact-based) and balance their use of rhetorical strategy (logos, ethos, pathos) based on the topic and public audience. We will evaluate and discuss a series of published examples from a variety of venues (NYT, WSJ, The Washington Post, and others) in order to identify genre conventions and best practices. We will also consider publication guidelines (including those from the NYT’s “Op-Ed and You” and The Op-Ed Project).

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RE: Project Memo: Promoting Equal Treatment across All Gender Identities In the US.

The United States is considered one of the greatest states in terms of advancements and development. As such, one would expect that some issues like inequalities within gender identities would be a non-issue, but in reality, it is something that we are struggling with.

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