Feedback on your 'Letter to the Editor' Drafts

Well, it's a rainy Friday morning in Knoxville.

I’ve read through your draft ‘letters to the editor,' and I see some good DRAFTS, but not one letter that can’t benefit from revision. So I thought I'd take the time here to give you some advice for your revisions. (I’m hoping that if I give you this advice to all of you NOW I won’t have to write it 25 times in the margins of your papers LATER ;-)

Here goes:

Organization:

You need to get a QUICK start. Don’t follow the school essay practice of starting with a generalization. Instead, take one of these approaches:

1) Establish your credibility in the very first phrase. Readers want answers to these questions: Who are you to be writing this letter? Why should I care what your opinion is? That’s why many good letters to the editor begin “As a UT student, I…” or “As a longtime country-music fan, I…”

2) Use the opening sentence to tell exactly what you are responding to—name the particular event or news article that prompted you to write. Be precise. If you think your audience won’t know what you’re talking about, provide a VERY VERY brief recap of the event or story before launching into your own views on the topic.

Audience and Purpose:

Remember that the purpose of a letter to the editor, as a civic genre, is not just to SAY something (to express your opinion) but to DO something—to move your audience toward a new way of thinking or acting. So your letter really needs to speak to the audience directly and ask for a change in belief or action. I saw a lot of opinion in your letters (appropriately) but sometimes it was hard to see what you wanted me, as a reader, to DO about that opinion.

Two good ways to fix this problem:

1) Address your letter directly to the people you imagine will be reading it. Ask them--directly--for a change in belief or action.

OR

2) Set up your letter as a kind of “open letter” to whatever person (usually someone with power or prominence) you think has the power to change the situation you are concerned about. Tell THAT person what you think they need to do or pay attention to.

Focus:

Once you’ve clarified for yourself what you want to accomplish with your letter, keep your focus on JUST THAT point. Don’t ramble, don’t bite off more than you can chew, don’t just write to enjoy the sound of your own voice, (A good letter to the editor can really only make ONE STRONG POINT. Obama's entire administration is probably too much to take on, for example, in a single letter.)

Appealing to your audience:

Did you ever hear the advice “Show, don’t tell”? I wrote that advice in the margins of many of your papers. You’re not going to move your audience just by calling something “ridiculous” or “shameful.” A better way to go at it is to present your case so well that the audience decides for themselves that something is “shameful” or “ridiculous”

The fact that you hold an opinion isn’t going to change any minds, all by itself. You need to appeal to your audience, in at least one of the three ways you learned about in English 101/102: by making them trust you as an authority (credibility or “ethos”), by presenting reasons or evidence that they hadn’t considered before (“logos”) or by moving them emotionally.

Tone:

Lots of your letters had a strong tone—humorous or sarcastic or angry. That’s okay if you are ethical about it (no name-calling, no insults to individuals or groups). A strong tone will definitely entertain and may actually move your audience. But be careful how you target your anger or sarcasm. If your audience feels that they themselves are the target of your sarcasm or anger, it may misfire.

Last but not least, STYLE:

Make every word count. Lots of your letters had the kind of fillers and wheel-spinning that is typical of school writing –overusing adverbs and adjectives like “really”, “truly”, padding your writing with phrases like “in this world we live in today..” or stating the obvious as in “My name is …. and I’d like to share my opinion on…”) You don’t have space for that!

As you are revising your letters, I urge you to apply the lessons from our last “style” quiz. One way to make every word count is to follow those principles: Make your subjects characters and your verbs actions.

And PROOFREAD: Avoid the kinds of errors—misspelled names, misused words, sloppy punctuation, unintentional fragments and run-on sentences—that can undermine your credibility.