Greta wrote a great lengthy blog entry entitled Be Careful What You Wish For and it contained a visual chart that expressed similarities between an editorial and an academic essay. I had never compared the two types of writing before, but I now understand how similar they both are. It is amazing how an academic essay could be transformed into an editorial by simply changing some techniques and carefully inserting quotes. It may not be that easy, but it could probably be completed without, too, much emphasize. The only major difference that I notated between that two is being careful to credit or quote what is said. A newspaper writer does not want an editorial to look like an academic paper because no one will want to read it. I also love how Greta ended her blog entry by saying “be careful what you wish for” when writing an editorial. If you write something upsetting and the majority of people know you, then you could receive some staring eyes when people approach you. Overall, write for an audience with a purpose and not to simply write negativity or extremely pleasing information.
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I’m glad you liked my blog. I really do think there are a lot of similarities between the two. If nothing else, making the comparison between academic essays and editorials puts writing an editorial in terms which I am more familiar with. There are differences though which can’t be ignored—the length and the audience specifically. I think we need to be mindful of what we write in an editorial also, not just because of the angry looks we might get, but also because we might incite people with our words to some sort of action. If we really haven’t carefully considered the rationality of our suggestion, we could be responsible for some bad social change (of course this works the other way as well, we could be responsible for good social change too). The important thing is just to be careful and rational about what we write.