. An op-ed is an essay that expresses your opinion on a topic that you care about, but is written for a general audience rather than an academic one. As such, your language will be more informal and personal; it will be more direct, with shorter, crisper sentences. In addition, in journalism (and in every other kind of writing) you are limited my maximums, not minimums, so you will have to get to your point quickly and be efficient throughout. Finally, you will be submitting this for publication. Your options for writing this essay are as follows:

1) A distillation of your research/argumentative paper. For this one, you will need to take your strongest points and present them for a general audience. You will have to change your tone and language to match that of your potential publication and audience. You will also have to remove the MLA citations (though you will probably want to keep a few of the quotes).

2) An opinion piece about a local issue (Covid and online learning, wearing masks and social distancing, tolls, legalizing marijuana, transgender athletes in high school, etc.) As in the first option, you will have to be efficient and direct, appealing to a wide audience with your personal voice. Don’t be afraid to be funny if you are able to- or at least keep it somewhat light in tone. General audiences don’t want to be lectured

Particulars: Max 700 words

it will be journalistic.