How to Write an Effective Letter to the Editor

By Robert W. Tracinski

A philosophic battle is won by the side that presents its ideas in the clearest, most convincing manner. To become an effective campus activist, therefore, it is important to learn the principles of clear writing and objective communication.

This is especially true of letters to the editor. Letters provide one of the most effective and economical means of reaching fellow students with your ideas--but they also present unique writing challenges. Below are five principles that will help you become a more effective campus activist by writing more effective letters to the editor.
 
1. Know what you are responding to.

Most letters to the editor are written in direct response to a specific article. That's why it is particularly important to perform one step that many letter-writers ignore. That missing step is to analyze the article you are responding to and determine its central theme.

Why is this important? I'll use one of my own experiences as an example. In 1995, the New York Times published an op-ed about the "scary" new ideologies one encounters on the Internet. The central theme of the piece was that extreme advocacy of liberty leads to anarchy and to rule by brute force. As illustrations of this point, the author lumped together libertarians, "anti-government" militia members, white supremacists--and Objectivists. I sent a response arguing that the author was misrepresenting Objectivism and that Ayn Rand was opposed to libertarianism. (The letter was printed.) All of my arguments were true--but it was later pointed out to me that my letter did not really answer the article. It left unchallenged the contention that "extreme" liberty leads to anarchy, and the assumption that the movements the author cited are exponents of liberty. Instead, I merely objected to the author's reference to Ayn Rand. The letter amounted to saying, "I can't deny that too much liberty leads to anarchy--I just object to including Ayn Rand as an example." In fact, this argument even misrepresents Ayn Rand's views, because it implies that she was not an extreme advocate of liberty.

The lesson of this story is that you do not want to answer only a minor point or side issue in an article that contains more fundamental errors. Such a response amounts to an implicit endorsement of the more fundamental errors.

There are contexts in which it is fine to answer only a nonessential point. You might agree with the essential point of an article but disagree with a minor issue, so that it is appropriate to address only the minor issue. Or you might agree with all of an article but think that the author does not go far enough or misses a more fundamental identification, which you want to provide. Finally, there are cases in which you are not addressing an author's argument but are merely providing an interpretation of facts presented in a purely journalistic article. But the point remains that you must identify the essential point of the article in order to know when each of these approaches is valid.
 
2. Stick to the essentials.

The average length of letters printed in national newsmagazines is about 80 words. Major newspapers often print letters up to 140 words. Student newspapers are generally more accommodating, often printing letters hundreds of words long. But letters to the editor are, by their nature, very short. They are, after all, a response to another person's article, not whole articles in themselves. To avoid taxing the editor's patience--not to mention the reader's--they must be kept within strict word limits.

In fact, the more succinctly you make your point, the better chance it has of being read and remembered. A friend of mine recalls one of the most effective letters to the editor he has ever seen. It was published in a major newsmagazine in 1987, shortly after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean passenger jet that accidentally flew into Soviet airspace. The letter read: "Disarmament? Flight KAL 007 was unarmed." In six words, the writer was able to make a hard-hitting statement about the folly of disarmament in the face of a brutal dictatorship. This is a case in which "less is more." To add more explanation would only dilute the impact of these six simple words.
 
3. Make arguments, not just assertions.

This is the flip side of Principle 2. You need to stick to your essential point, rather than becoming sidetracked on nonessential issues. But at the same time, you need to back up that essential point with evidence.

Because of the need to keep a letter to the editor very short, it is tempting to present your point in a "sez you, sez me" style. This approach consists of summarizing the position of the article you are responding to, then simply asserting that it is wrong and stating your own position. But this does not really convince anyone. No one is going to be swayed by the argument: "You say that God exists, but I say you're wrong: He doesn't." This is just an exchange of arbitrary assertions.

The reason why this mistake is so common is that a letter to the editor, because it has to be so short, seems as if it is too short to make an argument and to offer evidence for one's position. But this is not actually the case. On most issues, it is possible to present evidence for one's position in just a few sentences.

To take our example from above (which is more abstract than most), you can say: "Everything in the world acts according to natural laws. Things don't just appear and disappear at random; they don't spontaneously change their natures; rocks don't transform into bread, and water doesn't transform into wine. And science provides us with rational explanations of an ever-wider range of phenomena. But the concept of God tells us that the world is ruled by inexplicable miracles, that God can upset natural laws. It contradicts everything we know about the world." That's a good 78-word argument against the existence of God.

It's even easier to draft a short argument on a more earthly, less abstract topic--say, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Here's an example: "President Clinton claims that support for the IMF is necessary to end the global economic crisis. But the IMF is the cause of that crisis. It advocates spurring economic growth through inflation (in the form of currency devaluation) and higher taxes (in the form of 'austerity' measures). America discovered the disastrous consequences of these policies in the 1970s--but the IMF still peddles this poison to the rest of the world." That's 71 words, including a summary of the position one is responding to. The evidence offered is simple. The measures advocated by the IMF are named and translated into terms where they can be recognized as evils (inflation and taxes); then the '70s, an era famous for taxes and inflation--and for economic stagnation--is cited as evidence of the failure of these policies.

Of course, a few sentences cannot present a complete argument, with every piece of evidence a rational person would need to be convinced of your position. What you can accomplish in a few sentences, however, is to indicate the kind of evidence that supports your conclusion, so that the reader can do further thinking on the issue himself.
 
4. Present a distinctive conclusion.

To make your letters as effective as possible, it is important to target issues on which you can express a distinctive viewpoint. After all, what is the point in presenting an argument that conservatives, or libertarians, or even some liberals could also present? Such an argument might be perfectly valid--but there are plenty of others who can and will make it. What is the point, for example, in arguing that taxes harm economic efficiency? There are dozens of pro-free-marketers who make the same argument. But few others will argue that taxes are immoral because they punish the virtuous for the sake of parasites.

It only makes sense to target our efforts where they are most productive--and that means presenting arguments that are uniquely ours to make.

Presenting distinctive arguments will also help you to avoid a common error. Just as the short format of letters to the editor can lead you to conclude that it is impossible to present arguments and evidence, so it can also lead you to conclude that you have to present your conclusions in a watered-down, "common sense" form. But if it's just "common sense"--why bother to say it? For example, why bother saying that appeasement of dictators is impractical--a point few would disagree with--when you can say, instead, that our foreign policy should be guided by self-interest rather than self-sacrifice. Or, perhaps even more germane to U.S. foreign policy, you could make the point that we have to be guided by principles rather than range-of-the-moment pragmatism.

Always bear in mind the fundamental goal of a letter to the editor: to communicate the full meaning of your ideas.
 
5. Respect your readers' context.

This is the flip side to Principle 4. Just as it is sometimes tempting to water down your views to make them more easily acceptable to the reader, so it can also be tempting to use every letter to the editor as a vehicle to introduce the entire philosophy of Objectivism. But this only makes the letter incomprehensible to its intended audience--and to the newspaper's editors, who will be less likely to print it. If you want your readers to understand your argument, you have to introduce only those conclusions which they can be expected to understand, based on the factual and philosophic knowledge available to them. You can't cite a typical piece of environmental legislation and then say, "The environmentalists are acting on the death-premise." You can say, however, that "The environmentalists act as if they regard the lives of animals as more valuable than the lives of human beings." You have to be very sure to make your abstract conclusions follow clearly from the facts that you cite.

A related issue is the use of Objectivist jargon or quotes from Ayn Rand in letters to the editor. The purpose of a letter is to communicate an idea or argument. But that means that the idea or the argument comes first; getting Objectivism or Ayn Rand mentioned is secondary. Getting an Ayn Rand quote in print is good, but do so only if it integrates with the argument you are making.
 
Implementing these principles is not easy. Trying to correct one error often leads the writer to make another error of equal magnitude. But learning to write letters to the editor can make you into an effective campus activist, reaching thousands of fellow students with persuasive arguments for Objectivist ideas.

There is also a greater long-term benefit to be gained. Effective letters to the editor demand, in a more challenging form, all of the requirements of good writing: economy in using words; focus on the essential issues; the use of convincing evidence and clear-cut examples; and respect for the reader's context of knowledge. Learning how to write effective letters to the editor will help make you a better writer in any format.