Page 486 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

10. Some airlines charge overweight passengers for
two tickets if they take up two seats.

Supporting an Opinion Essay

A good opinion essay is always a mixture of fact and opinion. Factual

support for opinions can take the form of examples, facts, and even

anecdotes. The opinions themselves are not only supported by facts,

they are logically connected to the facts. In other words, a person in

possession of only the facts might logically draw the same conclusion
from them that the writer does—and the key word is might. Again,

facts can be slippery, and the same facts can often be used to support

two different conclusions. For example, look at the following set of

facts about the parking situation at a hypothetical school.

1. There are three types of parking: red zone parking (closest to

the classroom buildings, for faculty only); green zone parking

(near classroom buildings, for commuter students); and blue

zone parking (near on-campus housing, for students who live

on campus).
2. Each automobile is issued a red, blue, or green numbered

sticker to indicate where it is to be parked.

3. Shuttle buses take students who live on campus from housing

to classroom buildings.

4. Many people pay no attention to the parking regulations—

students park in faculty spaces, and on-campus students park
in commuter spaces.