Opinion pieces: How to know you’re off topic and how to get back on topic.

Students sometimes struggle to see the difference between expanding on their topic and being off topic, especially in opinion pieces. They make the mistake of thinking that an opinion can’t be wrong and some even try to deceive their readers by making a controversial or even hateful statement and then saying it is an opinion (it’s just my opinion that women are terrible drivers, why are you getting so mad?) The poor grades they receive as a result are often met with shock, sometimes hostility.

Let’s look at an example of an opinion piece that goes off topic.

Jeremy Brett will always be my Sherlock, not because I saw that adaptation first (I didn’t) but because out of all the people who have ever played Sherlock Holmes, his performance was the one which most resembled the Holmes that I had built in my head from the original stories and novels. From his fawn dressing gown to his strident voice to the inexplicable black-and-white prints of waterfalls all over the walls of the Baker Street rooms, Jeremy Brett was clearly taking the character directly off the page, was uniquely bringing to life the Holmes that already existed rather than an interpretation of what he thought Sherlock might be like if he was completely different to canon.(X)

Much of the paragraph is right on topic. She gave an opinion (Brett is the author’s favorite Holmes,) then described the criteria for that assessment (his performance was closest to the author’s imagination.) The red is where the paragraph begins to veer off topic, the dressing gown and the prints on the wall are not part the actor’s interpretation of Holmes. They are the work of the crews who put together a well staged work. They can be evidence of how close the entire show was to the original work, but they are not part of Brett’s interpretation of Holmes, which the author says she is discussing. In order to be on topic, the thesis would need to be changed to the series with Brett being her favorite adaptation, or evidence specific to Brett’s work as an actor.

Another problem with the author’s analysis is that she shifts from saying that this is her favorite because it matched her imagination, then provides evidence that it was close to the original books by Arthur Conan Doyle. There is nothing wrong with using both imagination and canon, but the author introduced the topic of her imagination but then described the book’s relationship to the books not her imagination. If she is saying that her imagination matched the contents of the books perfectly, then her imagination is irrelevant to the essay, and she can focus on showing the relationship to the original texts.

These are easy for a professional writer or grader, but students will sometimes struggle. The best way to improve is to practice and leave yourself plenty of time to review and analyze the finished work.