An op-ed is a signed opinion article by someone outside a publication's staff, arguing one point about something in the news. Most run 500 to 800 words, and national papers take up to about 1,200. The name comes from its old place in the paper, on the page opposite the editorials. The New York Times, which started its op-ed page in 1970, has called these pieces guest essays since 2021.
Below is a complete original op-ed with a note on what every paragraph does, eight openings built on different kinds of news peg, examples of the paragraphs writers most often get wrong, and the steps from idea to submission. The towns, people and figures in the examples are invented. Borrow the shapes and fill them with your own facts.
Op-ed, editorial, column or letter
Opinion pages carry four kinds of writing, and editors sort submissions by them before reading a word. If you don't work for the paper, you are writing either an op-ed or a letter to the editor.
| Piece | Who writes it | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| PieceEditorial | Who writes itThe editorial board, unsigned | What it doesStates the publication's own position |
| PieceColumn | Who writes itA staff or regular columnist | What it doesArgues on a schedule, usually on one beat |
| PieceOp-ed or guest essay | Who writes itAn outside writer, once | What it doesArgues one point the writer has standing to make |
| PieceLetter to the editor | Who writes itA reader | What it doesAnswers something the paper published, briefly |
An op-ed is also not a news story turned around. News follows the inverted pyramid, most important facts first and detail trailing off. An op-ed builds toward its ending instead, and its last paragraph is often the one readers quote. It is closer to an argumentative essay, but shorter, tied to a date, and written for a general reader rather than a teacher.
The structure of an op-ed
Most op-eds follow the same five parts, close to the outline The OpEd Project publishes for new writers. The word budget below is for a 750-word piece. Treat it as a starting allocation, not a rule: a personal piece spends more on the lede, a policy piece more on the evidence.
| Part | Its job | Words |
|---|---|---|
| PartLede and news peg | Its jobA scene or fact that ties the piece to this week | Words60–100 |
| PartThesis | Its jobYour argument in one or two sentences | Words30–50 |
| PartTwo or three points | Its jobEach claim with its evidence | Words350–450 |
| PartTo be sure | Its jobThe strongest objection, conceded and answered | Words70–100 |
| PartEnding | Its jobBack to the lede, or a clear ask | Words50–80 |
The thesis paragraph does the work of a nut graf in a feature: it tells the reader what the piece argues and why it matters now. Put it in the first two paragraphs. An editor deciding in a minute whether to read on needs to find it without scrolling.
A complete op-ed example
This piece argues against a local budget cut. At about 550 words it fits comfortably inside most papers' limits, and it uses every part of the structure above.
Don't close the Eastside library on Sundays
By Dana Whitfield. Whitfield teaches eighth-grade English at Harlow Middle School and has lived on Harlow's east side for 14 years.
Last Sunday at 2 p.m., every table in the Eastside branch library was taken. A father was helping his daughter glue a science-fair board on the floor by the atlases. Four teenagers were sharing one outlet. A man in hospital scrubs was printing what looked like a rental application. On Thursday, the Harlow City Council will vote on a budget that closes this branch, and two others, on Sundays.
The council should strike that line. Sunday is the one day many east-side families can use the library at all, the savings are small, and there is a cheaper way to find the same money.
Start with who comes. The library's own figures, posted on its website, show Sunday as the Eastside branch's busiest day for children's checkouts. That is no mystery. Many parents on the east side work weekday shifts at the distribution center and the hospital, and Saturday goes to laundry, groceries and second jobs. Sunday afternoon is when homework gets done. For the students in my classes who have no laptop at home, it is often the only time they can type and print an assignment before Monday.
Last spring I asked my 112 students where they did homework on weekends. Thirty-one wrote the Eastside library, and most of them added the word Sunday. The main library downtown stays open, but from the east side it is a 40-minute bus ride each way, and the Sunday bus runs once an hour.
Then look at the money. The city budget office estimates that closing three branches on Sundays saves $84,000 a year. The proposed general fund is $41 million. The cut is two-tenths of one percent of the budget, taken from the one public building on the east side that is open, free and heated on a winter weekend. Even that figure is generous: it counts heat the city will pay for on Sundays anyway, and a security contract that runs seven days a week either way.
And there is a better option in the same spreadsheet. The library's hourly visitor counts show Monday mornings as the quietest hours in the system. Sunday hours at the three branches add up to 12 a week. Opening those branches at noon on Mondays instead of 9 a.m. would cut nine, three-quarters of the savings, without taking away the day families actually use. The library director suggested exactly this in a memo to the council in August. It never made the agenda.
To be sure, the council has to cut somewhere. Sales-tax revenue came in under forecast this year, and every department has been asked to give something back. I am not asking for the library to be exempt. I am asking the council to take the hours from the mornings nobody uses instead of the afternoons everybody does. If Monday mornings leave a gap, the remaining $21,000 is the kind of number a budget committee finds in an afternoon.
On Thursday, council members will have a line in a spreadsheet in front of them. I hope they also picture a father and his daughter on the floor by the atlases, with a science-fair board due Monday. Keep the Eastside branch open on Sundays. The vote is at 6 p.m. at City Hall, and anyone who signs up by 5:30 can speak.
What each paragraph is doing
- The lede is a scene the writer saw herself, and the news peg, Thursday's vote, lands in its last sentence. By the end of one paragraph the reader knows why this is being published this week.
- The thesis takes a side in its first sentence and previews the three reasons, so the shape of the argument is clear before it starts.
- Point one uses the writer's own job. Her students are her standing: they are why she, and not a stranger, should write this piece.
- Point two turns a dollar figure into a share of the budget, the comparison readers can't do in their heads.
- Point three offers an alternative. An op-ed that only opposes is easy to wave away; one that proposes gives the council something to vote for.
- The to-be-sure paragraph concedes the real constraint, the money has to come from somewhere, and narrows the ask to fit it.
- The ending returns to the opening image and gives readers a time and a place to act.
Op-ed openings for eight kinds of news peg
The news peg (or news hook) is the answer to the editor's first question: why run this now? The same argument can hang on several pegs, and an idea that has no peg this month may have one next month. Each opening below is built on a different kind.
Next month the state Board of Education votes on whether to make a semester of personal finance a graduation requirement. I have taught that course as an elective for nine years, and I can tell the board what happens when it is optional: the students who need it most are the ones who never sign up.
The water main that burst under Ferris Avenue on Tuesday was laid in 1931. It is not the oldest pipe under the city. The utility's own maps show eleven miles of cast iron older than it, and at the current pace of one mile a year, the last of it won't be replaced until the late 2030s.
The county audit released Monday found that a quarter of school buses failed at least one safety inspection last year. That is the number that made the news. The one that should worry parents is on page 31: in more than half of those cases, the bus went back on its route before anyone checked the repair.
Fifty years ago this month, the county posted signs along the Tane River warning people not to swim. Last July, for the first time since, children swam at Mill Beach. The cleanup that made that possible was the easy half. The next one, the runoff from farms upstream, will be harder, and it starts with a permit hearing in November.
My father worked 41 years as a machinist and never took a sick day, because he never had one to take. I thought about him last week, when the state Senate committee on labor tabled, for the third year running, a bill that would give hourly workers five paid sick days a year.
Everyone agrees downtown Harlow needs more parking. Everyone is wrong. The city's own sensors show the Elm Street garage has not been more than 60 percent full on any day this year, and the council is about to borrow $9 million to build another one two blocks away.
The first real snow of the year is forecast for Friday, which means that by Saturday morning, the sidewalks on Grant Street will be a test of who owns a shovel. The city plows the roads. It leaves the sidewalks to whoever lives beside them, including the 80-year-olds and the empty storefronts.
Your Sunday story on the shortage of substitute teachers (“Who will teach Room 12?”, October 5) quoted three administrators and no substitutes. I have been one for six years. Here is why I am quitting in December, and it is not the pay.
The paragraphs writers get wrong
Ledes get most of the attention. Rejections usually come from three other places: a thesis nobody could disagree with, a to-be-sure paragraph that fights a straw man, and an ending that summarizes.
The thesis
A thesis is arguable when a reasonable person could take the other side. If no one would object, there is nothing for an op-ed to do.
Specific enough to disagree with
- The council should keep the Eastside branch open on Sundays and cut Monday mornings instead.
- Harlow should let homeowners build a backyard cottage without a public hearing.
- The district should collect phones at the start of the school day, not the start of each class.
Too vague to argue with
- Libraries are important to our community.
- Something has to be done about housing costs.
- We need to have a conversation about phones in schools.
The to-be-sure paragraph
Name the best objection a smart opponent would raise, grant what is true in it, then show why your conclusion survives. Readers who disagree with you are the ones you are writing for, and they stop reading the moment they feel caricatured.
Neighbors who worry about parking are right that backyard cottages add cars. But Brookfield, which allowed them six years ago, has approved 38 in all, fewer than one per street, not the flood its opponents predicted. And a rule requiring one off-street space per cottage answers the parking worry without a public hearing for each one.
The ending
An op-ed ending does one of three things: asks for an action, returns to the opening image with new meaning, or widens the frame. What it should not do is restate the thesis. The reader just read it.
The committee meets again on March 3. If you live in the 4th District, Senator Okafor's office takes calls until 5 p.m., and one sentence is enough: put the sick-leave bill to a vote.
Eleven miles of old pipe is a Harlow problem. A city that budgets for repairs only after the flood is a problem every council in the state will recognize, and the bill for it arrives the same way: under a street, without warning, on a Tuesday.
How to write an op-ed, step by step
- Start from an argument, not a topic
Write your thesis in one sentence before anything else. “School lunches” is a topic. “The district should give every student 30 minutes to eat, not 30 minutes including the line” is an argument. If you can't write the sentence, you have more thinking to do before you have a piece.
- Find the peg, and move fast
Ask why an editor would run this now: a vote, a report, an anniversary, an event. For breaking news the window can close within hours, so a piece that takes a week to polish arrives after the conversation has moved on. Evergreen arguments can wait for a peg: keep the draft and watch the calendar.
- Pick the outlet before you draft
A local paper, a national one and a trade publication want different lengths, readers and evidence. Read three recent op-eds in the outlet you want and its submission page, then aim for the lower half of its word range.
- Draft long in the five-part shape
Write the lede, thesis, points, to-be-sure paragraph and ending without stopping to trim. A first draft of 1,000 words for a 750-word slot is normal. Cutting is easier than padding.
- Cut to the limit, then read it aloud
Cut throat-clearing openings, a second example where one makes the point, and every adjective doing a fact's job. Spell out acronyms or drop them. Read the piece aloud at the end: anywhere you stumble, the reader will too, and the tone should sound like you on a good day, not like a report.
- Write the pitch and a one-line bio
The pitch answers three questions in a few lines: why now, why it matters, and why you. Paste the finished piece below it. Include only the credentials that bear on this argument. Suggest a headline if you like, though editors usually write their own. The rules for writing a headline apply to your working title too.
- Submit to one outlet at a time
Major papers expect an op-ed to be exclusive to them. For a timely piece, give the editor a day or two; for an evergreen one, a week or more. If you hear nothing, write once to say you are withdrawing it, then send it to the next outlet on your list.
How long an op-ed should be
Check the limit before you draft, not after. These are the lengths several large US outlets give in their submission guidelines. Local and student papers often want less.
| Outlet | Length it asks for |
|---|---|
| OutletThe New York Times | Length it asks forTypically 400–1,200 words |
| OutletThe Wall Street Journal | Length it asks for600–1,200 words |
| OutletUSA Today | Length it asks for650–900 words |
| OutletLos Angeles Times | Length it asks forAbout 750 words |
| OutletThe Washington Post | Length it asks forPieces over 750 words are rarely accepted |
| OutletThe Boston Globe | Length it asks forUp to 700 words |
A sample pitch email
Subject: Op-ed submission: Keep the Eastside library open on Sundays (550 words)
Dear Ms. Alvarez,
On Thursday the city council votes on a budget that closes three branch libraries on Sundays to save $84,000. My op-ed, pasted below, argues that the council should cut Monday mornings instead, using the library's own visitor counts to show those are the quietest hours in the system.
I teach eighth-grade English at Harlow Middle School, and many of my students do their homework at the Eastside branch on Sunday afternoons.
The piece is exclusive to the Courier. I can turn around edits tonight and am reachable at 555-0142.
Thank you for considering it,
Dana Whitfield
Mistakes that get op-eds rejected
- No answer to “why now?” A sound argument with no peg is an essay, and the opinion page has more of those than it can run.
- Three paragraphs of background before the argument. The editor stops before the thesis arrives.
- Writing for people who already agree. Insider shorthand and scorn for the other side read well to allies and persuade nobody else.
- Jargon from your field. Write for a smart reader who has never worked in it.
- Over the limit. Editors rarely cut 1,100 words to 750 for you. They pass.
- Sending the same piece to five papers at once. If two accept, you have to withdraw from one, and that editor remembers.
For the persuasive moves themselves, appeals to credibility, emotion and reason (ethos, pathos and logos), concession and repetition, see the guide to persuasive techniques.
Drafting an op-ed in Strokes
An op-ed is short enough to write in one sitting and painful enough to cut that you will want the long version back. In Strokes, version history saves drafts automatically, so you can take the 1,000-word draft down to 750 and still restore the paragraph you miss. Open the AI Assistant beside the draft and ask it for the strongest objection to your thesis, then write the to-be-sure paragraph against that instead of the easy one. Select a paragraph and press ⌘K to ask for a tighter version. When it is done, export to Word if the outlet wants an attachment, or copy the text into the email.
Frequently asked questions
How long should an op-ed be?
Most published op-eds run 500 to 800 words. National outlets list wider ranges: The New York Times typically runs 400 to 1,200 words, and USA Today asks for 650 to 900. Check the outlet's submission page and aim for the lower half of its range.
What is a news peg?
The news peg, or news hook, is the current event that makes your argument timely: a vote, a report, an anniversary, a court ruling, a season. It usually appears in the first paragraph and answers the editor's question of why the piece should run this week.
Can I submit the same op-ed to more than one newspaper?
Not at the same time to major papers, which expect exclusivity. Send it to one outlet, wait a day or two for a timely piece or a week or more for an evergreen one, then withdraw it in writing before you send it elsewhere.
Do I need to be an expert to write an op-ed?
You need standing, not a title. A nurse on staffing, a parent on a school schedule, or a tenant on a rent rule all have a reason to be heard. Say in your bio and early in the piece why you know what you know.
Who writes the headline on an op-ed?
Usually the editors. You can suggest a headline in your pitch, and a clear working title helps sell the piece, but expect it to change.
