Commentary Pieces

I recently came across a post on a colleague's blog asking what "hard skills" training do you wish you had learned as PhD student? Not surprisingly, the first skill the professor identified was effective writing. Digging deeper I noticed that effective writing was not just limited to peer reviewed manuscripts, but what might be considered commentary pieces. Commentary pieces can be best defined as your opinion on a given subject. Certain disciplines are more akin to this type of writing than others. political science and economics jump to mind. These disciplines often have a fast paced structure where opinions are expected to influence decisions. Fields like geology have their heyday whenever there is an earthquake or a volcano and someone from the USGS comes and assures us its not the end of the world, otherwise, commentary articles in geology seem to move at a glacial pace compared to political science.

If you find yourself in a situation where you think that your opinion is valuable to an ongoing debate, proceed with caution. Think hard about what format (e.g., blog, op-ed) you want to your opinion in and who your audience will be. Also, writing a commentary piece is different than writing a manuscript. Check out this commentary piece writing guide by the Pembina Institute on when to use commentary pieces, tips, and writing process.