How to Write a Letter to the Editor

Writing a letter to the editor is a great way for someone to engage with a publication and a topic that is interesting to them. If you’re reading this guide, then you likely have some inspiration for writing a letter, but even if you don’t have inspiration in mind, this guide can still work to help inspire you to think about a topic. For reference, my guide is based off research I did on 53 letters published about 11 different topics from the New York Times.

So, what is a letter to the editor? A letter to the editor is a letter sent to a publication about issues of concern from its readers. Letters to the editor are often some of the most popular pieces to read in a publication because of their short and emotional nature. They are a quick way for people to begin to understand different sides of a popular topic without having to read through the lengths of opinion pieces. Letters also play a crucial role as a media gatekeeper and a powerful way for publication’s readers to engage with the editors and writers of a certain publication. As an undergraduate who is constantly engaging with a wide range of topics, you may be interested in looking at issues from a wide variety of angles so you may enjoy letters to the editor. You also may find passions for certain subjects that you want to write letters to an editor for or be interested in getting involved with a certain publication or topic and use these letters as a way to open the door to future careers in these areas. It is impressive to be able to show a thoroughly researched piece published in a popular online or in-person magazine or newspaper if you are looking for a career in that area or writing in general.

The key to writing a successful letter to the editor is not just in writing an accurate and interesting letter but writing a letter that will get published. There is not much power to your letter if no one sees it or reads it. As a result, it is important to strike a balance between writing something you’re passionate about and something people are talking about. Because if it’s not an interesting topic that will generate buzz and excitement, then why would the publication publish it? Instead, they’ll choose a letter that will garner more attention and interest.

It also must be a topic in which you have some knowledge. The knowledge doesn’t necessarily have to be first-hand experience, though that does seem to help people’s stories stand out. The knowledge can be a result of careful research and intentional engagement with the topic. But regardless, you must be able to explain it easily as well as convey its relevance and importance to a wide range of people. Especially because of the short nature of letters to the editor, it is so important that you can capture the topic clearly and concisely.

There is a wide range of topics that can be the focus of letters to the editors. Common topics include current events, politics, and lifestyle topics. While a basic template can be used to construct a letter for a wide range of topics, certain conventions are relevant to some specific topics alone. It is always helpful to look at letters to the editor from the specific genres and publications you hope to submit to before beginning your letter. This way, you know what types of elements they commonly use. Some examples can be found in the back of this writing guide.

Choosing a Topic & Audience

There are likely two main reasons why you are choosing to engage with writing a letter to the editor. For the sake of this section, I’m going to provide advice around these two ideas. Though I do understand that there are many more reasons or that your reasoning could be a combination of the two, I think what I share in this section as a whole will be relevant to a wide range of reasons.

Why you are likely choosing to write a letter to the editor:

1. You are extremely passionate about a particular topic.
2. You have an interest in writing or journalism.

Choosing a topic is easy if you are extremely passionate about a particular topic. But it is important to evaluate that other people are interested in this topic as well as your ability to write about this topic.

1. Do some research into what has been recently published about this topic.
2. Look for a publication that has recently engaged with this topic in some capacity.
3. If you can find recently published works on this topic than it’s probably a fit for you to write a letter to the editor on it.
4. If you are not able to find recently published works on the topic you are interested in, then start to look for topics that are more popular and think about how you can relate your passion to the more popular topic.
5. Once you find a topic that is being talked about, take note of the publication (or publications) talking about it.
6. Look at the level of writing of previous letters to the editor of that publication, and make sure that you can match that level of writing about the topic you want to write about.
7. If you cannot meet that level, then look for another publication where your letter may be a better fit.
8. Keep searching until you find a topic and publication that meets your interests and writing level.

Example: As a history major, you may be interested in traditions surrounding U.S. holidays; as a result, you may want to write about a particular tradition you found interesting or angering regarding an upcoming holiday. Since the holiday season is coming up, you would want to write about a topic regarding Christmas or Hanukkah.

Choosing a topic may be a bit more difficult, if you have an interest in writing or journalism. Though it will likely be easier to choose a publication you are interested in writing for.

1. Look to publications that interest you and think about their recently published pieces.
2. Choose some topics that are interesting to you and see if you can relate any of them to experiences that you have or classes you’ve taken.
3. Or look to the people around you or your life and experiences and think about something that may be engaging to write about.
4. Do some research into the topics that you are looking at to make sure that they are ones you can confidently write about on a deep level.
5. Once you narrow down your topic, make sure to take note of the publication (or publications) talking about it.
6. Look at the level of writing of previous letters to the editor of that publication, and make sure that you can match that level of writing.
7. Make sure you find a publication that matches your level of writing and a topic that you have some interest and confidence in writing about.

Example: As a writing minor, you may be interested in writing and looking to get a piece published. You may love the New York Times and notice they are publishing a lot of political pieces with the upcoming election, so you decide to write a letter applying a concept you learned in your sociology class to the upcoming election.

In conclusion, it is important to choose a topic that interests you and interests other people. As well as to accurately do your research on what types of things are getting published and are getting read. It could also be helpful to gather information on who the editor of the publication is so you can get a sense of you who are technically writing to. Thinking about these things will help you submit your letter to the right publication with the right audience, and that will give it a higher likelihood to get published.

Composing Your Letter

Once you have a topic, you will want to get started composing your letter. Every letter is different, but I’m going to share a basic template for constructing a letter on almost any topic. Most letters use a reverse argument structure; where the letter opens with a concession, then the middle is an anecdote with evidence asserting the author’s credibility, and finally it ends with the claim.

Example:

To the Editor:

Re “Poor Schools Can’t Compete With Suburban Rivals. Should They?” (front page, Sept. 23)

I can appreciate the dejection felt by the members of the Hoover High School football team in Des Moines as they lose to better-endowed schools from their district. Fifty years ago, I played high school football at my lower-middle-class school in Los Angeles. We were mediocre at best, competing with wealthier schools whose facilities were better and whose players weren’t concerned about the daily anxieties of family economics. The disappointment is certainly real.

At the same time, it is hard for me to muster much passion to take on inequality in sports when high school students in some schools don’t have enough to eat, when the academic facilities in schools are woefully inadequate, when security in neighborhoods is precarious, when many of the families of students still lack health insurance. Let’s solve those problems, and then concern ourselves with athletic inequities.

Steven Livesey
Norman, Okla.

1. Address the Editor: One defining feature is setting up who you are talking to; you should simply and clearly address the editor.
2. What the Letter is in Response to: It is then helpful to address what you are writing your letter in response to. Often, letters will be in response to articles written by that publication. I think this is helpful because people reading the letter can go back and read the article to gain more context. But you could also just set up some basic context behind what you are writing about.
3. Concession: You then add why you are writing this letter, so how you have a different take or affirm what has been previously said about this topic or issue. This sets up your viewpoint for the rest of the letter and serves as a topic sentence.
4. Personal Anecdote as “Evidence”: Next, you add your evidence, often this is in the form of a personal anecdote, but it can also be research and facts. Showing your experience or research allows you to develop a sense of credibility for your letter. Using an anecdote also allows you to make the letter engaging.
5. Claim: Letters normally end with their claim and the point they were trying to make with the letter overall. This ties the whole thing together and leaves the reader with a lasting message.
6. Signed with Some Distinguishing Factor: Lastly, the letter ends with your name and some distinguishing factor about you. You can use just your location, or you could use your university or anything else you think that could give the reader a sense of the perspective you are writing from.

Keys to Writing a Successful Letter to the Editor

A letter to the editor won’t be truly successful if it doesn’t get published, and a letter to the editor also won’t be successful if no one reads it. So, an effective letter is something that will get published and also convey your message in an engaging and clear way to the correct audience who will actively understand and gain something by reading it. I have developed five keys to making sure that your letter will do all of the above things.

1) Use Personal Anecdote/Story: This is the most common thing I found in all of the letters I looked at. I think it was commonly used because it makes the letter engaging and interesting to the reader. It also builds the reader’s investment in the letter, as they become invested in your story and who you are. It also builds credibility on the topic because it allows you to share how you have directly experienced or interacted with the topic you are writing about.

Example: 

After I miscarried my first pregnancy, I set out to learn why, given how common miscarriages are, we have come to expect perfect pregnancies, and grieve even early losses so deeply. I discovered that many of the innovations of modern life — from effective birth control, to emotionally intensive parenting, to prenatal care complete with ultrasounds and home pregnancy tests, to aggressive baby gear marketing, to detailed pregnancy websites and apps — have promoted unrealistic expectations about how much we can control pregnancy and encouraged bonding with pregnancies that are not yet secure.

Understanding that women once regarded early pregnancy losses as a normal part of reproductive life gave me equanimity and perspective in my subsequent pregnancies with my two children.

This example provides a personal anecdote about this person’s life and shares how it has impacted their personal experience, thus building the reader’s investment in their story and argument.

2) Make it Engaging: There are a lot of ways to make your letter engaging for the reader; this will make them want to start and keep reading your letter. One way is through the use of anecdotes or stories like I just touched on in the last example. But elements like satire, humor, and other rhetorical devices are also used to bring attention to the story the writer is trying to tell in a different yet effective way. It is also important to keep your letter short so that you do not lose the reader’s attention. On average most letters I looked at from the New York Times were only 9.8 lines in length so very short and to the point.

Example:

To the Editor:

Whatever happened to the advice we all received as children? Look both ways before crossing the street. We weren’t taught to walk diagonally through intersections texting on cellphones.

Is it really all about cars?

David Sutton

West Orange, N.J.

This example uses humor to build the reader’s investment and interest in the letter, as well as playing a little bit on the story and creating this illusion of something from our collective past. All of these elements make it highly engaging for the reader.

3) Assert Your Credibility: Credibility may seem hard to build, especially if you don’t have any research or exact educational background on the subject that you are writing a letter about. Especially in publications like the New York Times, a lot of the time, you assert your credibility with elements like titles, schooling, and research. But more broadly, in writing letters to the editor, you can assert your credibility through your personal experiences and the stories you tell. You must make sure anything you assert throughout your letter is accurate. While you don’t have to be an expert on your given subject, it is important to do your research and be familiar with the topic at hand.

Example: 

To the Editor:

Re “Why Some Young Voters Bolt the Democratic Party for Democratic Socialism” (news article, Oct. 16):

As a student at a very liberal college, SUNY New Paltz, I see more and more of my peers identifying with socialist beliefs, especially since Bernie Sanders’s run for president in 2016. Although I agree that people my age (in their 20s) are increasingly seeing the benefits of a socialist candidate and his policies, I see even more of my peers simply not caring at all.

In the 2016 presidential election, only a little more than half of the students on my campus voted. A lot of my friends chose not to vote either because of a general lack of interest in politics or because they didn’t support either of the candidates.

It is also difficult for young people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds who have never felt represented to believe that socialism will ever work in our society.

I do support Senator Sanders and the progressive platforms tied to democratic socialism, but I don’t have too much faith in the United States government and its ability to transform into the progressive state the 99 percent of us need it to be.

Emma Misiaszek
Syracuse

This example asserts credibility by the author sharing their experience at a very liberal college. They continue to create credibility as they back up their personal story with statistics about the 2016 election; this shows that they have not only experienced this topic firsthand but also done their research on it and therefore are credible.

4) Build a Clear Argument: The key to a successful letter is to be able to make your argument clearly and concisely. While there is no set structure behind how to do this, I talked about the basic structure behind building most arguments in the “Composing Your Letter to the Editor” section. The structure is as follows. First, assert why you do or don’t agree with what has been published previously about the topic. Then, provide your evidence and experience with the topic; this often also asserts why you have the credibility to write on this topic. Finally, provide your claim. Most letters have all of these elements, even if they are not necessarily in this exact order.

Example:

To the Editor:

Re “In the Land of Self-Defeat,” by Monica Potts (Sunday Review, Oct. 6):

Ms. Potts’s article about her small town in Arkansas fits into a genre of reporting that has flourished since the 2016 election in which sympathetic writers, often raised in Trump country, attempt to explain why people in rural America vote against their interests. Often these are written by people who themselves left these places because they were too small, too conservative and too narrow-minded.

In her effort to elicit an empathetic response from readers, Ms. Potts focuses on her subjects’ belief in self-reliance, hostility toward the city and conviction that they have to rely on themselves. Yet she neglects a very important fact. The rural conservative white voters who support Mr. Trump and are so opposed to federal spending often live in states that receive far more than their share of federal funds, especially in relation to those states with larger urban populations.

They don’t really oppose federal spending. They oppose federal funding for black people and others in cities. Perhaps if they were serious in their belief in self-reliance, they would vote to reject the federal funds that come to their state, and it could be used better in states that want it.

Paul C. Mishler
South Bend, Ind.

The writer is an associate professor of labor studies at Indiana University South Bend.

This example follows the structure I have outlined that works most commonly for building a clear argument. It begins by asserting why he doesn’t agree with what has been written in the article. He then provides evidence that supports that idea. And finally, he asserts his claim, in the end, in to leave the reader with his main message.

5) Know Your Audience: Where you publish your letter is key to it reaching an audience who will not only receive it well but engage with it. If the letter is not the right fit for the publication, then it likely will not get published in the first place. So, it is crucial to conduct research in the beginning phases of writing your letter to make sure that you are writing for the correct audience. You should continue to write to the audience throughout your letter.

Example: If you are writing a hard-hitting political piece about an inconsistency with the upcoming election, then you probably shouldn’t publish your letter in Cosmopolitan. The audience that reads Cosmopolitan isn’t going to be looking for that kind of piece and will instead be looking for something.

Successful Examples

I think learning from example is a key to building skills in any particular area. As a result, I thought it would be helpful to include three successful examples for reference at the end of this writing guide. These examples all exemplify the five keys to writing a successful letter to the editor and would be great to reference when you hit a block.

Example: 

To the Editor:

Absolutely there is entrenched institutional and societal bias against women, but I have also observed something else.

In addition to the very real glass ceiling, there is also what I call the “lip gloss ceiling”: female behaviors and habits that add to our limitations in the workplace. They often include less than confident communication, discomfort with self-promotion and perfectionism.

While I agree that everyone would benefit if men were offered professional development to demonstrate a more sensitive and inclusive style, most organizations are male-established, male-led and male-modeled. That platform may have to wait until more women are in leadership roles, and more modern millennials assume the majority of management.

I stand ready for active duty when that time comes.

Raleigh Mayer
New York

The writer consults with companies on leadership and diversity issues.

I found this example to be successful because it builds a very clear argument in an engaging way  that shows she has the credibility to be speaking on the topic. Using terminology like “lip gloss ceiling” shows that she has engaged with the topic she is speaking about and that she is, as a result, credible. Also, the way that she mounts to a pithy ending makes the piece engaging and shows personality. It is very clear and easy to understand the point she is making with her letter.

Example:

To the Editor:

Re “Race Takes Turn as Warren Faces Barrage Onstage” (front page, Oct. 16):

After watching all the Democratic debates, I am left with the following sentiments that I believe are shared by many Democrats:

My heart is with Bernie Sanders because what he says about America and what needs to be done is absolutely true. My head is with Elizabeth Warren because she is Bernie lite, a progressive who is more electable than Bernie since she is less scary to suburban Republicans and independents. And my fear puts me with Uncle Joe, because he may be most likely to beat President Trump in the swing Rust Belt states, and the thought of four more years of Trumpism is unspeakable.

But I felt the same way about Hillary Clinton and look how that turned out.

The others do nothing for this 65-year-old longtime Democrat. So how do I vote? I don’t know.

Shelly B. Kulwin
Chicago

I found this example to be successful because it focuses on personal anecdotes and stories to make the letter engaging and also build her argument. It also shows how you can assert credibility through long term engagement with a subject as she does it by saying she’s been a “65-year-old longtime Democrat”. She also asserts a claim that shows she is unknowing, which I want to emphasize is okay with letters to the editor. You don’t have to have everything figured out; you can just share your thoughts and experiences.

Example:

To the Editor:

To Peggy Wehmeyer, I send my condolences and my gratitude. My gratitude for shining a light on what is an epidemic.

As a pastor (and someone who has depression), I work with individuals who live with perpetual suicidal ideation. There is still so much stigma and shame, as Ms. Wehmeyer illuminates, attached to the word “suicide.”

In counseling those left behind I say this: Suicide is not a choice, it is not a sin. Death by suicide is one natural outcome of a life-threatening disease. The excruciating effort of hiding one’s mental illness is beyond exhausting. Many people are very good actors, but some cannot continue the effort.

I’m sorry that Mark, Ms. Wehmeyer’s husband, had to learn this the hard way, as did his wife and children.

(Rev.) Sandra Morris
Toronto

I thought this was a good example because it shows the power of building value for your

audience. In this letter, she is able to share her experience and credibility as a pastor and

someone with depression and build that to sharing something helpful for anyone reading

the piece. Her piece is, therefore, engaging because people feel like they can gain

something from it, and it shows that she knows and is comfortable with her audience.

Conclusion

Overall, the key to a successful letter to the editor is a passion for the topic and awareness of the audience you are writing for. If you can meet these two criteria, then you can write a successful letter to the editor. I outlined five useful tips for meeting these criteria as well as provide examples that you can use to help you find your footing as you develop your skills in writing these letters. But the crucial thing is to practice, so think about something you are passionate about start researching and start writing. It may take some time before you get your first letter to the editor published but keep writing and keep submitting and eventually your letter will be selected and published.

References

Grey, D. L., & Brown, T. R. (1970). Letters to the Editor: Hazy Reflections of Public Opinion. Journalism Quarterly, 47(3), 450–471. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769907004700302

Letters to the Editor. (2017, June 5). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/section/opinion/letters

Marisa Torres da Silva (2012) Newsroom practices and letters-to-the-editor.

Journalism Practice, 6(2), 250-263, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2011.629124

Raeymaeckers, K. (2005). Letters to the Editor: A Feedback Opportunity Turned into a

Marketing Tool: An Account of Selection and Editing Practices in the Flemish Daily Press. European Journal of Communication, 20(2), 199–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323105052298

Rhetorical Patterns – Persuasion and Argument. (n.d.). Retrieved from

https://www.lincoln.edu/departments/languages-and-literature-department/rhetorical-patterns/rhetorical-patterns-persuasion