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Neuroscience vs psychology, opinion vs fact: what’s the difference and how you should present both.

In an era dominated by information overload, distinguishing between fact and opinion is more necessary than ever. Whether you’re a college student doing academic research or a social media user scrolling through your feed, understanding the difference can shape your worldview and influence your decision-making. T he major thing you have to understand is that the difference between opinion vs fact lies in the following: a fact can be proven true or false, while an opinion is based on personal beliefs and cannot be proven. Further below, we will guide you through the nuances of facts and opinions.

Definition: Fact vs Opinion

A fact is a statement that can be proven true or false through evidence or objective verification. It is a verifiable truth that remains constant regardless of individual beliefs or perspectives. Facts are characterized by their universality and their ability to be substantiated through verification. They are independent of personal feelings or biases and are based on empirical evidence or logical deduction. For example, “The Earth revolves around the Sun” is a fact because it is supported by scientific evidence, can be objectively verified, and is universally accepted as true.

An opinion , on the other hand, is a subjective statement that reflects an individual’s sentiments, convictions, or perspectives. Opinions are characterized by their variability and their dependence on personal beliefs. They cannot be universally proven true or false and often contain words that indicate judgment, preference, or belief. For example, “Vanilla is the best ice cream flavor” is an opinion , as it is a personal preference, varies from person to person, and cannot be objectively verified as true or false.

Identifying Facts and Opinions in Various Contexts

In various social and professional contexts, distinguishing between facts and opinions is essential for effective communication and decision-making. This distinction helps individuals navigate through a plethora of information, ensuring that they can critically analyze and interpret messages accurately.

In news media, facts are presented as objective reporting, providing verifiable information without personal bias.

Example : A news report states, “The unemployment rate dropped to 5% in the last quarter.”

What is this statement? A fact that can be verified with economic data.

On the other hand, opinions are often found in editorials or opinion columns, where writers express their viewpoints or interpretations of events.

Example : An opinion piece might argue, “The government’s economic policies have been highly effective in reducing unemployment.”

What is this statement? A subjective assessment that cannot be universally proven.

Here, facts might be historical events or settings that provide a backdrop for the story. For example, a novel set during World War II might include factual information about the war’s timeline and major events. In contrast, opinions are expressed through characters’ thoughts and feelings, which are subjective and open to interpretation. For instance, a character in the novel might believe that “War is a necessary evil for protecting one’s country,” which is an opinion reflecting the character’s personal belief.

Language as a Key to Understanding

To identify facts and opinions, pay attention to the language used. Statements with words like “always,” “never,” or specific numbers are likely to be facts, as they provide definitive information.

Example: “The company’s revenue increased by 15% last year”

What is this statement? A factual statement that can be verified with financial records.

Conversely, phrases such as “I think,” “in my opinion,” or “best” indicate opinions, as they reflect personal judgment or preference.

Example: “I think this is the best strategy for the company’s growth”

What is this statement? An opinion, based on the speaker’s personal viewpoint and cannot be objectively verified.

Strategies for Distinguishing Facts from Opinions

You need to develop the skill of distinguishing between facts and opinions. This ability improves critical thinking and helps build one’s judgments and decisions on solid ground. Here are some strategies to help you effectively differentiate between the two:

• Verify the Information: Before accepting a statement as a fact, check it against reliable sources to determine if it is a verifiable truth. For example, if someone claims, “The Amazon Rainforest produces 20% of the world’s oxygen,” you can research scientific studies or authoritative websites to verify this information. If the statement is supported by credible evidence, it can be considered a fact.
• Analyze the Language: Pay close attention to the language used in the statement. Subjective language or personal pronouns often indicate an opinion. For instance, a statement like “I believe that renewable energy is the key to a sustainable future” is an opinion because it is based on personal belief and uses the pronoun “I.” In contrast, a statement like “Renewable energy sources generated 29% of global electricity in 2020” is a fact because it provides specific, verifiable data without subjective language.
• Consider the Source: The credibility of the source is important in determining the reliability of the information. Evaluate whether the source is known for factual reporting or if it has a reputation for presenting opinionated content. For example, a peer-reviewed scientific journal is more likely to present factual information , while a political blog may be more inclined to share opinions.
• Seek Objectivity: Look for statements that can be independently verified , regardless of personal beliefs or biases. A fact should remain true regardless of individual perspectives. F or example, “Water boils at 100°C at sea level” is an objective fact because it can be tested and verified through experimentation, irrespective of one’s beliefs or opinions.

By applying these strategies, you can navigate through the vast ocean of information with a discerning eye, distinguishing between facts that shape reality and opinions that reflect personal perspectives.

Evaluating Evidence and Discerning Subjectivity

Evaluating evidence and discerning subjectivity are essential skills for navigating the complex landscape of information we encounter daily. Evaluating evidence involves a thorough examination of the:

• reliability
• source of the information supporting a statement.

This process plays a vital role in determining whether a statement is a fact, which can be verified and is universally true, or an opinion, which is subjective and based on personal beliefs.

To evaluate evidence properly, one should consider the source of the information, the methodology used to obtain it, and the presence of any potential biases. For instance, evidence from a peer-reviewed scientific journal is generally more reliable than an unsubstantiated claim on a social media platform. Additionally, understanding the context in which the evidence was gathered and the consensus among experts can provide further insight into its validity.

Discerning subjectivity is equally important. This involves recognizing when a statement is influenced by personal beliefs, emotions, or biases. Subjective statements often contain value judgments, assumptions, or generalizations that cannot be universally verified. To discern subjectivity, look for indicators such as emotive language, the use of personal pronouns like “I” or “we, ” or phrases that express preference or opinion, such as “I believe” or “in my opinion.”

Consider the statement: “The government’s response to the pandemic was inadequate.”

To evaluate this, you would first examine the evidence supporting this claim. This might include:

• data on infection rates,
• economic impact,
• healthcare system capacity,
• and comparisons with other countries’ responses.

You would also consider the source of this information and any potential biases.

Next, you would discern the subjectivity in the statement. The use of the word “inadequate” is a value judgment that reflects the speaker’s opinion . It is subjective because what is considered “ adequate ” can vary from person to person based on their expectations, experiences, and beliefs.

By evaluating the evidence and discerning subjectivity, you can determine that while there may be factual elements in the statement (e.g., data on infection rates), the overall assertion is an opinion influenced by personal beliefs and perspectives. This distinction will help you form well-rounded views and engage in informed discussions.

Real-Life Examples of Fact and Opinion

In real life, distinguishing between fact and opinion is highly important in various scenarios:

Academic Research

When doing academic research, it is essential to differentiate between facts and opinions to present well-researched arguments. For example, a fact in a research paper might be, “The global average sea level has risen by about 8 inches since 1880,” which is a measurable and verifiable statement. An opinion , on the other hand, might be, “We should invest more in renewable energy to combat climate change,” which is a subjective statement based on personal beliefs or values.

Job Interviews

During job interviews, candidates should base their responses on facts while expressing opinions that align with the company’s values.

For instance, a fact could be, “The company’s revenue increased by 10% last year,” which is a specific and verifiable piece of information. An opinion might be, “The company’s growth strategy is the most innovative in the industry,” which is a subjective judgment that cannot be universally proven.

Healthcare Decisions

With healthcare, distinguishing between factual medical information and personal beliefs is necessary for informed decisions. A fact could be , “Vaccines have been proven to prevent certain diseases,” which is supported by scientific evidence. An opinion could be , “Natural remedies are always better than vaccines,” which is a personal belief that varies from person to person.

Political Debates

Any politician or person involved in this sphere needs to be able to recognize statistical data over political opinions. For example, a fact might be , “The unemployment rate decreased to 5% last quarter,” which is a specific and measurable statement. An opinion could be , “The government’s economic policies are the best for job creation,” which is a subjective assessment of the government’s performance.

Consumer Reviews

When writing a review you need to be able to state objective product features and separately mention subjective user experiences. A fact could be , “The smartphone has a 6.5-inch display,” which is a specific and measurable feature. An opinion might be , “The smartphone’s design is the most elegant on the market,” which is a subjective judgment based on personal taste.

Environmental Discussions

For those of you who love to discuss global warming, knowing what is scientific data and what are personal viewpoints is essential. A fact could be, “Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have reached their highest in 650,000 years,” which is a statement supported by scientific research. An opinion might be, “We need to drastically reduce our carbon footprint to save the planet,” which is a subjective statement based on personal values and beliefs.

Knowing what are opinions, and which pieces of information are facts is a key to functioning in a media-driven society (which we basically are). With the help of effective evaluation strategies, recognizing subjectivity, and analyzing language, you can discern verifiable truths from personal beliefs. This distinction can help empower you to engage in productive discussions, make informed decisions, and contribute to a more informed and rational society.

Why is it important to differentiate between opinions and facts?

Differentiating between opinions and facts is important for several reasons. It helps in making informed decisions, as facts provide objective information while opinions are subjective. Understanding the difference also enhances critical thinking skills, enabling individuals to analyze information more effectively. In discussions and debates, distinguishing between the two can lead to more productive and focused conversations, as it clarifies what is known versus what is believed.

Can opinions be proven like facts?

Opinions cannot be proven like facts because they are subjective and based on personal beliefs, feelings, or preferences. While facts are objective and verifiable, opinions are not universally true and can vary from person to person. However, opinions can be supported by facts or evidence, which can make them more persuasive or credible.

What role do opinions and facts play in decision-making?

In decision-making, facts provide the necessary objective information to understand the situation or problem at hand. They serve as the foundation for making informed choices. Opinions, on the other hand, can influence decisions by providing perspectives, preferences, and interpretations of the facts. A well-informed decision typically involves considering both facts and opinions, and weighing their relevance and credibility.

How can one evaluate the reliability of facts and opinions?

To evaluate the reliability of facts, one should verify them against credible sources, check for consistency with other known information, and consider the evidence supporting them. For opinions, assessing reliability involves examining the credibility of the person or source expressing the opinion, the reasoning and evidence backing the opinion, and the potential for bias or personal interest. It’s also important to consider the context in which the opinion is presented and whether it aligns with established facts.

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Teaching Fact and Opinion

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN FACT AND OPINION

For higher-level reading comprehension, students must accurately distinguish between fact and opinion. To do this successfully, students must begin with solid definitions of the two concepts. Once this has been achieved, students can practice applying these definitions through activities engaging with a wide range of reading material. Let’s take a look at defining these two all-important concepts before proceeding into strategies and ideas for teaching fact and opinion in the classroom.

WHAT IS A FACT?

A fact refers to something true and can be verified as such . That is, a fact is something that can be proven to be true. 

WHAT IS AN OPINION?

An opinion refers to a personal belief. It relates to how someone feels about something. Others may agree or disagree with an opinion but cannot prove or disprove it. This is what defines it as opinion.

Common Fact Vs. Opinion Statements

• The Earth is round.
• Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.
• The Great Wall of China is the longest wall in the world.
• The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
• The human body has 206 bones.
• The fastest land animal is the cheetah.
• The capital of France is Paris.
• The Nile River is the longest river in the world.
• The Statue of Liberty is located in New York Harbor.
• The United States of America has 50 states.
• Pizza is the best food in the world.
• Horror movies are too scary to watch.
• Taylor Swift is the greatest musician of all time.
• Dogs are better pets than cats.
• Chocolate ice cream is better than vanilla ice cream.
• Politics is too complicated to understand.
• Exercise is essential for a healthy lifestyle.
• The internet is the greatest invention in human history.
• Living in a big city is better than living in a small town.
• The color blue is the most calming color.

IDENTIFYING FACT FROM OPINION IS AN ESSENTIAL SKILL FOR STUDENTS

The ability to distinguish between fact and opinion helps students develop critical and analytical skills in reading and listening. Fact and opinion are often woven together in texts and speeches. It is, therefore, imperative that students can unravel the threads of what is true from what is mere belief if they are to navigate the deluge of media successfully they will encounter in their lifetimes.

Whether on the news, in advertising, or in a history book, learning to distinguish between what is fact and what is opinion is crucial to becoming an autonomous consumer with the critical thinking skills to avoid being manipulated easily.

THE ULTIMATE FACT AND OPINION TEACHING UNIT

This  HUGE 120 PAGE  resource combines four different fact and opinion activities you can undertake as a  WHOLE GROUP  or as  INDEPENDENT READING GROUP TASKS  in either  DIGITAL  or  PRINTABLE TASKS.

The Language of Facts AND OpinionS: Signal Words and Phrases

Writers will liven up their facts with a sprinkling of opinions. Unfortunately, it can sometimes be challenging to extract the verifiable truths from the author’s preferences and biases. Luckily, the language used often throws up helpful clues in the forms of words and phrases that assist us in identifying statements as fact-based or opinion-based.

Let’s now take a look at some examples of those signal words and phrases being used in the sentence fragments that often precede a statement of fact or opinion:

FACT SIGNAL WORDS

• The annual report confirms …
• Scientists have recently discovered …
• According to the results of the tests…
• The investigation demonstrated …

OPINION SIGNAL WORDS

• He claimed that…
• It is the officer’s view that…
• The report argues that…
• Many scientists suspect that…

As we can see from the signal word examples, the language used to introduce fact, and opinion statements can help indicate whether it is being framed as a fact or an opinion.

Students must understand that things are not always as they appear to be. At times, writers, whether consciously or not, will frame opinion as fact and vice versa. This is why it is vital that students develop a clear understanding of what constitutes fact and opinion and are afforded ample opportunities to practice distinguishing between the two.

WHAT IS CONTEXT?

Context is the circumstances surrounding an event, statement, or idea and in terms of which it can be fully understood. Facts and opinions must be placed in context to draw conclusions, and they can significantly impact the importance we place upon statements of fact and opinion.

For example, a young boy who tells his mother, “I ate a truckload of sweets at the party last night” needs to be placed in the context of his age and audience.

We can confidently infer he never actually ate a real truckload of sweets, but we can reasonably appreciate he ate a lot of them and wanted to emphasise that point. His mother might ask a clarifying question to turn that opinion into a hard fact.

Context provides the background information or circumstances that help us understand the meaning of facts and opinions.

For instance, if we say the factual statement, “it’s raining outside” , the context may differ depending on the situation. If we’re at home, it might mean we must stay inside or find something to do indoors. If we’re at a sports game, it might affect the playing conditions or attendance.

Similarly, the context of an opinion can vary based on the situation. For example, if someone says, “I don’t like spicy food” , the context might include their previous experiences with spicy food or the cultural norms of the cuisine they’re discussing. Understanding the context helps us understand the meaning and implications of what someone is saying.

THE CHALLENGES OF TEACHING FACT AND OPINION IN THE “POST-TRUTH” ERA

Teaching students to differentiate between fact and opinion is a complex task that requires educators to navigate a number of challenges that have only accelerated in the “Post-Truth” era, in which some members of society cannot accept being wrong on a particular issue, even with an ocean of evidence stacked against them.

One of the key challenges is that students often come to the classroom with preconceived notions and biases that can make it difficult for them to accept certain facts.

This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, individuals and groups have clung to their beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. For example, in the 16th and 17th centuries, many people still believed that the Earth was the center of the universe, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.

Today, we face a similar challenge when teaching students about scientific issues such as climate change. Some students may come from families or communities that deny the existence of climate change, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that supports it. In such cases, educators must find ways to engage with students respectfully and constructively, while also presenting the scientific evidence clearly and compellingly.

Another challenge educators face when teaching fact and opinion is that students may struggle to distinguish between the two when presented together. This is particularly true in news media, where news articles often include a mixture of factual information and opinions from various sources.

In such cases, educators must teach students to critically evaluate the sources of information they encounter and distinguish between factual information and opinions. This requires a deep understanding of the media landscape, as well as an ability to evaluate the information that is presented critically.

Teaching Resources

Use these resources and tools to improve your student’s media literacy skills through proven teaching strategies.

Fact Vs. Opinion TEACHING activities

Fact and Opinion Activities: Honing the Skills

To become a skilled, critical reader, a student must develop the ability to evaluate a text for facts and opinions quickly. To achieve this, they must practice distinguishing between fact and opinion to a point where it becomes a subconscious mechanism. The activities below will afford your students these necessary opportunities. They can also easily be adapted to various ages and abilities by carefully selecting the reading material.

Student Activity 1. Top 10 Facts and Opinions  

Not only does this simple activity help students hone their fact and opinion-detecting abilities but serves as a great warm-up research activity when beginning a new topic in class. 

When starting a new topic, whether on a historical period, a literary figure, or a species of animal, set students to list ten facts and opinions from their background reading and research on their new topic. Students must then form and record ten opinions based on reflection on this initial reading and research.

It may also be a valuable exercise for students to review their opinions at the end of the topic. Have they changed their opinion in any areas of the topic? Why did they change or maintain their opinion? This can work as a great review activity to wrap things up.

Student Activity 2. Evaluate an Editorial

Newspaper editorials can be a superb resource for students to practice recognizing facts and opinions. They are filled with the editor’s opinions on the day’s issues, intermingled with facts selected to support that view.

First, give students copies of a newspaper editorial. Then, working in pairs, have students go through the editorial to identify the facts by underlining them and the opinions by highlighting them. Remind them to look for the signal words we covered earlier to help identify facts and opinions.

When finished, students can compare their answers and discuss the reasons for their decisions. This will help identify any areas of confusion within the class, providing valuable data to inform your future planning on this topic.

Student Activity 3. Fact vs Opinion Survey

This activity can initially be undertaken using statements compiled on a worksheet. Later, students can work through text passages or a textbook itself directly. Students work through a series of statements marking either F or O beside each to identify that statement as a F act or an O pinion.

This activity is a practical study preparation exercise as it helps students to filter factual content from opinion. It also makes it easier for students to work out the underlying purpose of a text , whether it is designed to inform, persuade, or entertain. Students will soon begin to recognize that passages of text that contain more facts than opinions are most likely intended to inform. In contrast, a more opinion-based text will most likely be designed to persuade or entertain.

Student Activity 4. The Great Fact or Opinion Sort

Organize students into reasonable-sized groups of four or five students. Provide each group with a jar containing a set of cards , each with a fact-based or an opinion-based statement printed on it. Students take turns picking a card from the jar and reading it to the group. The group discusses each statement before deciding if it is a fact or an opinion.

Students can then record the statements accordingly on the Fact and Opinion graphic organizer described above or sort them into two piles.

This activity effectively supports struggling students as they learn from those who have already developed a firmer grasp of the two concepts.

Extension Exercise: Identifying Bias

One reason it is so vital for our students to learn to differentiate between fact and opinion is that this ability is a stepping stone to detecting bias in a text. Students begin to evaluate a text for bias by identifying how much of the text is fact-based and how much is based on opinion.

Once this is done, students must then analyse whether the opinions expressed in the text are biased by considering whether the writer has:

• Provided incomplete information
• Intentionally ignored or left out information to persuade the reader
• Allowed their own personal experiences to cloud any sense of objectivity.

A Complete Teaching Unit on Fake News

Digital and social media have completely redefined the media landscape, making it difficult for students to identify FACTS AND OPINIONS covering:

Teach them to FIGHT FAKE NEWS with this COMPLETE 42 PAGE UNIT. No preparation is required,

FACT vs OPINION GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS

Graphic organizers are a great tool to help students sort the facts and opinions in a text. Offering, as they do, a very visual means of organizing information, graphic organizers help students drill their ability to identify differences between fact and opinion statements until they become automatic.

The Fact and Opinion Chart

This simple chart consists of two columns helpfully labelled fact and opinion beneath a topic heading. Students work through a text, sorting statements as they come across them into the appropriate column on the graphic organizer. At the end of this task, they will be left with a clear segregation of the statements of the text according to whether they are objective facts or subjective opinions.

READ OUR GREAT ARTICLE ON LITERACY GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS HERE

IN CONCLUSION

Not only is the ability to identify bias in the writing of others essential, but this knowledge will also be of great benefit to students when it comes to forming and expressing their own opinions.

Taking the time to prepare and deliver discrete lessons on recognising facts and opinions in reading is essential. No matter how confident students are in distinguishing between the two, they are still likely to benefit from further practice. Even the most reflective of us can sometimes remain ignorant of our biases!

Becoming the critical readers that our students aspire to become begins with forming clear definitions of the terms in the student’s minds. These definitions must be supported by examples and illustrations to achieve this. Student understanding must be further underpinned by classroom and home practice. The activities above serve as a good starting point, but they are not sufficient on their own.

It will be necessary to support students further to gain a deeper understanding of fact and opinion (and related concepts such as bias) by frequently referencing these concepts when engaged with students in lessons with other explicit objectives seemingly unrelated to fact and opinion. Reinforcement should be persistent to ensure students develop firm skills in this area.

With ongoing technological advances, assessing the reliability and truthfulness of the media, we consume daily has never been more challenging – or essential.

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO FACT AND OPINION

6 Ways To Identify Fake News: A Complete Guide for Educators

How to Write a Descriptive Text

Teaching Proofreading and Editing Skills

Information Literacy and Media Literacy for Students and Teachers

Teaching Compare and Contrast

What Is An Inference? And How To Teach It.

5 Ways to Teach Critical Thinking in Media Literacy to Fight Fake News

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

An author’s purpose can influence the kind of information they choose to include.

Thinking about the reason an author produced a source can be helpful to you because that reason was what dictated the kind of information they chose to include. Depending on that purpose, the author may have chosen to include factual, analytical, and objective information. Or, instead, it may have suited their purpose to include information that was subjective and therefore less factual and analytical. The author’s reason for producing the source also determined whether they included more than one perspective or just their own.

Authors typically want to do at least one of the following:

• Inform and educate
• Sell services or products or

Combination of Purposes

Sometimes authors have a combination of purposes, as when a marketer decides they can sell more smartphones with an informative sales video that also entertains us. The same is true when a singer writes and performs a song that entertains us but that they intend to make available for sale. Other examples of authors having multiple purposes occur in most scholarly writing.

In those cases, authors certainly want to inform and educate their audiences. But they also want to persuade their audiences that what they are reporting and/or postulating is a true description of a situation, event, or phenomenon or a valid argument that their audience must take a particular action. In this blend of scholarly author’s purposes, the intent to educate and inform is considered to trump the intent to persuade.

Why Intent Matters

Authors’ intent usually matters in how useful their information can be to your research project, depending on which information need you are trying to meet. For instance, when you’re looking for resources that will help you actually decide how to answer your research question or evidence for your answer that you will share with your audience, you will want the author’s main purpose to have been to inform or educate their audience. That’s because, with that intent, they are likely to have used:

• Facts where possible.
• Multiple perspectives instead of just their own.
• Little subjective information.
• Seemingly unbiased, objective language that cites where they got the information.

The reason you want that kind of resource when trying to answer your research question or explaining that answer is that all of those characteristics will lend credibility to the argument you are making with your project. Both you and your audience will simply find it easier to believe—will have more confidence in the argument being you are making—based on your selected resources.

Resources whose authors intend only to persuade others won’t meet your information need for an answer to your research question or evidence with which to convince your audience. That’s because they don’t always confine themselves to facts. Instead, they tell us their opinions without backing them up with evidence. If you used those sources, your readers will notice and not believe your argument.

Fact vs. Opinion vs. Objective vs. Subjective

Need to brush up on the differences between fact, objective information, subjective information, and opinion?

Fact – Facts are useful to inform or make an argument.

• The United States was established in 1776.
• The pH levels in acids are lower than pH levels in alkalines.
• Beethoven had a reputation as a virtuoso pianist.

Opinion – Opinions are useful to persuade, but careful readers and listeners will notice and demand evidence to back them up.

• That was a good movie.
• Strawberries taste better than blueberries.
• George Clooney is the sexiest actor alive.
• The death penalty is wrong.
• Beethoven’s reputation as a virtuoso pianist is overrated.

Objective – Objective information reflects a research finding or multiple perspectives that are not biased.

• “Several studies show that an active lifestyle reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes.”
• “Studies from the Brown University Medical School show that twenty-somethings eat 25 percent more fast-food meals at this age than they did as teenagers.”

Subjective – Subjective information presents one person or organization’s perspective or interpretation. Subjective information can be meant to distort, or it can reflect educated and informed thinking. All opinions are subjective, but some are backed up with facts more than others.

• “The simple truth is this: As human beings, we were meant to move.”
• “In their thirties, women should stock up on calcium to ensure strong, dense bones and to ward off osteoporosis later in life.”*

*In this quote, it’s mostly the “should” that makes it subjective. The objective version of the last quote would read: “Studies have shown that women who begin taking calcium in their 30s show stronger bone density and fewer repercussions of osteoporosis than women who did not take calcium at all.” But perhaps there are other data showing complications from taking calcium. That’s why drawing the conclusion that requires a “should” makes the statement subjective.

Critical Thinking in Academic Research Copyright © 2022 by Cindy Gruwell and Robin Ewing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Gale Review

A blog from Gale International

Disentangling Fact from Opinion in Academic Articles

│By Rhiannon Green, Gale Ambassador at the University of Durham│

As a university student myself, I know first-hand how important it is to read critically when writing academic essays. One reason we must read critically is because academic articles are constructed from both fact and opinion, and it is necessary to differentiate between the two when using them in our own arguments. This is especially true for articles within the discipline of History which are frequently written with more than one agenda in mind; whilst they do seek to inform the reader on a particular historical topic, and include historical information to this end, it is often used in a way that presents and defends the author’s own opinion on that particular topic. Debates around women’s rights, for example, have seen academics use various arguments and angles over the years, and whilst there are undoubtedly “facts” which are relevant to the debate, historians have often used the facts to present their own angle or argument. In this blog post I will use the resources in Gale OneFile –  a component of Gale Reference Complete and home to a vast array of academic articles – to demonstrate the importance of disentangling fact and opinion in academia.

As you can see in the screenshot below, Gale OneFile is found in the “General Research” section of the Gale Reference Complete interface. Gale OneFile has two subsections; Gale General OneFile , which is more vocational in its content, and Gale Academic OneFile , which mostly consists of peer-reviewed journals of a more scholarly nature.

The Difference Between Fact and Opinion

Firstly, it is important to distinguish the difference between fact and opinion, as the line between the two can sometimes become blurred, particularly in academic articles. A typical reading of the term “fact” is something which is known to be true, and thus cannot be contested. In contrast, “opinion” is used to describe someone’s response to an event or action and so is frequently influenced by personal bias. Found in Gale Reference Complete , the articles in Gale OneFile range from those which are heavily factual, to those which are shaped by opinion.

How to Recognise Opinion in Academic Articles

One indicator of opinion in articles is anecdotal evidence which offers up a personalised viewpoint to the reader. Mary Harrington’s recent article in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life demonstrates this, as she discusses her relationship with feminism by drawing upon her own experiences. However, this is not to say that the article consists solely of opinion, and indeed fact can be found in her discussion of the choices modern American women are making with regards to female work and reproduction. From this, we can see that articles often feature both fact and opinion side by side, and it is the job of the reader to differentiate between the two.

Another way opinion can be recognised is through the process of fact checking. Sometimes students take the information presented to us in academic articles at face value, based on the assumption that scholars are well-informed experts and “must be telling the truth”. Assuming that academia is always factual however, is problematic; close reading often shows that what initially seem like facts may be open to debate or is missing crucial information. Opinion has a huge bearing on the writing of both history and current affairs, with academics commonly taking different lines of argument on the same topic.

Sometimes, the title of the article itself can indicate its own bias, an example being this article on gender equality, which states in the title that it provides “a Christian perspective”. There are often clues to the nature of potential bias in the title of an article. You can also become aware of potential bias by learning more about an author’s political and moral stance.

Moreover, whilst authors of academic articles may include clear and unarguable “facts,” they are often selective with which facts they choose to include, only including those which support their argument. This poses problems for the reader in that other information may be omitted, demonstrating why it is important to draw information from many articles of different standpoints when carrying out your research.

The Illusion of Objectivity

Whilst we can see that that articles often take a certain viewpoint, it is undeniable that they do also present facts which can be useful. And different authors may be more or less subjective or objective.  Sometimes historical articles such as this one from History Today on women’s rights are more heavily informed by fact and led by objectivity. Here, the biographical detail about Emmeline Pankhurst is factual, serving to educate the reader on her life and significance. Students must always remember, however, to question the level of historical accuracy, as some historians are carefully deliberate in their use of fact. And whether anyone can ever write in an entirely unbiased, objective way is itself up for debate! Some details, perhaps biographical details that are commonly accepted, are easily identifiable as fact. But other details may be more nuanced – the extent to which information is factual is not always easy to identify, and so must be considered in relation to other secondary articles.

The value of opinion

It may be your first thought that the end-goal when studying History is to “get to the facts” – that students want to differentiate opinion from fact to “find the truth”, but opinion is the driving force behind historical debate and the study of Humanities subject more generally. Indeed, the discipline of History is built as much on opinion as on fact (some would argue more!). It is only via debating presenting new opinions and arguments that the discipline continues to progress and evolve.

Using Articles in Practice

As I mentioned at the start of this blog post, it is important to always read critically, and this also applies when reading articles in Gale OneFile . This is one way that the highlighting tool provided on the Gale platform can come in handy, as it gives students the opportunity to break the text down into more manageable chunks of information, aiding analysis. This tool can be seen in use in the screenshot below, showing a different article about Emmeline Pankhurst, where I have highlighted fact in yellow, and opinion in green. We can see here that opinion is just as important as fact, with both helping to shape the nature of academic discussion.

Further to this, we know that reputable sourcing is essential to the writing of a good essay, meaning that reading with an awareness of fact and opinion is also vital as it helps students decide which sources to use in the first place.

To conclude, fact and opinion both contribute to informing the line of argument presented in academic articles, and both are useful to your own essays, but it is vital to distinguish between them to ensure you use information correctly and with contextual awareness. As students, we are expected to be “switched on” to the ways in which articles can have bias. This can sometimes be difficult, but techniques such as cross-referencing and highlighting as you read can ensure you’re thinking critically about an article. This is hugely helpful when distinguishing between fact and opinion and, in turn, developing strong arguments of your own.

If you enjoyed reading about disentangling fact and opinion in Gale OneFile , you may like:

• Exploring the History of “Fake News”
• Why Feminism Is Still Very Much Necessary
• and Exploring Gale Reference Complete .

Blog post cover image citation: Image by Agence Olloweb on Unsplash.com https://unsplash.com/photos/d9ILr-dbEdg

About the Author

Rhiannon is currently a finalist at Durham University, studying for a BA in English Literature and History. Gale Resources have been invaluable to her time as a student, and she is keen to share the benefits of digital archives with others. After graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in either publishing or communications, as well as reading as many books as possible. You can find her on LinkedIn and Twitter .

Fact vs. Opinion

The ability to distinguish between fact and opinion is a vital skill in this day and age. Here are some ways to tell the differences between them! 

Facts are statements that can be verified.  They can be proven true or false. Statements of fact are objective; they contain information but do not tell what the writer thinks or believes about the topic.

You can ask yourself these questions to assess if something is a fact. If the answer is yes, it’s a fact!

• Can the statement be proved or demonstrated to be true?
• Can the statement be observed in practice or operation?  Can you see it happen?
• Can the statement be verified by witnesses, manuscripts, or documents?

My car payment is $250 a month.

President Millard Fillmore was America’s 13th president.

Opinions are statements that express a writer’s feelings, attitudes, or beliefs.  They are neither true nor false. They are one person’s view about a topic or issue.

Types of Opinions

• Positions on controversial issues
• Predictions about things in the future
• Evaluations of people, places, and things

Words to Identify Opinions

• Biased Words (bad, worse, worst, good, better, best, worthwhile, worthless, etc.)
• Qualifiers ( all, always, likely, never, might, seem, possibly, probably, should, etc.)

My car payments are too expensive.

President Millard Fillmore had the best policies of all the presidents.

Informed Opinions

The opinions of experts are known as informed opinions.  As experts in their field, they may make observations and offer comments that are not strictly factual.  Instead, they are based on years of study, research, and experience.

Questions to Identify Informed Speakers

• Does the speaker have a current and relevant background to the topic under discussion?
• Is the speaker generally respected within the field?
• Does the speaker carefully signal, via judgment words, to identify when they are presenting opinions vs. facts?

Chimps are in massive danger of extinction from dwindling habitats.

(Jane Goodall, primate expert and ethologist)

If you want to practice the concepts explained here, go to our Facts vs. Opinions Practice page!

Kaylan|2019

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

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III. Rhetorical Situation

3.10 Facts and Opinions

Kathryn Crowther; Lauren Curtright; Nancy Gilbert; Barbara Hall; Tracienne Ravita; and Kirk Swenson

Facts are statements that can be definitely proven using objective data. The statement that is a fact is absolutely valid. In other words, the statement can be pronounced as true or false. For example, 2 + 2 = 4. This expression identifies a true statement, or a fact, because it can be proved with objective data.

Opinions are personal views, or judgments. An opinion is what an individual believes about a particular subject. However, an opinion in argumentation must have legitimate backing; adequate evidence and credibility should support the opinion. Consider the credibility of expert opinions. Experts in a given field have the knowledge and credentials to make their opinion meaningful to a larger audience; this credibility is sometimes called “ethos” and is one way that we make our arguments persuasive. For example, you seek the opinion of your dentist when it comes to the health of your gums, and you seek the opinion of your mechanic when it comes to the maintenance of your car. Both have knowledge and credentials in those respective fields, which is why their opinions matter to you. But the authority of your dentist may be greatly diminished should they offer an opinion about your car, and vice versa. In writing, you want to strike a balance between credible facts and authoritative opinions. Relying on one or the other will likely lose more of your audience than it gains.

This section contains material from:

Crowther, Kathryn, Lauren Curtright, Nancy Gilbert, Barbara Hall, Tracienne Ravita, and Kirk Swenson. Successful College Composition . 2nd edition. Book 8. Georgia: English Open Textbooks, 2016. http://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/8 . Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

Impartiality or fairness; dispassionate or detached. Also refers to the goal, aim, or intention that someone or a group of people hope to achieve.

3.10 Facts and Opinions Copyright © 2022 by Kathryn Crowther; Lauren Curtright; Nancy Gilbert; Barbara Hall; Tracienne Ravita; and Kirk Swenson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 3 strong argumentative essay examples, analyzed.

General Education

Need to defend your opinion on an issue? Argumentative essays are one of the most popular types of essays you’ll write in school. They combine persuasive arguments with fact-based research, and, when done well, can be powerful tools for making someone agree with your point of view. If you’re struggling to write an argumentative essay or just want to learn more about them, seeing examples can be a big help.

After giving an overview of this type of essay, we provide three argumentative essay examples. After each essay, we explain in-depth how the essay was structured, what worked, and where the essay could be improved. We end with tips for making your own argumentative essay as strong as possible.

What Is an Argumentative Essay?

An argumentative essay is an essay that uses evidence and facts to support the claim it’s making. Its purpose is to persuade the reader to agree with the argument being made.

A good argumentative essay will use facts and evidence to support the argument, rather than just the author’s thoughts and opinions. For example, say you wanted to write an argumentative essay stating that Charleston, SC is a great destination for families. You couldn’t just say that it’s a great place because you took your family there and enjoyed it. For it to be an argumentative essay, you need to have facts and data to support your argument, such as the number of child-friendly attractions in Charleston, special deals you can get with kids, and surveys of people who visited Charleston as a family and enjoyed it. The first argument is based entirely on feelings, whereas the second is based on evidence that can be proven.

The standard five paragraph format is common, but not required, for argumentative essays. These essays typically follow one of two formats: the Toulmin model or the Rogerian model.

• The Toulmin model is the most common. It begins with an introduction, follows with a thesis/claim, and gives data and evidence to support that claim. This style of essay also includes rebuttals of counterarguments.
• The Rogerian model analyzes two sides of an argument and reaches a conclusion after weighing the strengths and weaknesses of each.

3 Good Argumentative Essay Examples + Analysis

Below are three examples of argumentative essays, written by yours truly in my school days, as well as analysis of what each did well and where it could be improved.

Argumentative Essay Example 1

Proponents of this idea state that it will save local cities and towns money because libraries are expensive to maintain. They also believe it will encourage more people to read because they won’t have to travel to a library to get a book; they can simply click on what they want to read and read it from wherever they are. They could also access more materials because libraries won’t have to buy physical copies of books; they can simply rent out as many digital copies as they need.

However, it would be a serious mistake to replace libraries with tablets. First, digital books and resources are associated with less learning and more problems than print resources. A study done on tablet vs book reading found that people read 20-30% slower on tablets, retain 20% less information, and understand 10% less of what they read compared to people who read the same information in print. Additionally, staring too long at a screen has been shown to cause numerous health problems, including blurred vision, dizziness, dry eyes, headaches, and eye strain, at much higher instances than reading print does. People who use tablets and mobile devices excessively also have a higher incidence of more serious health issues such as fibromyalgia, shoulder and back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and muscle strain. I know that whenever I read from my e-reader for too long, my eyes begin to feel tired and my neck hurts. We should not add to these problems by giving people, especially young people, more reasons to look at screens.

Second, it is incredibly narrow-minded to assume that the only service libraries offer is book lending. Libraries have a multitude of benefits, and many are only available if the library has a physical location. Some of these benefits include acting as a quiet study space, giving people a way to converse with their neighbors, holding classes on a variety of topics, providing jobs, answering patron questions, and keeping the community connected. One neighborhood found that, after a local library instituted community events such as play times for toddlers and parents, job fairs for teenagers, and meeting spaces for senior citizens, over a third of residents reported feeling more connected to their community. Similarly, a Pew survey conducted in 2015 found that nearly two-thirds of American adults feel that closing their local library would have a major impact on their community. People see libraries as a way to connect with others and get their questions answered, benefits tablets can’t offer nearly as well or as easily.

While replacing libraries with tablets may seem like a simple solution, it would encourage people to spend even more time looking at digital screens, despite the myriad issues surrounding them. It would also end access to many of the benefits of libraries that people have come to rely on. In many areas, libraries are such an important part of the community network that they could never be replaced by a simple object.

The author begins by giving an overview of the counter-argument, then the thesis appears as the first sentence in the third paragraph. The essay then spends the rest of the paper dismantling the counter argument and showing why readers should believe the other side.

What this essay does well:

• Although it’s a bit unusual to have the thesis appear fairly far into the essay, it works because, once the thesis is stated, the rest of the essay focuses on supporting it since the counter-argument has already been discussed earlier in the paper.
• This essay includes numerous facts and cites studies to support its case. By having specific data to rely on, the author’s argument is stronger and readers will be more inclined to agree with it.
• For every argument the other side makes, the author makes sure to refute it and follow up with why her opinion is the stronger one. In order to make a strong argument, it’s important to dismantle the other side, which this essay does this by making the author's view appear stronger.
• This is a shorter paper, and if it needed to be expanded to meet length requirements, it could include more examples and go more into depth with them, such as by explaining specific cases where people benefited from local libraries.
• Additionally, while the paper uses lots of data, the author also mentions their own experience with using tablets. This should be removed since argumentative essays focus on facts and data to support an argument, not the author’s own opinion or experiences. Replacing that with more data on health issues associated with screen time would strengthen the essay.
• Some of the points made aren't completely accurate , particularly the one about digital books being cheaper. It actually often costs a library more money to rent out numerous digital copies of a book compared to buying a single physical copy. Make sure in your own essay you thoroughly research each of the points and rebuttals you make, otherwise you'll look like you don't know the issue that well.

Argumentative Essay Example 2

There are multiple drugs available to treat malaria, and many of them work well and save lives, but malaria eradication programs that focus too much on them and not enough on prevention haven’t seen long-term success in Sub-Saharan Africa. A major program to combat malaria was WHO’s Global Malaria Eradication Programme. Started in 1955, it had a goal of eliminating malaria in Africa within the next ten years. Based upon previously successful programs in Brazil and the United States, the program focused mainly on vector control. This included widely distributing chloroquine and spraying large amounts of DDT. More than one billion dollars was spent trying to abolish malaria. However, the program suffered from many problems and in 1969, WHO was forced to admit that the program had not succeeded in eradicating malaria. The number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa who contracted malaria as well as the number of malaria deaths had actually increased over 10% during the time the program was active.

One of the major reasons for the failure of the project was that it set uniform strategies and policies. By failing to consider variations between governments, geography, and infrastructure, the program was not nearly as successful as it could have been. Sub-Saharan Africa has neither the money nor the infrastructure to support such an elaborate program, and it couldn’t be run the way it was meant to. Most African countries don't have the resources to send all their people to doctors and get shots, nor can they afford to clear wetlands or other malaria prone areas. The continent’s spending per person for eradicating malaria was just a quarter of what Brazil spent. Sub-Saharan Africa simply can’t rely on a plan that requires more money, infrastructure, and expertise than they have to spare.

Additionally, the widespread use of chloroquine has created drug resistant parasites which are now plaguing Sub-Saharan Africa. Because chloroquine was used widely but inconsistently, mosquitoes developed resistance, and chloroquine is now nearly completely ineffective in Sub-Saharan Africa, with over 95% of mosquitoes resistant to it. As a result, newer, more expensive drugs need to be used to prevent and treat malaria, which further drives up the cost of malaria treatment for a region that can ill afford it.

Instead of developing plans to treat malaria after the infection has incurred, programs should focus on preventing infection from occurring in the first place. Not only is this plan cheaper and more effective, reducing the number of people who contract malaria also reduces loss of work/school days which can further bring down the productivity of the region.

One of the cheapest and most effective ways of preventing malaria is to implement insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs).  These nets provide a protective barrier around the person or people using them. While untreated bed nets are still helpful, those treated with insecticides are much more useful because they stop mosquitoes from biting people through the nets, and they help reduce mosquito populations in a community, thus helping people who don’t even own bed nets.  Bed nets are also very effective because most mosquito bites occur while the person is sleeping, so bed nets would be able to drastically reduce the number of transmissions during the night. In fact, transmission of malaria can be reduced by as much as 90% in areas where the use of ITNs is widespread. Because money is so scarce in Sub-Saharan Africa, the low cost is a great benefit and a major reason why the program is so successful. Bed nets cost roughly 2 USD to make, last several years, and can protect two adults. Studies have shown that, for every 100-1000 more nets are being used, one less child dies of malaria. With an estimated 300 million people in Africa not being protected by mosquito nets, there’s the potential to save three million lives by spending just a few dollars per person.

Reducing the number of people who contract malaria would also reduce poverty levels in Africa significantly, thus improving other aspects of society like education levels and the economy. Vector control is more effective than treatment strategies because it means fewer people are getting sick. When fewer people get sick, the working population is stronger as a whole because people are not put out of work from malaria, nor are they caring for sick relatives. Malaria-afflicted families can typically only harvest 40% of the crops that healthy families can harvest. Additionally, a family with members who have malaria spends roughly a quarter of its income treatment, not including the loss of work they also must deal with due to the illness. It’s estimated that malaria costs Africa 12 billion USD in lost income every year. A strong working population creates a stronger economy, which Sub-Saharan Africa is in desperate need of.  

This essay begins with an introduction, which ends with the thesis (that malaria eradication plans in Sub-Saharan Africa should focus on prevention rather than treatment). The first part of the essay lays out why the counter argument (treatment rather than prevention) is not as effective, and the second part of the essay focuses on why prevention of malaria is the better path to take.

• The thesis appears early, is stated clearly, and is supported throughout the rest of the essay. This makes the argument clear for readers to understand and follow throughout the essay.
• There’s lots of solid research in this essay, including specific programs that were conducted and how successful they were, as well as specific data mentioned throughout. This evidence helps strengthen the author’s argument.
• The author makes a case for using expanding bed net use over waiting until malaria occurs and beginning treatment, but not much of a plan is given for how the bed nets would be distributed or how to ensure they’re being used properly. By going more into detail of what she believes should be done, the author would be making a stronger argument.
• The introduction of the essay does a good job of laying out the seriousness of the problem, but the conclusion is short and abrupt. Expanding it into its own paragraph would give the author a final way to convince readers of her side of the argument.

Argumentative Essay Example 3

There are many ways payments could work. They could be in the form of a free-market approach, where athletes are able to earn whatever the market is willing to pay them, it could be a set amount of money per athlete, or student athletes could earn income from endorsements, autographs, and control of their likeness, similar to the way top Olympians earn money.

Proponents of the idea believe that, because college athletes are the ones who are training, participating in games, and bringing in audiences, they should receive some sort of compensation for their work. If there were no college athletes, the NCAA wouldn’t exist, college coaches wouldn’t receive there (sometimes very high) salaries, and brands like Nike couldn’t profit from college sports. In fact, the NCAA brings in roughly $1 billion in revenue a year, but college athletes don’t receive any of that money in the form of a paycheck. Additionally, people who believe college athletes should be paid state that paying college athletes will actually encourage them to remain in college longer and not turn pro as quickly, either by giving them a way to begin earning money in college or requiring them to sign a contract stating they’ll stay at the university for a certain number of years while making an agreed-upon salary.  

Supporters of this idea point to Zion Williamson, the Duke basketball superstar, who, during his freshman year, sustained a serious knee injury. Many argued that, even if he enjoyed playing for Duke, it wasn’t worth risking another injury and ending his professional career before it even began for a program that wasn’t paying him. Williamson seems to have agreed with them and declared his eligibility for the NCAA draft later that year. If he was being paid, he may have stayed at Duke longer. In fact, roughly a third of student athletes surveyed stated that receiving a salary while in college would make them “strongly consider” remaining collegiate athletes longer before turning pro.

Paying athletes could also stop the recruitment scandals that have plagued the NCAA. In 2018, the NCAA stripped the University of Louisville's men's basketball team of its 2013 national championship title because it was discovered coaches were using sex workers to entice recruits to join the team. There have been dozens of other recruitment scandals where college athletes and recruits have been bribed with anything from having their grades changed, to getting free cars, to being straight out bribed. By paying college athletes and putting their salaries out in the open, the NCAA could end the illegal and underhanded ways some schools and coaches try to entice athletes to join.

People who argue against the idea of paying college athletes believe the practice could be disastrous for college sports. By paying athletes, they argue, they’d turn college sports into a bidding war, where only the richest schools could afford top athletes, and the majority of schools would be shut out from developing a talented team (though some argue this already happens because the best players often go to the most established college sports programs, who typically pay their coaches millions of dollars per year). It could also ruin the tight camaraderie of many college teams if players become jealous that certain teammates are making more money than they are.

They also argue that paying college athletes actually means only a small fraction would make significant money. Out of the 350 Division I athletic departments, fewer than a dozen earn any money. Nearly all the money the NCAA makes comes from men’s football and basketball, so paying college athletes would make a small group of men--who likely will be signed to pro teams and begin making millions immediately out of college--rich at the expense of other players.

Those against paying college athletes also believe that the athletes are receiving enough benefits already. The top athletes already receive scholarships that are worth tens of thousands per year, they receive free food/housing/textbooks, have access to top medical care if they are injured, receive top coaching, get travel perks and free gear, and can use their time in college as a way to capture the attention of professional recruiters. No other college students receive anywhere near as much from their schools.

People on this side also point out that, while the NCAA brings in a massive amount of money each year, it is still a non-profit organization. How? Because over 95% of those profits are redistributed to its members’ institutions in the form of scholarships, grants, conferences, support for Division II and Division III teams, and educational programs. Taking away a significant part of that revenue would hurt smaller programs that rely on that money to keep running.

While both sides have good points, it’s clear that the negatives of paying college athletes far outweigh the positives. College athletes spend a significant amount of time and energy playing for their school, but they are compensated for it by the scholarships and perks they receive. Adding a salary to that would result in a college athletic system where only a small handful of athletes (those likely to become millionaires in the professional leagues) are paid by a handful of schools who enter bidding wars to recruit them, while the majority of student athletics and college athletic programs suffer or even shut down for lack of money. Continuing to offer the current level of benefits to student athletes makes it possible for as many people to benefit from and enjoy college sports as possible.

This argumentative essay follows the Rogerian model. It discusses each side, first laying out multiple reasons people believe student athletes should be paid, then discussing reasons why the athletes shouldn’t be paid. It ends by stating that college athletes shouldn’t be paid by arguing that paying them would destroy college athletics programs and cause them to have many of the issues professional sports leagues have.

• Both sides of the argument are well developed, with multiple reasons why people agree with each side. It allows readers to get a full view of the argument and its nuances.
• Certain statements on both sides are directly rebuffed in order to show where the strengths and weaknesses of each side lie and give a more complete and sophisticated look at the argument.
• Using the Rogerian model can be tricky because oftentimes you don’t explicitly state your argument until the end of the paper. Here, the thesis doesn’t appear until the first sentence of the final paragraph. That doesn’t give readers a lot of time to be convinced that your argument is the right one, compared to a paper where the thesis is stated in the beginning and then supported throughout the paper. This paper could be strengthened if the final paragraph was expanded to more fully explain why the author supports the view, or if the paper had made it clearer that paying athletes was the weaker argument throughout.

3 Tips for Writing a Good Argumentative Essay

Now that you’ve seen examples of what good argumentative essay samples look like, follow these three tips when crafting your own essay.

#1: Make Your Thesis Crystal Clear

The thesis is the key to your argumentative essay; if it isn’t clear or readers can’t find it easily, your entire essay will be weak as a result. Always make sure that your thesis statement is easy to find. The typical spot for it is the final sentence of the introduction paragraph, but if it doesn’t fit in that spot for your essay, try to at least put it as the first or last sentence of a different paragraph so it stands out more.

Also make sure that your thesis makes clear what side of the argument you’re on. After you’ve written it, it’s a great idea to show your thesis to a couple different people--classmates are great for this. Just by reading your thesis they should be able to understand what point you’ll be trying to make with the rest of your essay.

#2: Show Why the Other Side Is Weak

When writing your essay, you may be tempted to ignore the other side of the argument and just focus on your side, but don’t do this. The best argumentative essays really tear apart the other side to show why readers shouldn’t believe it. Before you begin writing your essay, research what the other side believes, and what their strongest points are. Then, in your essay, be sure to mention each of these and use evidence to explain why they’re incorrect/weak arguments. That’ll make your essay much more effective than if you only focused on your side of the argument.

#3: Use Evidence to Support Your Side

Remember, an essay can’t be an argumentative essay if it doesn’t support its argument with evidence. For every point you make, make sure you have facts to back it up. Some examples are previous studies done on the topic, surveys of large groups of people, data points, etc. There should be lots of numbers in your argumentative essay that support your side of the argument. This will make your essay much stronger compared to only relying on your own opinions to support your argument.

Summary: Argumentative Essay Sample

Argumentative essays are persuasive essays that use facts and evidence to support their side of the argument. Most argumentative essays follow either the Toulmin model or the Rogerian model. By reading good argumentative essay examples, you can learn how to develop your essay and provide enough support to make readers agree with your opinion. When writing your essay, remember to always make your thesis clear, show where the other side is weak, and back up your opinion with data and evidence.

What's Next?

Do you need to write an argumentative essay as well? Check out our guide on the best argumentative essay topics for ideas!

You'll probably also need to write research papers for school. We've got you covered with 113 potential topics for research papers.

Your college admissions essay may end up being one of the most important essays you write. Follow our step-by-step guide on writing a personal statement to have an essay that'll impress colleges.

Christine graduated from Michigan State University with degrees in Environmental Biology and Geography and received her Master's from Duke University. In high school she scored in the 99th percentile on the SAT and was named a National Merit Finalist. She has taught English and biology in several countries.

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Introduction

Background on the Course

CO300 as a University Core Course

Short Description of the Course

Course Objectives

General Overview

Alternative Approaches and Assignments

(Possible) Differences between COCC150 and CO300

What CO300 Students Are Like

And You Thought...

Beginning with Critical Reading

Opportunities for Innovation

Portfolio Grading as an Option

Teaching in the computer classroom

Finally. . .

Classroom materials

Audience awareness and rhetorical contexts

Critical thinking and reading

Focusing and narrowing topics

Mid-course, group, and supplemental evaluations

More detailed explanation of Rogerian argument and Toulmin analysis

Policy statements and syllabi

Portfolio explanations, checklists, and postscripts

Presenting evidence and organizing arguments/counter-arguments

Research and documentation

Writing assignment sheets

Assignments for portfolio 1

Assignments for portfolio 2

Assignments for portfolio 3

Workshopping and workshop sheets

On workshopping generally

Workshop sheets for portfolio 1

Workshop sheets for portfolio 2

Workshop sheets for portfolio 3

Workshop sheets for general purposes

Sample materials grouped by instructor

Distinguishing Fact, Opinion, Belief, and Prejudice

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Digital Media Literacy  - The Blur Between Facts and Opinions in the Media

Digital media literacy  -, the blur between facts and opinions in the media, digital media literacy the blur between facts and opinions in the media.

Digital Media Literacy: The Blur Between Facts and Opinions in the Media

Lesson 11: the blur between facts and opinions in the media.

/en/digital-media-literacy/recognizing-persuasive-language/content/

The blur between facts and opinions in the media

Understanding the news used to be simpler. Newspapers, radio, and TV usually made a clear distinction between objective fact that can be proven, and opinion crafted by their writers and producers. They used terms like editorial, op-ed, and commentary to distinguish opinionated content from more objective reporting.

But over the years, the Internet has helped blur the line between fact and opinion in the media. Now there are virtually limitless sources out there creating content online, and terms like editorial and op-ed have all but faded away. There’s also no vetting process or authority that requires anyone to mention if their online content is fact or opinion.

Check out this video to learn more about facts and opinions in the media.

Opinions: The ups and downs

Just to be clear, opinions are not inherently bad when it comes to reporting the news. They can provide new context or a different perspective. Opinions have also played an influential part in history, such as when news anchor Walter Cronkite shared his personal views on the Vietnam War in 1968. Of course, perspectives like that were typically designated as opinion.

But these days, we seem to have lost some of our ability to detect opinion-based material if it isn’t properly labelled. Unfortunately, there are content creators out there who are happy to take advantage of that. They mix opinions in with a few facts to make their perspective more credible. This helps fire up your emotions and keep you engaged with their content.

Identifying facts and opinions

At this point, you may be thinking that you could tell the difference between fact and opinion. Well, it may be harder than it looks . A Pew Research study created five factual statements and five opinion statements, and then asked people to identify which was which. Out of 5,000 adults, only 35% correctly identified all five opinion statements, while only 26% identified all five factual statements. 

That means the vast majority either saw facts as opinions, or accepted opinions as fact . Misinterpretations like these could easily lead to confusion and difficulty in discussing the news with others. The study also found that people were more likely to view an opinion as fact if that opinion matched their existing beliefs.

Spotting the difference

The blur between fact and opinion likely won’t get better anytime soon , so it’s up to you to spot the difference. For instance, watch out for statements that may seem factual, but are actually opinions that favor a certain perspective. And while you may find terms like editorial every now and then, don’t rely on them to help you distinguish fact from opinion. Finally, avoid news sources that care more about stoking your anger and fears over reporting objective news. 

Though it may be difficult, recognizing fact and opinion in the media can make a tremendous impact on how you see the world.

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An essay boils down to arguments, and arguments boil down to the facts. Although defining a fact vs. an opinion ought to be cut and dry, that is far from the case. Simple explanations of facts and opinions will not provide the proper context to truly distinguish them, which is why we will explore “opinions” and “facts” in-depth: how they are different, how they are similar, and how they evolve.

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Meaning of Opinion and Fact

First we will discuss the opinion , then the fact .

Opinions are what you should avoid in your essay, and something you should never use as evidence to support your thesis.

Opinion is a personal conjecture.

Something is an opinion if it:

Does not require verification:

I like pizza.

Has failed to acquire verification:

The earth is flat.

Or cannot acquire verification:

Humans will evolve into beings of pure energy.

Fact is not “the truth.” Fact is “what is found” during the search for the truth.

Fact is what has continuously withstood the test of hypotheses.

Green is the color between yellow and cyan on the visible spectrum of light.

Humans have been to space and landed on the moon.

Many plants use sunlight to create nutrients from carbon dioxide and water.

Fact can either be arrived at logically (through the argumentation of a hypothesis) or arrived at by experience (through the experimentation of a hypothesis).

Potential Facts

Potential facts are in the process of being proven or disproven. Take for example the advanced study of physics. It would be incorrect to describe the study of quantum mechanics as a study of “opinions,” simply because the topics contained in the field are not fully verified. Rather, the topics regard “potential facts” or "theoretical ideas" that are in the pipeline of research.

There is some overlap between “opinions that have failed to acquire verification” and “potential facts,” but the good news is that neither should be used in an essay as logical support. Potential facts might be referenced as a possible avenue for advancement, oftentimes appropriately in the conclusion of an essay, but “potential facts” should not occupy body paragraphs as a replacement for facts.

Potential facts are often worked upon in theoretical and philosophical fields, and can be identified by their presence near the top of academic study. On the other hand, “opinions that have failed to acquire verification” can be identified by their outsized presence on social media and by their propagation by tabloids, influencers, and celebrities.

Similarities Between Opinion and Fact

There are some fundamental similarities between opinions and facts, but don’t use these things to help you decide whether something is opinion or fact.

Opinions and Facts are Both Conclusions

Someone can present a fact with their whole chest, and someone can present an opinion with their whole chest. Both are conclusive, which can make both of them appear like objective facts. Just because something is said like it is a fact, however, does not mean that it is a fact.

Conspiracy theorists: Fundamentally, conspiracy theorists distrust everything, including their own senses, fearing that whatever they haven’t sensed isn't actually true. To avoid believing in conspiracies, ground yourself in some form of logical belief. Find a conclusion that you trust. While it is beneficial to be wary of taking anything at face value, it is only beneficial if you also have a logical method to verify things.

In your essays, you will constantly provide evidence that you did not personally verify (e.g., studies that you weren’t present for), or draw conclusions about things you did not personally create (e.g. literature that you did not write). This is perfectly fine.

Note that the opposite is also true. Just because something is said in a tentative or unoptimized manner, it does not mean that it is logically flawed and thus an opinion. Do not rely on how something is presented. Instead, pay attention to the content. Right things can be said in a small voice.

Opinions and Facts Both Evolve

This year, pizza might be your favorite food. Next year, it might be brussels sprouts, who knows?

Likewise, what we regard as fact evolves as we learn more. However, opinion is not likely to become fact in this evolutionary process. Rather, potential facts will become facts in this evolutionary process.

The fact of opinion: Say you like pizza. It is then a fact that you like pizza. That is the fact of opinion. This is the only kind of “opinion” argument that is ever likely to appear in your essay. For instance, if you are arguing that the character of a book—let’s call this character Xuan—does not love their job despite repeatedly saying that they do, then you might use evidence from the book to support this claim about their opinion. Arguing the fact of opinion is something you will only do in literary analyses and the like, where the focus is upon the humanity of the topic and not its objectivity. Literature students thrive when exploring interpretations.

Differences Between Opinion and Fact

Opinion is not concerned with verification, while facts are. Ironically, because of this, stating an opinion is far more conclusive than stating a fact. This is why a scientist might struggle to quickly prove a fact while a conspiracy theorist or fear-monger will quickly “prove their point” using some form of faulty logic. Testing hypotheses is time-consuming. Making stuff up is quick.

Someone is not foolish because it takes them time to teach something or to learn something. Someone is foolish when they teach or take something to be fact because it is emotionally exciting.

Identifying Opinion vs. Fact with Examples

Let’s break down opinions and facts:

Identifying Opinions

Here is how you identify an opinion. Any of these are signs that something is an opinion.

Subjective Conclusions (Biased)

It is an opinion if it is subjective. In other words, if it contains a personal bias, then it is an opinion.

Apples are the best fruit.

Contested Conclusions (Verification Inconclusive)

It is an opinion if the verification is inconclusive. In other words, if a hypothesis has been repeatedly tested and the result consistently provides no answer, then to declare a conclusion is a matter of opinion.

Despite what studies show, which is that neither is significantly better than the other, medication X is probably still better than medication Y for those over the age of 65.

Moral Conclusions

Moral judgments should not be used as logical support. Instead of writing in terms of “right and wrong,” instead write in terms of cause and effect. For instance, don’t write about why pollution is wrong. Instead, write about how it is harmful to the planet.

Conclusions About the Unknown (Verification Impossible)

Something is unknown if it cannot be verified in any way at present, and is thus an opinion. Examples of this include: future events not observed by scientific rhythm (the moon’s orbit is not an opinion, for example); past events not observed, recorded, or logically deduced; and faith-based arguments.

Identifying Facts

Here is how you identify a fact. Any of these are signs that something is a fact.

Objective Conclusions (Without Bias)

Something is a fact if it is methodically arrived at without any bias. If the truth is what a researcher seeks, their conclusions will not be tainted with assumptions and personal opinions.

Quantifiable Conclusions (by Research)

Scientific measurements are hugely beneficial in research because they provide a baseline for validity. If a system of measurement is accurate, then something measured that way can be quantified. If something is quantified, that means that numbers can be assigned to it . Quantifiable data is used to draw conclusions based on what we know about that system of measurement.

After 10 hours, the solution had risen from -19 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Verifiable (by Multiple Accounts)

If something is clearly witnessed by multiple unbiased people, then it can be considered a fact. Note the words clearly, multiple, and unbiased. Something is clearly witnessed if it doesn’t happen under dubious conditions, such as someone seeing someone in pitch darkness. If the people are multiple , then more than one person saw it. If someone is unbiased , then they don’t have any preconceived ideas about what might have happened . To give an example of bias, if someone distrusts their neighbor, then that person might be more inclined to think their neighbor did something wrong before any evidence is provided.

Verification by multiple accounts is used all the time, not just in criminal investigations. People use this method of verification to verify all kinds of things that they do not personally witness. If you don’t attend a party, you can still verify that it happened by talking to those who did attend.

They didn’t televise it, but the football game was interrupted by a fan running onto the field. I wasn’t there, but my friends were. They saw it, and so did dozens of others who posted about it online.

Trusted Sources (and Common Knowledge)

When analyzing a passage or writing your own essay, you will frequently rely on trusted sources and common knowledge. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary is an example of a trusted source. “Most birds fly” is an example of common knowledge.

All of this said, just be sure everything is what it claims to be!

How to Avoid Misleading Facts

Do not be hoodwinked by faulty conclusions and sneaky sources. Here are some common ways that “facts” can be misleading.

Be Wary of Unverified Sources

Vague phrases like “studies show...” are often misleading because they don’t cite the studies. Even if something cites a study, don’t trust it just because it’s a study. Some studies are biased and bogus. Consider: what is the actual source of this evidence?

Be Wary of Unread Context

If you haven’t read the study or book that someone cites, you should probably take a glance at it. They could be using it out of context . This goes for videos or photos as well, which are particularly hazardous when used out of context , because photos and videos are often considered to be positive proof. They can be positive proof, but only when correctly attributed, contextualized, and verified. In the age of photo and video manipulation, videos and photos must be verified. "Deepfakes" now exist that can conjure real-seeming people and voices using a computer.

Be Wary of Generalization

If a study or idea is generalized, be wary of it. Don’t trust broad conclusions drawn from a single source or study. Don’t trust broad conclusions about a genre based on a single book or song. Don’t trust broad conclusions about a society, a philosophy, or a people based on one piece of evidence. Bottom line: huge conclusions require huge amounts of evidence. This type of logic should be avoided:

Because some are X, all are X.

Be Wary of Sets of Information

Here’s an example:

After tests, the AC unit was shown to be working within manufacturer parameters.

A phrase like this may or may not be helpful to an argument , even when it is verifiably true. For instance, this statement of fact does not support that this AC is energy efficient, or particularly effective at cooling down higher temperatures. Before you cite a set of information as evidence, you must be sure that the set of evidence contains what you think it does.

Rarely can huge sets of information be used to broadly support one contention. Break down reports, regulations, and even laws in order to use them as evidence. Do not cite the whole when only one part is relevant to your argument. For example, do not appeal to the United States Constitution as an ultimate authority in its own right. After all, at one point, Article 1 of the United States Constitution contained the three-fifths compromise, which helped to constitutionalize slavery. Obviously, even authoritative documents are not right all the time. This fallacy is called the argument from authority .

Be Wary of All Logical Fallacies

Logic is an extremely powerful tool that you can use to verify ideas all on your own. However, if you take a single misstep in your logic, your conclusion will not be correct. These missteps are called logical fallacies . An argument from authority is just a single fallacy among many. Others include circular reasoning and missing the point . Study logical fallacies and look out for them when analyzing something or when writing something yourself.

Opinion vs Fact - Key Takeaways

• Does not require verification
• Has failed to acquire verification
• Cannot acquire verification
• Fact is what has continuously withstood the test of hypotheses. It is not "the truth" but rather "what is found out" during the search for the truth. Facts can be arrived at logically or practically.
• Potential facts are in the process of being proven or disproven. They tend to exist in advanced and theoretical fields, and should not be used as evidence.
• Opinion is not concerned with verification, while facts are.
• Be sure to identify whether something is really a fact before citing it as evidence. Understand logical fallacies, and don't trust conclusions based on them.

Frequently Asked Questions about Opinion vs Fact

--> what's an example of an opinion, --> how do you identify if something is a fact or an opinion.

Verification. A fact is verified, while an opinion is not. If something is verified, then it is a fact. 

--> What is an example of a fact?

--> what is the main difference between opinion and fact, --> what is the meaning of facts and opinions.

Whether something is a fact or an opinion matters a great deal when trying to prove a point. If you are trying to prove something, it is meaningful to include facts as evidence, not opinions.

Test your knowledge with multiple choice flashcards

If something has failed to acquire verification, what is it?

Fact is what has continually withstood the test of _____.

Opinion is not concerned with _____, while facts are.

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What is an opinion?

Should you use an opinion to support your thesis?

"An opinion does not require verification."

True or false?

"Humans will evolve into beings of pure energy." Is this an opinion or a potential fact?

An opinion. It cannot be verified, whereas potential facts are in the process of verification.

Fact is not ____. Fact is what is found out during the search for the truth.

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The Fact/Opinion Distinction

John Corvino argues that the claim "That's just your opinion" is pernicious and should be consigned to the flames.

When debating ethics and other controversial topics, one frequently hears the claim “That’s just your opinion.” It is a pernicious claim, devoid of clear meaning, and it should be consigned to the flames – or so I shall argue here.

In calling something an opinion, one presumably wants to contrast it with something that is not an opinion, and the obvious candidate for the contrast class is “fact”. Philosophers might be tempted to draw this contrast by identifying facts as states of affairs – occurrences that are there in the world regardless of what anyone may think about them – and identifying opinions as beliefs (or some other mental state) about states of affairs. According to this approach, we can separate facts from opinions by using what Perry Weddle has called the “Whose?” test: It always makes sense to ask “Whose opinion is it?” but never “Whose fact is it?”

But this way of drawing the contrast merely pushes the problem back further. For among the beliefs that people have about the world, there are some that people tend to put in the “fact” column and some that they tend to put in the “opinion” column. That is, they contrast factual beliefs from opinions (opinion beliefs), and it is quite appropriate to ask “Whose belief?” in either case. The same goes for expressions of belief: We can talk about statements of fact vs. statements of opinion , or factual claims vs. opinion claims , and so forth, and all of these are in the mouths of subjects.

Suppose, then, we narrow our inquiry to statements, so that when we ask, “What is the difference between facts and opinions?” what we’re really asking is “What is the difference between statements of fact and statements of opinion ?”

This seems like it should be an easy question, but it actually tends to stump most people on the street. Mind you, they have no trouble in offering examples of either, or in categorising others’ examples. So for instance, given

they’ll say that the A statements are facts and the B statements are opinions. When asked to explain the principle of distinction between the two, however – the rule that tells us how to assign statements to one category or the other – they often get tongue-tied.

Some have tried to explain the distinction to me by arguing that facts are true . This answer is not at all helpful, since opinions are typically put forth as true, and some factual claims turn out to be false. For example, most people would say that it’s true that genocide is wrong, and there may or may not be beer in my refrigerator. The fact/opinion distinction varies independently of the true/false distinction.

Others say that factual statements are “concrete” rather than “abstract”, but that answer would render all mathematical statements non-factual, since mathematics involves abstract concepts (e.g. numbers). Neither does it help, at least at first glance, to say that facts are “objective” (rather than “subjective”), since at least some statements in the “opinion” column involve matters that would be true (or false) regardless of what any particular subject believes. For example, whether or not God created the earth is an objective matter, albeit a controversial and difficult-to-prove one. If it happened, it happened whether anyone believes it or not. Ditto if it didn’t happen. (I’ll say more about the subjective/objective distinction later on.)

Perhaps the last example suggests a better answer: the difference between facts and opinions is that factual statements are uncontroversial. But this answer doesn’t seem right either, since it would make it audience-relative whether something is a fact: for example, “the earth revolves around the sun” would be a fact for modern Europeans but not for medieval ones; “God created the earth” would be a fact for believers but not for sceptics; “The earth is flat” would be a fact for Flat-Earthers but not for the rest of us. How useful would the fact/opinion distinction be if any statement could count as either one, depending on who hears it?

If everyday observers are confused about the distinction, “experts” fare little better. Curious as to the standard explanation, I Googled “facts vs. opinions”. (This is not how to conduct serious philosophical research, but it can be a useful way of gauging common thoughts on a subject.) Here’s the first result I received, from a “Critical Thinking Across the Curriculum Project” website:

“Fact: statement of actuality or occurrence. A fact is based on direct evidence, actual experience, or observation.

“Opinion: statement of belief or feeling. It shows one’s feelings about a subject. Solid opinions, while based on facts, are someone’s views on a subject and not facts themselves.”

This way of drawing the distinction makes “The earth revolves around the sun” an opinion – or at least, not a fact – since no one directly observes it happening (not even astronauts!). It also jumbles together occurrences (what we earlier called “states of affairs”), statements about occurrences, and the evidence for those statements.

Perhaps more confusing is its labelling opinions as “statement(s) of belief.” As we’ve been using the terms, all statements express beliefs, and our task is to determine which of them express factual beliefs and which express opinions.

So I looked further. Here are the second and third results from my quick internet search, from an “Education Oasis” and “Enchanted Learning” website, respectively:

“A fact is a statement that can be proven true.”

“An opinion expresses someone’s belief, feeling, view, idea, or judgment about something or someone.”

“Facts are statements that can be shown to be true or can be proved, or something that really happened. You can look up facts in an encyclopedia or other reference, or see them for yourself. For example, it is a fact that broccoli is good for you (you can look this up in books about healthy diets).

“Opinions express how a person feels about something – opinions do not have to be based upon logical reasoning. For example, it is an opinion that broccoli tastes good (or bad).”

Both of these connect fact with provability. But in common parlance, “provability” seems audience-relative as well: While one person might find Anselm’s ontological argument to be a sufficient proof for God’s existence (thus rendering “God exists” a fact for that person ); others may not.

The Education Oasis site announces that “An opinion expresses someone’s belief ... about something.” So if I believe that there’s beer in my refrigerator, is that just an opinion? The Enchanted Learning site muddies the waters even further by claiming that you can look up facts in an encyclopaedia (always? but then were there no facts before books?), and by including an evaluative notion (“good for you”) among examples of facts.

If this is “Critical Thinking”, I’d hate to see what Sloppy Thinking looks like.

Let me offer a conjecture: the fact/opinion distinction is ambiguous, and in trying to explain it, people typically conflate it with other distinctions in the neighbourhood.

Let’s consider three of those other distinctions. Take, first, the familiar philosophical distinction between belief and reality . In common understanding, there’s a world (reality), and then there are our representations of that world (beliefs: sometimes true, sometimes not). I might believe that there’s beer in the refrigerator, whether or not there’s any there. I might believe that God created the earth, whether or not God did – indeed, whether or not God exists at all. Generally, we strive to make our beliefs as accurate as possible in representing reality, but that doesn’t remove the gap (some would say “gulf”) between the two.

The problem, obviously, is that attempts to bridge that gap always proceed via our own fallible cognitive capacities. Beliefs about reality are still beliefs, and some of them, despite our best efforts, turn out to be false. That’s true whether we’re talking about beliefs that usually show up in the “fact” column (“There’s beer in the refrigerator”) or in the “opinion” column (“God created the earth”). In other words, both facts and opinions can be either successful or unsuccessful in representing reality, and thus the fact/opinion distinction is not the same as the belief/reality distinction.

Second, consider the subjective/objective distinction. Something is subjective insofar as it is mind-dependent, objective insofar as it is mind-independent. Given this definition, all beliefs (qua beliefs) are subjective, because beliefs depend on minds. And since we’ve been treating both facts and opinions as statements of belief, facts and opinions are similarly subjective: In other words, we can always ask “Whose belief?” or “Whose statement?”

Of course, there are different kinds of beliefs and statements. Some are about objective matters, such as whether there is beer in the refrigerator. Others are about subjective matters, such as whether one would enjoy a Guinness more than a Corona. Perhaps the fact/opinion distinction tracks the distinction between statements with objective content (facts?) and those with subjective content (opinions?). But if so, we would need to revise what usually gets put in each column. In particular, the statement that “God created the earth” will need to move over to the “fact” column, since whether God created the earth is an objective matter – it happened (or not) independently of whether we believe it happened. The same is true for “God exists” – not an opinion, on this schema, but a factual claim (maybe true, maybe false).

It is also by no means obvious that “Genocide is wrong” should remain in the “opinion” column. While some philosophers hold that moral beliefs are subjective, many do not. Moreover, there is a strong commonsense intuition that genocide would be wrong whether anyone believes it’s wrong, suggesting that the claim is objective, not subjective. So while the subjective/objective distinction might be useful in explaining the fact/opinion distinction, adopting this approach would require us to revise our common thinking about facts and opinions. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since – as we have seen – our common thinking about facts and opinions appears rather confused.

Finally, consider the descriptive/normative distinction. Descriptive statements describe or represent the world; normative statements evaluate it. For example: the statement that thousands were killed in Darfur is descriptive; the statement that such killing was wrong is normative.

The descriptive/normative distinction is sometimes called the fact/value distinction, which might lead it to be confused with the fact/opinion distinction. But it’s controversial whether all normative claims are matters of opinion. Moreover, many of the standard “opinion” examples are not normative: consider “God exists” or “A Democrat will win the presidency in 2016”. If the fact/opinion distinction were identical to the fact/value distinction, then once again we would need to revise our common thinking about facts and opinions.

Having teased apart these various distinctions, and looking back over the several attempts to explain the difference between fact and opinion, we might propose the following definitions:

o A statement of fact is one that has objective content and is well-supported by the available evidence.

o A statement of opinion is one whose content is either subjective or else not well supported by the available evidence.

These definitions have several advantages. First, they capture some of the concerns that lead people to insist on the fact/opinion distinction in the first place – in particular, the concern that claims not be accepted without good evidence. Second, they explain why some objective matters – in particular, controversial matters such God’s existence or predictions about the future – get placed in the category of opinion, despite their objective content. And third, they avoid the sloppiness of some of the earlier proposals. That said, they are still somewhat revisionist: They do not fully capture everyday usage (since everyday usage is messy and confused), but instead serve to refine that usage.

Why worry about the fact/opinion distinction? One reason is that precise thinking is valuable for its own sake. But there’s another, more pragmatic reason. Despite its unclear meaning , the claim “That’s just your opinion” has a clear use : It is a conversation-stopper. It’s a way of diminishing a claim, reducing it to a mere matter of taste which lies beyond dispute. ( De gustibus non est disputandum : there’s no disputing taste.)

Indeed, the “opinion” label is used not only to belittle others’ stances, but also to deflate one’s own. In recognising that a personal belief differs sharply from that of other individuals and cultures, one may conclude, “I guess that’s just my opinion – no better than anyone else’s.” This conclusion may stem from an admirable humility. On the other hand, it can have pernicious effects: it leads to a kind of wishy-washiness, wherein one refrains from standing up for one’s convictions for fear of imposing “mere opinions”. Such reticence conflicts with common sense: surely some opinions are more thoughtful, more informed, more coherent, and more important than others.

This diminishment is especially troubling in moral debates. Moral debates are practical – they’re debates about what to do – and they concern our values : things that matter to us. Either we send troops to Syria or we don’t. Either we allow same-sex couples to marry or we don’t. Either we lie to our parents about what happened to the car or we don’t. Categorising these issues as “matters of opinion” doesn’t make them any less urgent or vital.

I therefore propose that we abandon the ambiguous fact/opinion distinction, and especially the dismissive retort “That’s just your opinion.” We should focus instead on whether people can offer good reasons for the claims they make – reasons that might compel us to share their views. That’s my opinion, anyway. If you think yours is better, don’t merely say so: Say why .

John Corvino is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wayne State University, the author of What's Wrong With Homosexuality? , and the co-author (with Maggie Gallagher) or Debating Same-Sex Marriage . Read more at www.johncorvino.com .

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• Key Differences

Know the Differences & Comparisons

Difference Between Fact and Opinion

In finer terms, a fact is a proven truth, whereas opinion is a personal view, that represents the outlook of an individual, which may or may not be based on the fact. In this article excerpt, an attempt is made to simplify the difference between fact and opinion, take a read.

Content: Fact Vs Opinion

Comparison chart, definition of fact.

The fact is something, that has actually taken place or known to have existed, which can be validated with pieces of evidence. They are strictly defined, and can be measured, observed and proven. It refers to something that makes statements true and used in connection with research and study.

A fact can be an event or information, based on real occurrences which can be tested through verifiability, i.e. they are supported by proofs, statistics, documentation, etc. Therefore, a fact is nothing but a verifiable truth or reality which are agreed upon by consensus of people.

Definition of Opinion

The term ‘opinion’ is defined as the personal view or judgment about a subject, that may or may not be substantiated by the facts or positive knowledge. In other words, an opinion is an inconclusive statement, used in subjective matters, which cannot be proved true or false. It is what a person thinks or feels about something or someone. Hence it is not a true but biased information.

Opinion is highly influenced by a person’s feelings, thoughts, perspective, desires, attitude, experiences, understanding, beliefs, values, etc., which cannot be tested by concrete evidence. Therefore, due to individual differences, every person’s opinion on a particular matter is also different.

Key Differences Between Fact and Opinion

The difference between fact and opinion on the following grounds:

• The fact is described as the statement that can be verified or proved to be true. Opinion is an expression of judgment or belief about something.
• Fact relies on observation or research while opinion is based on assumption.
• The fact is an objective reality whereas opinion is a subjective statement.
• Facts can be verified with the help of evidence or statistics. On the contrary, opinion is not supported by any evidence.
• Facts explain what actually happened. Unlike an opinion, that represents a perception about something.
• One important feature of the fact is that it is universal and does not differ from person to person. As against this, every human being has a different opinion on a particular subject and so, it varies from one person to another.
• Facts are shown with unbiased words, however, opinion is expressed with biased words.
• Facts can change anybody’s opinion, but vice versa is not possible.
• Facts are real information and so it cannot be challenged or debated, but if we talk about opinions, they can be debated.

Therefore, to know the reliability and utility of an information or statement, it is vital to understand the differences between fact and opinion, so as to evaluate things and draw conclusions. While reading comprehension, it is hard to identify, whether a given expression is a fact or an opinion, as they are quite commonly juxtaposed by the writers. Facts are always one step ahead of opinions as facts can be proved to be right or accurate, whereas opinion may also be right but they cannot be proved as true.

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Bounouh Mohammed says

May 13, 2018 at 2:10 pm

The information is clear and well explained.

MANIMAREN A/L MURUGAN says

November 6, 2020 at 8:35 am

Well explained

Jacob Lee says

September 5, 2019 at 12:48 am

This is EPIC.

September 1, 2020 at 8:47 pm

Yalan Sivalinggam says

November 3, 2020 at 8:06 am

information is very usefull

January 2, 2022 at 4:04 pm

Yes it is truly amazing

January 13, 2022 at 4:02 pm

This is the best…

Oncxerere Namibia says

April 15, 2022 at 5:17 pm

Wonderful and meaningful

georgia says

August 12, 2022 at 10:02 pm

This really explains the difference between fact and opinion very well.

Afrah pharouq says

March 27, 2023 at 9:27 pm

Theresa Thompson says

May 29, 2023 at 9:47 am

I like how facts and opinions are broken down and explained with great examples. thank you.

SAMINA AMANI says

October 6, 2023 at 1:59 pm

I love 😘 your help👍👍👌.

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How to Use Facts in Opinion Writing & Persuasive Writing

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Guide: Distinguish fact from opinion

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The difference between fact and opinion is not always easy to recognise in academic writing. Academic writing outside the pure sciences often includes opinion supported by argument to strengthen the claim being made. Sometimes factual data (e.g. statistics) are used in support of opinion but data of this kind may also be subject to different interpretations.

What is a fact?

A fact is something that can be verified and backed up with evidence, e.g. In 2005, Brazil and FC Barcelona star Ronaldinho was named FIFA World Footballer of The Year. We can verify these details by looking at FIFA records.

What is an opinion?

An opinion is based on a belief or view. It is not based on evidence that can be verified, e.g. Wayne Rooney is the best football player in the English Premier League. Are there players in the English Premier League who are better than Wayne Rooney?

Facts are often used in conjunction with research and study. The census (a survey of the population usually conducted by a government department) is a good example of when facts are used. These facts can be supported by information collected in the census, e.g. According to UK Government national statistics in 2004, approximately one in five people in the UK were aged under 16.

Opinions can be found in many types of writing such as a “Letter to the Editor” in a newspaper. A reader may write in with an opinion e.g. “24 hour pub licensing will ruin our community.” Another reader may write in and disagree, e.g. “24 hour licensing will stop yobbish behaviour by staggering closing hours.”

Mixing fact and opinion

Writers often mix fact and opinion. So it is not always easy to tell whether something is based on verifiable information or someone’s particular viewpoint. For this reason, it is important to read with a questioning mind. Just because someone says something is true – it doesn’t mean it is true? What do you think?

SOURCE: Open University 2011; BBC Skillswise 2011

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WATCH LIVE: Chris Hayes and team react to Day 2 of Michael Cohen’s testimony

Hope Hicks' testimony paired facts with emotion to connect the dots for the jury

When Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel in 2017 , many saw it as a healthy sign of adherence to the rule of law in this country — a sign that Donald Trump was not above the law. Fast-forward seven long years, and we now await a Supreme Court decision on the question of whether Trump , as president of the United States, could order the murder of a political adversary and get away with it. That and so much more suggest that that day in 2017 is long gone. We appear increasingly untethered from our first principles as a nation, and one can rightly wonder what has happened to the rule of law .

But this week, I have hope. The first Trump criminal case is taking place. Thanks to District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his crackerjack team of experienced attorneys, we have witnessed a criminal case unfold like clockwork, building a case based on Trump-world insiders, corroborated by hundreds of tapes, emails, texts, phone records, documents, tweets and financial records.

And this past week, we had Hope Hicks , a Trump loyalist who owes her career to Trump, take her obligation to the law seriously and testify to the damning admissions she said Trump made to her about the Stormy Daniels hush money payments. Hicks recounted for the jury how, after the Daniels story became public, Trump told her he was indeed aware of the payments by Michael Cohen to the porn star to keep her quiet. Trump told Hicks that Cohen had made the payments out of loyalty but without his knowledge — a story Hicks did not credit, given what she viewed as Cohen’s desire for credit and his general lack of charitableness (I had analogized him earlier in the week to a “dog with a pheasant in his mouth,” who would want to display his offering proudly to his master, with no incentive to keep his good deed to himself).

Here was Hicks, taking her oath with solemnity, filling an apparent hole in the DA’s case: that Trump knew about this payoff.

Hicks’ testimony thus confirmed that Trump did in fact know of the hush money payments. That Hicks broke down in tears after her testimony was icing on the cake for the DA — it made clear she took no joy in recounting this incriminating conversation.

Here was Hicks, taking her oath with solemnity, filling an apparent hole in the DA’s case: that Trump knew about this payoff (as David Pecker made clear , Trump knew about the payoff to Karen McDougal). That is key, because Trump thereafter reimbursed Cohen for the hush money payments, personally signing the reimbursement checks. Hicks’ testimony makes plain Trump did so knowing that they were not payments for legal fees. And for that reason, the jury need not decide whether Trump knew of the scheme at the time (as Hicks strongly intimated) or only learned of it later (as he claimed to Hicks), since in either scenario, Trump knew of the scheme prior to making the reimbursements.

Not that corroboration of Hicks’ testimony is needed, but it exists in a particularly damning form: Trump’s own admission in a civil case in California brought by Stormy Daniels. In that lawsuit, Trump admitted he reimbursed Michael Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels.  Trump’s admission — made with his co-defendant, Cohen — is here, and the California court recognized these statements as admissions. (Trump of course has pleaded not guilty and denied the affairs with McDougal and Daniels.)

One final but important observation of what we are witnessing in this New York courtroom: We are seeing a defendant ably represented. Whatever criticisms there have been of the caliber of Trump’s legal team in other matters , in this case — the most important Trump case to date — there is no question that the defense team is collectively experienced, smart and tenacious.

That is as it should be in our system of laws, but all too often is not for defendants without the power and financial resources of this defendant. These defense counsel are representing a defendant who is deeply unpopular with a vast percentage of the American public. Able representation in such circumstances is as important now as it was when John Adams represented British redcoats charged with murder in our country’s formative years.

How this trial will end — what the jury will find — of course remains to be determined. But what is occurring here in my hometown is something for which we should be grateful. I certainly am.

Andrew Weissmann is a legal analyst for MSNBC and a professor of practice with the New York University School of Law's Center on the Administration of Criminal Law. Previously, he was a lead prosecutor for Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s office and led the Justice Department’s Fraud Section. He co-hosts MSNBC’s podcast “Prosecuting Donald Trump.”

When authoritative sources hold onto bad data: A legal scholar explains the need for government databases to retract information

Associate Professor of Law, Fordham University

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Janet Freilich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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In 2004, Hwang Woo-suk was celebrated for his breakthrough discovery creating cloned human embryos , and his work was published in the prestigious journal Science. But the discovery was too good to be true ; Dr. Hwang had fabricated the data. Science publicly retracted the article and assembled a team to investigate what went wrong .

Retractions are frequently in the news. The high-profile discovery of a room-temperature superconductor was retracted on Nov. 7, 2023. A series of retractions toppled the president of Stanford University on July 19, 2023. Major early studies on COVID-19 were found to have serious data problems and retracted on June 4, 2020.

Retractions are generally framed as a negative: as science not working properly, as an embarrassment for the institutions involved, or as a flaw in the peer review process. They can be all those things. But they can also be part of a story of science working the right way: finding and correcting errors, and publicly acknowledging when information turns out to be incorrect.

A far more pernicious problem occurs when information is not, and cannot, be retracted. There are many apparently authoritative sources that contain flawed information. Sometimes the flawed information is deliberate, but sometimes it isn’t – after all, to err is human. Often, there is no correction or retraction mechanism, meaning that information known to be wrong remains on the books without any indication of its flaws.

As a patent and intellectual property legal scholar , I’ve found that this is a particularly harmful problem with government information, which is often considered a source of trustworthy data but is prone to error and often lacking any means to retract the information.

Patent fictions and fraud

Consider patents, documents that contain many technical details that can be useful to scientists . There is no way to retract a patent . And patents contain frequent errors : Although patents are reviewed by an expert examiner before being granted, examiners do not check whether the scientific data in the patent is correct.

In fact, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office permits patentees to include fictional experiments and data in patents. This practice, called prophetic examples , is common; about 25% of life sciences patents contain fictional experiments . The patent office requires that prophetic examples be written in the present or future tense while real experiments can be written in the past tense. But this is confusing to nonspecialists, including scientists, who tend to assume that a phrase like “X and Y are mixed at 300 degrees to achieve a 95% yield rate” indicates a real experiment.

Almost a decade after Science retracted the journal article claiming cloned human cells, Dr. Hwang received a U.S patent on his retracted discovery. Unlike the journal article, this patent has not been retracted. The patent office did not investigate the accuracy of the data – indeed, it granted the patent long after the data’s inaccuracy had been publicly acknowledged – and there is no indication on the face of the patent that it contains information that has been retracted elsewhere.

This is no anomaly. In a similar example, Elizabeth Holmes, the former – now imprisoned – CEO of Theranos, holds patents on her thoroughly discredited claims for a small device that could rapidly run many tests on a small blood sample. Some of those patents were granted long after Theranos’ fraud headlined major newspapers.

Long-lived bad information

This sort of under-the-radar wrong data can be deeply misleading to readers. The system of retractions in scientific journals is not without its critics, but it compares favorably to the alternative of no retractions. Without retractions, readers don’t know when they are looking at incorrect information.

My colleague Soomi Kim and I conducted a study of patent-paper pairs. We looked at cases where the same information was published in a journal article and in a patent by the same scientists, and the journal paper had subsequently been retracted. We found that while citations to papers dropped steeply after the paper was retracted, there was no reduction in citations to patents with the very same incorrect information.

This probably happened because scientific journals paint a big red “retracted” notice on retracted articles online, informing the reader that the information is wrong. By contrast, patents have no retraction mechanism, so incorrect information continues to spread.

There are many other instances where authoritative-looking information is known to be wrong . The Environmental Protection Agency publishes emissions data supplied by companies but not reviewed by the agency. Similarly, the Food and Drug Administration disseminates official-looking information about drugs that is generated by drug manufacturers and posted without an evaluation by the FDA.

Consequences of nonretractions

There are also economic consequences when incorrect information can’t be easily corrected. The Food and Drug Administration publishes a list of patents that cover brand-name drugs. The FDA won’t approve a generic drug unless the generic manufacturer has shown that each patent that covers the drug in question is expired, not infringed or invalid.

The problem is that the list of patents is generated by the brand-name drug manufacturers , who have an incentive to list patents that don’t actually cover their drugs . Doing so increases the burden on generic drug manufacturers. The list is not checked by the FDA or anyone else, and there are few mechanisms for anyone other than the brand-name manufacturer to tell the FDA to remove a patent from the list.

Even when retractions are possible, they are effective only when readers pay attention to them. Financial data is sometimes retracted and corrected, but the revisions are not timely. “ Markets don’t tend to react to revisions ,” Paul Donovan, chief economist of UBS Global Wealth Management, told the Wall Street Journal, referring to governments revising gross domestic product figures.

Misinformation is a growing problem. There are no easy answers to solve it. But there are steps that would almost certainly help. One relatively straightforward one is for trusted data sources like those from the government to follow the lead of scientific journals and create a mechanism to retract erroneous information.

• Retractions
• Misinformation
• Drug patents
• Government data
• Scientific fraud
• Scientific journals

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