Writing economics articles

When writing a piece on economics or any type of article, it is vital that you ensure you have an engaging and interesting opening. If you lack an engaging opening, then the reader will be less inclined to carry on reading the piece and, therefore, may not complete reading it. Your job, as a writer, is to ensure that they do keep on reading the piece and that they want to know more about it. Regardless of the subject, a writer’s job is to make their reader interested in what they are writing about and there are several ways to do this. For example, if you are writing for an academic publication then your introduction would be something like this:

“The discourse of economics is a subject which has fascinated generations of thinkers. The worth of money or whether money is worth anything at all has puzzled philosophers for decades and resulted in bitter arguments on the meaning of human life and whether capital can even be equated to it. This article will discuss the plethora of economic theories and discuss whether they truly have any bearing on human existence or whether the concept of money is an anathema to a fruitful life.”

The above example demonstrates how to write an engaging academic opening to an article about economics. However, if you are writing something that is for a broader market and not simply for the consumption of university lobbies then your style of opening will have to be different and will be based on what particular type of publication or website you are writing for. For instance, you could write another opening more like this:

“Are you bored out of your tree by economics? Do you want to learn about money but not be bogged down in too many long and dull lectures on the subject? This this article is for you. Rather than bore you with a list of statistics we’ll give you the low down on all the key elements of market theories, how they affect you and how you can transform yourself from an ordinary person into an economics genius! So, strap in to read all about it.”

As you should be able to discern, the above example is markedly different from the previous one. The use of colloquial speech patterns, rhetorical questions and exclamation marks ensures that this type of opening is just as engaging as the previous one but in a different way and aimed at a different market. Of course, these types of opening are genre specific – you may want to make your opening much more accessible to any type of reader. If this is the case then you must make sure to introduce your topic quickly and effectively, present some of the content the reader can expect to find in the article and end on a note that draws the reader further into the piece and ensures that they will keep reading it.

The next key stage to writing your piece is to structure your main points and to consider how best to accommodate them into your article. The way that you will introduce and expand upon your points will vary between the different types of article you will want to write and therefore reflect the particular style you want to present.

• The typical way. The typical way to write an article is the way usually used in academic papers, exams and the vast majority of articles. You structure each point as an individual paragraph, or if the points are linked and one isn’t as strong as the other, combine them under the umbrella of one paragraph. You then write each paragraph one after the other, beginning with the strongest or “main” point before moving on to the other points before reaching a conclusion. This type of structure is good to use not only if you are writing something academic but also if you are just beginning to write articles.
• The bullet point way. The bullet point way is essentially as it sounds – you express your various points through linked bullet points rather than through full paragraphs. A lot of modern news outlets such as Buzzfeed use this technique. Be careful of using it, however, as it can often be seen as lazy and overly simplistic and may lessen the impact of your article.
• The mixed method. The mixed method utilises elements of the typical way and the bullet point way and generally helps to make the piece more interesting. It allows the writer to break up the text and use both paragraphs and bullet points as well as headers to make the piece informative but also easier to understand and not lacking in any interesting content.