Facts and Opinions: What’s the Difference?
Today, it’s hard to recognize a fact from an opinion.
Let’s start basically.
What’s the difference between a fact and an opinion in a singular statement?
Adjectives and Adverbs.
Here’s how one simple statement can develop from a fact into an opinion:
Pizza is food.
Fact.
Pizza is a food.
Fact.
Pizza is a fantastic food.
Opinion.
Once we added that adjective, it brings in a different idea than one presumed to be true by a majority of people.
Here’s another one:
Markers are used for coloring.
Fact.
Markers are best used for coloring.
Opinion.
Once we added in that adjective, it takes away the other best uses for markers — highlighting, drawing, writing.
Before you argue, here’s why it’s an opinion: you can argue against that statement.
So, if you want to argue with my uses for a marker, you are already proving my own point of it’s opinionated status.
What does all that even amount to?
Facts cannot be argued.
Opinions can argued.
Adjectives and adverbs — and other functioning-as-such modifiers — are the enemy of a solid fact.
In nearly every class in school, we have to do some research.
In English, we have the research paper.
In Social Studies, we research history and society.
In Science, we research.
In Math, we need a basis for our formulas.
In that research, we seek facts.
From facts, we generate our own ideas and our own opinions.
If we can’t decipher between what’s a fact and what’s an opinion, our ideas have no base.
We can’t base a whole new idea off the fact that “Pizza is a fantastic food.”
Those are ideas already being turned into opinions.
Facts are a place to start.
But, wait. When you research, you don’t find sources that are talking about such simple concepts of pizza and markers; you find sources that are seemingly factual with numbers and figures and diagrams and info-graphics. How do you tell THOSE apart?
There is another post I have written: Reputable vs. Non-Reputable Sources in Research. After you read this, go there.
Until you read that, here’s what I will use to sum up my ideas on deciphering between these two concepts in a world that constantly forces information into our mind.
Find another site, source, place, book, etc. that says the same thing.
Facts don’t change.
If one article says 200 people attended the event, another article should say that same number.
Likewise, if one article says 200 people attended the event and the other says 589 people attended the event, it’s not factual enough. Factual to the creator, maybe, but not factual enough.
If one sight says “ABOUT 200 people attended the event,” find another one that says the same thing.
About is a modifier. In this case, it works to secure the fact.
Isn’t language fun?
Look for qualifying or modifying words.
These types of words are probably linked very closely to the initial thought about adjectives and adverbs.
Resources with more nouns, verbs, prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions (Yes, I left out interjections — a monster of their own creation) are more likely to contain factual information.
Thank an English teacher if you can identify those parts of speech.
Also, be on the look out for differing connotations (the emotional meaning of a word); they modify meaning in a more subtle way.
“President Obama sauntered in to give his address to the nation.”
Or
“President Obama walked in to give his address to the nation.”
Or
“President Obama jumped in to give his address to the nation.”
Sauntered. Walked. Jumped.
They all have very different implications.
Which one is the factual one?
Which one is the MOST factual one?
Last but not least, words that imply personal opinion are a form of qualifying or modifying a statement: think, believe, the pronoun “I,” understand, feel…
Unless within a direct quotation, words like these imply creator-manipulation of a fact, which is an opinion.
Facts are facts are facts; there should be no modifier or something that is true.
In a world full to the brim of people being able to write whatever they want and share whatever they want, it becomes more and more challenging to discern between reality or a reality someone else wants to believe.
It becomes more and more challenging to recognize what is true from what is untrue.
Opinions run rampant.
Yet, facts still exist; it just takes a little more time to find them.
Happy Writing.
