Young Writers Society

here is just a snippet of my article written on this issue:


We should understand comprehensively what maturity is if we are to make laws concerning age. At the age of 16, young people are able to have sex, start a full time job, and get consent to join the army and get married. These are major life decisions and 16 year olds are given plenty of privileges, so why do young people need to be age 18 before they are responsible enough to vote?
If young people age 16 were allowed to vote it could potentially increase the problems with voting. With more pressure on teens, to judge as to whom they chose to lead them could conclusively lead to more peer pressure and conflicts with today’s youth. Think about the fights and breakouts, at 16 they are only just maturing. I don’t know about you but do you ever look back and think “boy do I wish I had listened to my parents and teachers when I was 16; I was lazy and thought I knew everything.” Well at that stage you were only just turning into an adult and hasn’t 18 been the ‘Adult age for over a millennia, meaning at 16 you were still a child. Voting is a serious issue, so no wonder why you have to be an adult to vote. Some may argue I am being slightly biased but I have seen it, in my home and at school. Do we need to give our ‘children’ every form of responsibility or can we wait until they’ve learned a lesson or two about adulthood?

Hey there t4yd3491 -- that's an interesting name you've got there to go with an interesting article!

Structure

To begin with, I know you're said this is just a snippet but I'd like to talk about structure because it's a very important tool in article-writing.

I like how, at the beginning of the piece, you write about the importance of knowing what "maturity" is (which I expected to be followed by a dictionary definition! Why not?). This is a great place to start and even better if it's the main point you're going to return to in the rest of the article. But it doesn't seem that way, and although you give examples of what "maturity" is meant to be, you never really explain it properly.

Also your conclusion, which is generally very good, finishes with a question. Although it's clearly rhetorical I can't help but think you could make the piece feel more finished if the final piece of punctuation wasn't a question mark. It's only a little thing, but consider using the rhetorical question earlier in the conclusion to draw the argument to a close rather than to actually end it.

Argument

A lot of your evidence for why sixteen shouldn't be the voting age is based on personal experience and generalised scenarios. While this is all valid and (in some cases) rather accurate, I think you could try to give more concrete examples.

The way you appealed to your reader to consider themselves when they were younger was good -- a bit informal when you compare it to the rest of the article but a very good idea nonetheless.

While you give a good list of privileges that sixteen-year-olds enjoy, you don't do the same for the rest of the things they can't do! This would be an easy thing to add in, but we don't trust sixteen-year-olds to drive a cars, purchase alcohol, or own a credit card. Also the "traditional" age of adulthood is actually 21 in some countries, so that's something you could include as well.

Overall

It's a nice snippet but I'd like to see the full thing. Perhaps you address these points a bit better in the full copy -- at the moment the argument seems quite blurred so it'd be interesting to see if you are able to make it clearer in the full piece.

You've got some good ideas and your writing about the topic comes across as intelligent and informed. Keep it up and see if you can improve this with another draft. Feel free to PM me if you've got any questions.


Charlie

Hai! So I've been feeling sorry for the poor neglected General Articles section lately and decided I should review something here. Well guess what, I chose your piece! You should feel priviledged

Try not to Drone

When you speak in a flat tone and you move from point to point with no addition of exciting words or changes in sentence structure, you are in danger of boring the reader to death. So please don't do it! You need to sound excited about this topic is you want to help your reader feel some of that enthusiasm. Understandably you want to sound professional as well but please don't mistake professional for boring! Some of the best article writers out there are casual and the reason their writing is popular is because it sounds like someone's having a conversation with you. A colloquial style will attract far more readers than a stiff, learned approach does.

Repetition of labels

You need to mix it up a little and go for some variation. Instead of using 'age 16' so frequently, try to find other ways to express it. For example:

If young people age 16 were allowed to vote it could potentially increase the problems with voting.

Okay so this line comes after a lot of others where you've said 'age 16 this, age 18 that' but it's time to move away from there. Why not try, 'If the younger generation were allowed to vote...' which sounds much better.

Don't alienate your audience

You need to know who you're writing for and write for them! This article is clearly targetting adults since they're the only ones who could potentially do anything to change the voting system. In this case, you need to use language that is colloquial but geared toward their sympathies and not a teenage audience. There's a part toward the end where you break down almost completely into teen speak:

Think about the fights and breakouts, at 16 they are only just maturing. I don’t know about you but do you ever look back and think “boy do I wish I had listened to my parents and teachers when I was 16; I was lazy and thought I knew everything.”

You can not do this. If you're not in your thirties yourself, you can't say to people who are thirty something - 'I'm sure if you look back, you'll think that you so should have listened to your parents more' - I know, I'm exaggerating the tone but it just doesn't work. It draws attention to the fact that you're not them and you've a long way to go before you'll be in their shoes. That's not something you want to do.

Structure your arguement!

Okay so at first you seem to be fighting for the right for children of 16 to be able to vote but then you suddenly change your mind and decide they shouldn't? A ballanced arguement is all very well, but right from the start it should either be clear which side you are fighting for, or it should be a neutral presentation of the evidence and work from a 'present and knock down' method. You should never back both sides. You can present the beliefs of one side and then explain why they're wrong, but you can't throw the opposing view out there and do nothing to destroy its credibility.

Overall

I'd have liked to see the rest of this as it's difficult to judge on a small snippet, but I think you need to research more. You don't give any strong reasons for or against a person's right to vote here and the one that did stick out to me - that 16 can be a troublesome age for teenagers - struck me as being too grounded in a teenage perspective. Your audience are adults. Your subjects are teenagers. Do not mix the two up! You should always write with your audience in mind.

I hope this helps!

Heather xxx