Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

So on Wednesday, November 3rd, we ran on a Friday schedule and went to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for Ethics and Leadership at the end of the day. Carnegie is the oldest U.S think tank, and it's right around the corner. We went there to learn how to write policy documents in order to write our group policy document about Sex Trafficking in Thailand.

We met with the Communications Director, Jessica, and also the Editor, Mary Lynn Jones. They were both really helpful.

Mary taught us alot of good writing skills, and gave us a list of the most important 8 to think about when writing a policy or any other document really. A few of the 8 points are know your audience, state points clearly, state things concisely/avoid SAT words (which I like because I really don't know alot of SAT words). Her points were really helpful.

Mary also gave us some tips on writing an op-ed.

A few of her many tips are:

• Always have a summary that highlights the paper
• Be cautious about language, soften tone if necessary
• You can use an acronym if it comes up more than twice
• If you use a graph in a policy it should be something that's hard to say in words
• Don't include so many numbers that the reader gets confused. 
• Each paragraph should have a purpose/function. 

It was a really cool day and going to Carnegie was awesome :)

Carnegie Endowment Video