In Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “The Case for Reparations”, he discusses the role race has played and will continue to play in our country’s society and culture unless we . This article is so influential because not only is it covering a controversial and majorly debated about, but because of the position she takes within her article. The first thing the reader sees when they go to read the article is the tagline, “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.” , which immediately tells the reader what Coates thinks about the topic he is discussing without having making it into a thesis. Coates then includes a Bible quote and a quote from philosopher John Locke, as a way to to show the reader where his ideals when writng this article came from and combating the fact many readers may take issue with what he is writing.

However it is also through Coates’ use of research, starting with his point of entry story about the life of Clyde Ross that helps his article stand out. From his use of pictures, to links to other pieces of writing, to his interactive census map Coates incorporates many forms of research into his writing besides the standard listing or quoting of facts/statistics. Another aspect which Coates gets the reader to think about what he is talking about in his article is the tone in which he ties in his own writing with the research he has done. Making sure that they each are evenly present in the article and flow together as he moves from writing about a specific part of history into a more generalized subject. Yet he also writes as to make the reader who may oppose what or how he is writing about this subject not only look at the research and question history, but themselves and what they stand for. Which is something I might want to do when writing my essay about millennials’ shift relying on technology to fulfill their emotional and social needs. So that readers of my essay won’t just walk away from it feeling as if they learned or want to learn more about the topic of my writing, but have them question themselves and how they may relate to what I am writing about.

Recently I read Anne Helen Peterson’s BuzzFeed article “Jennifer Lawrence And The History Of Cool Girls”. Whose tagline of  is what first interested me in the humorously biting piece. However it was the descriptive and relevant examples and references to modern media and pop culture, like the quote from GoneGirl and Jennifer Lawrence’s most memorable media moments, along side moments from past influential events or women in Hollywood’s history. Another thing that sucked me into the article was how Peterson organized her piece. First starting with the most contemporary example, then going back to the start of “The Cool Girl” persona’s history then working her way through time circling back to the JLaw example she discussed in the beginning of her piece. Yet the most interesting piece to me was how she highlighted important blocks of text from her article by pairing them with pictures or formatted them so they stood out from the rest of the text. I think that the way Peterson formatted her piece so that it was a solid analysis of the history of her topic but not strenuous to read and the fact that it kept an heir of relevance throughout the piece that allowed it constantly make a connection to its readers is why the users of Longform appreciated the article.

For those of you who don’t know Medium.com is an online publishing platform, created by the founder of Twitter, that allows anyone who wants to contribute to post a piece of their work,  onto its site. And on January 13th of the year 2014 litter mob member and conservationist writer Elizabeth Royte published her piece “The Remains of The Night” on Medium. In the piece she talks about her experience, as someone who picks up litter in her neighborhood park and discusses the backstory that comes with it. Throughout the piece she also interjected in pictures with their own factual captions,  along with pictures that contained blocks of Royte’s own text as a way to not only break up the blocks of text in an organized  and easy to read fashion, but to highlight the importance of how what she is doing in her own microcosm experience and how it relates to the macro cosmic issue of littering and all the social taboos that occur in public parks. But Royte’s decisions when formatting her essay allowed her to incorporate statistical data into her piece, and to place each tidbit of knowledge in the perfect place so that it corresponded with which one of Royte’s experiences that area of her essay was going over while helping to transition to the next one of Royte’s points or experiences. This in turn added a logical appeal to her work without distracting the reader from the main story whilst it gave the essay an easy to follow structure, as well.

The format Royte chose to use on Medium gives the reader a visual aspect to look at during the 17 minute read, which not only keeps them entertained and interested in the topic of her piece, but informs the reader not just about her and the story she is telling but the bigger picture that her essay relates to. It shows that Royte is not just focusing on what she thinks or believes about the topic but gives the reader enough information about the topic so that they may form their own opinion. Royte also chooses a topic that most people wouldn’t have gone with to follow her point of entry, which was how she is part of a task force to clean up her neighborhood park. This adds a level of excitement and intrigue to her piece that she probably wouldn’t have accomplished if she just made her essay strictly about littering in public parks and not all the other seedy and strange behavior that takes place in public places and why it takes place there. This aspect of Rotye’s essay worked well with the format she used on medium because she didn’t start with the statement of a definitive thesis or direction of to where this essay was particularly heading, and avoided being stuck in a box of what her essay has to be about and gave her the chance to explore the more interesting options of where to take her essay. But it was a combination of Medium.com’s formatting abilities along with Rotye’s choices that made this essay as engaging as it was.