How to State a Factual Support for Your Position Paper?

Question by Peter: How to state a factual support for your position paper?
I’m a high school student, recently we started doing position papers, the comments i get back from my teachers were something like you need factual support, what do he really mean. It was a paper on the quote “The most effective government is one that governs the least”, and my argument was saying that i disagree and for the the supports I said well look at the times of the great depression the government could have stepped in to tackle the problem before it starts, instead of a government that do nothing. what would be a good factual support? Like numbers or something? My teachers reply was that this is not a fact it’s a statement of my opinion, so what would be a solid fact. thanks

Best answer:

Answer by KenK
If you read Wikipedia pages, you may see a combination of “opinion” and “facts”. In general, if you read some subjects in wikipedia, you will get examples of good, factual writing. When Wikipedia editors encounters opinion, they mark it differently, with “[citation needed]”. For example, look at this wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Browne
It says, “Of her predictions that might be considered accurate, many are predictions that are easy to make.[citation needed] Examples from her list of predictions for the 21st century include:[22] “Elizabeth Taylor ends up back at the Betty Ford Center”; “Neither Warren Beatty nor Donald Trump has any success in politics”; “Air travel reaches an all-time high, but because of overbookings and poor service, the airlines will need to revamp their scheduling practices”.

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