Says versus said
We’ve already taken some time to talk about tense (especially as it relates to the lede), but I wanted to spend an additional minute on the special case of the verb “to say.” In general, the preferred tense for verbs of expression (say, claim, note, etc.) in broadcast newswriting is the straight present. 20-year-old Tim Spriggs says, “We need a gay-straight alliance at St. John’s for the same reason that there are organizations for other minorities.” This works most of the time, because most often we’re describing a recent statement that reflects the speaker’s current views (as above), or the current state of affairs. But...
We’re done in by the passive voice
It’s nothing new for editors and journalism teachers to inveigh against the use of the passive voice in newswriting. In fact, that’s an understatement. Such exhortations are commonplace, trite, and boring; they’re the first chapter in every writing guide. And still, the passive voice is everywhere in news copy. I fix a dozen passive voice sentences a day in copy from our stringers, writers and wire services, and still some get by me. So here is my brief harangue on the subject. First, a definition. The passive voice is a verb form in which the subject of the sentence is the thing being acted upon,...
Link of the Week: Grammar, not gramma
With almost every entry on this blog I toss around grammar jargon like they’re working overtime at the factory. Most of it is stuff you probably thought you were done with when you graduated middle school. But, oh no, here it is again… and related to something you should know in order to make a living in newswriting. I bet you didn’t count on that when you flushed your mental cache around the time you graduated from college. So for those who need a very condensed but readable guide to basic English grammar–technical terms and all–here’s what I use to double check my hazy recollections:...
I’m a little tense about that lede
Because the lede to a broadcast story (or any news story, for that matter) must hook the audience immediately, it needs immediacy. In print and sometimes in broadcast feature stories, it’s possible to, as we say, ‘delay the lede,’ putting a grabby bit of character or narrative right up front. In that case, the what’s-new, who-what-when-where-why-how part of the story (called the ‘nut graf’ — really!) comes later in the prose. But on my side of the street, where we do only spot news, the ‘nut’ must always come first. That is, spot news always ledes with the most interesting, compelling way of expressing what’s...
One more way to ‘decentuate’ the appositive
There’s one other way to avoid appositives that I forgot to mention. You can make the noun and its description the subjects of two consecutive sentences, like so: The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says he’s now enjoying his retirement. John Shalikashvili left the top spot at the Pentagon in 1997… This works because English is highly asyndetic. That means the sentence structure carries much of the meaning, and so fluent speakers of the language understand how words, phrases and sentences relate to each other without the help of a lot of conjunctions and connective words. Thus it’s clear the subject of...
I’m negative about appositives
It’s often said about broadcast writing that it should sound conversational, but what usually goes unsaid are all the little technical things and thoughtful phrasing that go into giving written prose the feel of conversation. Those techniques will be a large part of my emphasis here. One such important ‘rule’ (in quotes because, once well understood, rules can be treated as guidelines and cheerfully broken to achieve a desired effect) is avoiding appositives. An appositive is a word or phrase, set off by commas, that further describes the noun it follows. For example: John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is now...