Quotes are important in journalism and reporting because they tell readers the information in question wasn’t made up by a reporter, but is someone’s account or opinion.
Not all quotes are equal. The best come directly from an interviewee’s speech and are faithfully reproduced. In electronic media these are obvious – you see or hear the person in question saying their own words.
With written media, quotes can be either direct or indirect.
Direct quotes
Direct quotes are written inside speech marks and are more or less exactly the interviewee’s words.
I say “more or less exactly” because many journalists, myself included, tidy up, taking out the hesitations, the ums and the ahs. This is perfectly OK. What isn’t acceptable is putting words in someone’s mouth – words they didn’t use.
It would be normal to correct the grammar up to a point.
We often edit – often the reader only sees part of an interview. It wouldn’t be practical to include every word.
Indirect quotes
Journalists use indirect quotes to simplify and summarise an interviewee’s words, they improve readability.
Most quotes you see in written media come from interviews. Some come from prepared statements.
Organisations use prepared statements to control their message rather than answering pesky questions from nosey journalists whose job is to extract the truth not parrot propaganda.
Robotic speech patterns
Prepared statements generally don’t read like human speech. For some reason people think robotic English makes them sound more sincere or knowledgeable. Often the reverse is true.
Journalists don’t always make it clear when they repeat a prepared statement. This isn’t dishonesty. It happens because constantly telling readers where information comes from all the time quickly gets boring. We come from a tradition where the column inches allocated to a story was limited. And we still work in a market where readers lose patience with too much detail.
On the other hand, journalists shouldn’t pull the wool over reader’s eyes.
I tell my readers when a quote is from a statement when I’m writing a news story or feature, but not if I’m writing a two paragraph snippet. Most of the time I also tell readers if a quote is from an emailed response – which may have been written by committee or a social media post.
There’s a fine line between full disclosure and boring readers. But if the story is controversial or important, it is best to take the risk and be candid.
Your job as a writer is to get your message across clearly and quickly.
One way you can sabotage communication is by laying traps for readers. Traps that halt a reader’s natural flow as their eye scans over text.
Punctuation – as the name suggests – stops flow. This is why I leave out optional commas.
You can also slow down a reader’s flow when you use capital letters incorrectly. For the same reason you should never write a word entirely in capitals.
Companies that insist their names are spelled out in capitals only do this because they want to halt the reader’s flow and make them take notice. You do not have to indulge them. It’s another story if they are paying you to write marketing copy.
Likewise I don’t use the ‘&’ symbol – instead I always write ‘and’. The exception to this rule is when the ‘&’ forms part of a company’s name.
The same applies to ‘+’.
It is also better to write out percent in full than use %. Although some newspapers, including one where I work, insists on using the symbol.
Never resort to phone text-style language in anything written for a wider audience. It isn’t funny, clever or useful.
Avoid jargon if you can. Sometimes you have no choice.
It makes your writing difficult to understand and puts readers off. Jargon confuses readers and in many cases jargon is ambiguous – always a sign of poor communication. It puts a barrier between you and your readers.
This is especially hard if you interview someone who talks in jargon and mangement cliches. You have a duty to report their words accurately, but you also have a duty not to bombard readers with gobbledegook.
Where you can, turn quotes into indirect speech and simply drop the jargon term. Use easily understood descriptive words and phrases instead.
When you can’t avoid a jargon term give your reader a short definition in plain English.
If possible add an example to illustrate the definition.
I had to write about management when the term ‘participative management’ came up as unavoidable jargon.
I explained this as:
Participative management, a way of running things where the workers take part in decision-making.
It would have been so much better if the interviewee said that in the first place.
Some people think worrying about spelling and grammar is anal and backward. They are wrong.
There are two reasons why spelling and grammar are important and will remain important for as long as people still read printed words:
First: Well-written, properly-spelt, grammatically-correct English is unambiguous.
Poorly written English is open to misinterpretation.
If being understood is important, then worry about spelling and grammar.
Second: Well-written text flows, it’s a pleasure to read. It sends readers a message about your professionalism and wisdom. It is credible. People want to read more of it.
Poorly written English jerks around, it causes readers to stumble. They may not realise why this sets off alarm bells in their heads, but it does. They won’t look for follow-up reading.
Too much poor English and they’ll question the message. This may not happen on a conscious level. It may not happen with all readers. It will happen enough for it to matter. So yes, spelling still matters.
Use capital letters for proper nouns. Avoid them for common nouns.
Proper nouns are the names of things. So use capitals for the names of people, places, months, days of the week, companies and so on. Don’t use capitals for common nouns.
People run into difficulty with capitals because there’s a temptation to use them for important words. In business writing people often use capitals as a way of avoiding offending someone or something by implying he or it isn’t important.
Another difficulty is with titles. Newspapers typically use a capital letter when the title comes directly before a person’s name but not otherwise.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key is correct, but it would be the prime minister’s desk.
In his book Newsman’s English British newspaper editor Harold Evans says;
“Avoid using them unnecessarily. The Parks Committee, but subsequently the committee. The South West Regional Hospital Board, but then the hospital board.”
One piece of advice I had early in my career as a journalist is: “If in doubt use lower case unless it looks wrong”.
Lastly, do not use capital letters for emphasis and avoid writing words in all capitals.
I’m so pleased this had nothing to do with me. This was published in _The Australian _ 15 years ago and spotted by Mumbrella.
So let’s do some role playing. You’re a sub on The Australian.
Your boss has just given a speech about the health of newspapers.
You’ve got to put a headline on the speech.
Do you a) Check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline or b) Not check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline? Remember, your career may depend on the choice you make.
Your school may have taught you not to end a sentence with a preposition. This is a hangover from Latin and Greek. Sentences in those languages never ended with prepositions.
Years ago I worked in communications for Britain’s Science and Engineering Research Council. My boss took me to task for ending a sentence with a preposition.
He told me it was; “Something, up with which, I will not put” – a quote from Winston Churchill.
Churchill was on my side in this. I suspect my boss didn’t realise the quote was a joke.
While the grammar police won’t agree, this is a rule you can ignore. It doesn’t apply to everyday writing, business writing, journalism and online communications.
There will be times it doesn’t make sense to twist sentences to avoid ending with a proposition. Your writing will be clearer and easier to understand.
Relax. You’ll be in great company. Most newspaper style guides allow it. Most popular authors and the overwhelming majority of modern literary authors sidestep the rule.
Google is one of a rare breed of companies that has moved into everyday language as a verb.
There are language purists who argue against turning nouns into verbs.
Don’t worry. It’s fine to “google something” online. People have “hoovered carpets” for years.
Note the lower case G and H.
Most of the time Google and Hoover are proper nouns requiring a capital.
There’s no such thing as a proper verb, so why should Google or Hoover take a capital when they are used as verbs?
Years ago when I was starting out as a journalist there was a regular supplement in the UK Press Gazette which argued exactly that: a company name used as a verb needs a capital.
Free hosting services, like WordPress.com can as good as or better than self-hosting. You’ll need to pay for a few basics, but it won’t cost more than web hosting.
A low-cost, minimalist option like Micro.blog (where you are reading this post) is the best for anyone who’d rather write posts than mess around with code.
Blogging can take up a huge amount of time. It doesn’t have to.
There’s a community aspect to blogging. It isn’t apparent until you dive in and do it yourself.
Blogging is similar, but not the same as journalism.
My blogs don’t have any direct economic benefits, but they keep me in touch with audiences and show prospective clients that I’m alive and kicking.
Newspapers teach journalists to write using the inverted pyramid.
It isn’t always the best approach, but it is reliable. the inverted pyramid has worked for news writing since the days reporters telegraphed dispatches to editors. Today it works for online writing.
The structure echoes the classic essay structure you were taught — or should have been taught — at school.
The basic format:
Introduction — say what the piece is about; answer questions like who, what, where and when. You can also explain why at this point, although that can wait until later.
Then — expand, amplify;
Keep doing this until you’ve told the whole story. Make the most important points first then add more and more detail in each additional paragraph.
How did this develop?
Printed newspaper had limited space for news. Traditional newspaper subeditors would cut a story from the bottom if it needs to fill a specific space on a printed page.
The inverted pyramid structure, with each paragraph being progressively less important, means editors remove the least important information first.
A news story written using the inverted pyramid structure can be cut at the end of any paragraph, even the first paragraph, and still be a self-contained story.
Online this means search engines pay more attention to the most important words – which helps people find your writing. Those opening paragraphs also make neat summaries for listings and similar online uses.
The most important information goes in the first paragraph and each extra paragraph carries progressively less weight. That’s where the inverted pyramid name comes from: the foundation sits at the top, the less important details are at the bottom.
If you want to make your writing clearer and more interesting, use ‘be’ verbs sparingly.
The verb to be includes:
Be, being, been, am, is, are, was, were.
Be verbs make text dull partly because of overuse, but also because they remove the reader one step from the action. They take readers the long route to meaning and can be long-winded.
Compare:
Fred is dismissive of cowboy films
with
Fred dismisses cowboy films.
The second phrase has more energy, it propels the reader along. It expresses the same idea in a clearer, more concise way.
Be verbs turn up in passive language, staying away from them helps keep your writing in the active voice.
Old-school newspapers taught journalists to never use be verbs in headlines, but prefer strong action verbs instead. It’s hard to get away with that in today’s online world, so think instead of keeping them to a minimum.
The active voice is usually better than the passive voice because it is direct. This makes it easier to understand and unambiguous.
With the active voice a subject does something to an object: Andy kicked the ball.
In the passive voice the object is acted on by the subject: The ball was kicked by Andy.
An active voice makes for tighter writing and easier reading. It is more personal and less formal.
Efficient writing
The passive sentence used six words while the active sentence needed only four. It has simpler grammar. Active sentences are economic and clear.
Active voice phrases are easier to understand because they involve fewer stages. Think of it as fewer mental hoops to jump through. This becomes important in more complex sentences and longer pieces of text.
While active voice sentences are also easier to write, you might not always find this in practice. The good news is that writing active sentences helps organise your own thoughts. That way you’ll write clearer.
Confident words
Sentences written in the active voice read as if the writer is confident about the facts. In contrast, phrases and sentences written in the passive voice seem tentative or uncertain.
Bureaucrats and corporate managers often like hiding behind the passive voice’s ambiguities. Academics like to use it.
For example, in the phrase; “the claims have been analysed”, it isn’t clear who did the analysis. On the other hand; “We analysed the claims” is definite.
It gets worse when the writer resorts to using the word ‘it’ instead of ‘I’ or ‘we’:
In the sentence “It was decided no claims would be payable” the author is deliberately hiding behind the ‘it’ implying that authority comes from on high and not identifying the person who did the deciding.
There are times when you need to use the passive voice. That’s another post
Concrete nouns keep your writing on track. They are unambiguous and specific.
Use concrete nouns when you need to pin down facts and inform readers.
We describe nouns as concrete when they refer to something you can touch, smell, see, taste or hear. They are all things you sense directly.
Banana, chair, piston engine, trumpet, pterodactyl are all concrete nouns.
I like to think of concrete nouns as crunchy, but they could just as easily be squishy, smelly, loud or colourful.
As opposed to abstract nouns
On the other hand, abstract nouns are things you can’t form a picture of. They are ideas, conditions and qualities, such as courage and happiness.
Many abstract nouns started life as verbs or adverbs, but become abstract nouns with suffixes. So fascinate, becomes fascination, credible becomes credibility and so on.
Yet if you want to report on events or describe something, steer clear of abstract nouns.
Abstract nouns are useful when you want to generalise or when writing about ideas. They can be good for poetry, song lyrics and other flowery types of writing. At the same time they make it hard to figure out exactly what the writer means and are open to misinterpretation.
At school we were taught never to start sentences with “And”.
And yet newspaper journalists do it all the time. Not starting a sentence with “and” is one of the first so-called rules professional writers learn to break.
There’s nothing wrong with using “and” to begin a sentence or a paragraph. It is a great way to smooth the flow when you have a series of short sentences that would otherwise be too staccato for comfortable reading.
Only break this rule in moderation. Overusing “And” at the start of sentences quickly becomes boring.
As Keith Waterhouse points out in Daily Mirror Style, too many sentences starting with the word means your writing reads like the New English Bible.
Aim for only one “And” sentence start in a short piece of 300 words. For longer stories, you can get away with using it a few times – about once every 3-500 words. Control any urge to sprinkle sentences starting with “And” through your copy.
Other conjunctions
The school rule didn’t just apply to “And”, starting sentences with other conjunctions was also forbidden. As an aside, conjunctions are ‘joining’ words used to string phrases together – usually, but not always, to build more complex sentences.
There are plenty of alternative conjunctions to call on at the start of your sentences:
“But” is a great way to start a sentence that disagrees with the previous one.
“Yet” is a less-frequently used alternative.
“Or” is a great word for helping text flow.
Some people don’t like sentences to start with “However”. That’s another rule worth breaking.
“Although” is a possibility. In practice, it can be better to shorten the word to “Though” at the start of a sentence.
The term “content” is a barbarism that bit by bit devalues what journalists do.
Jay Rosen, Chair of Journalism at New York University
Second, people read online material about 25 per cent slower than print. Jakob Nielsen explains why in In defence of print. Nielsen wrote his article in 1996, but things haven’t changed.
Countering distraction
Third, people get distracted easily online. There are advertisements and links to other websites as well as bleeping notification of incoming emails, tweets and instant messages.
If you write a brief article, there is more chance a reader will get to the end before skipping off elsewhere.
Brevity is the key
Fourth, skilled writers aim for brevity because good, vigorous English is concise.
A writer’s goal is to get messages to readers as swiftly and as accurately as possible.
Get on. Say what you need to say. Get off.
Leave the fancy, flowery stuff to poets and fiction writers.
Short – cram the maximum amount of meaning into the minimum number of words. There’s no strict guide to ideal word length, but search engines only care about the first 64 characters. Make every word count.
Clear – good headline are unambiguous. They must be immediately understandable in any context. Not everyone reading your writing will be a native English speaker. Keep this in mind.
Straightforward – use mainly nouns and verbs. Remember your nouns will be keywords for people using search engines.
Use simple words – short, Anglo Saxon words are best. Everyone knows exactly what they mean and they help you cram more meaning into fewer characters.
Active – use the active voice.
Avoid – forms of the verb to be. Articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’ are space wasters best left out of headlines. Use a comma rather than the word ‘and’. Try not to use pronouns.
Plain English – there’s a grab-bag of short clichéd headline words that people never use in real life – such as nix, slam, rap. It’s better to stick with everyday language.
Some experts will tell you lists, questions and commands work well in online headlines. All may be worth trying, it depends what you are aiming for. Either way, they’ll work better if you keep my earlier points in mind.
As old school journalists, we were taught to write mainly with nouns and verbs. Editors let us use adjectives only if they make the meaning more precise.
And even then, subeditors would remove them as they tightened copy.
In Daily Mirror Style Keith Waterhouse describes the old school journalist’s view. He says:
Adjectives should not be allowed in newspapers unless they have something to say.
Writers think adjectives add colour to their words. They do. But colourful writing isn’t always easier to understand.
In volume one of Editing and Writing, another newspaper journalist Harold Evans says they give writing a “superficial glitter”.
He goes on to say:
Every adjective should be examined to see: is it needed to define the subject or is it there for emphasis?
Evans says “over-emphasis destroys credibility”.
Adjectives for emphasis
Take care when using adjectives for emphasis. For example, the word ‘very’ adds nothing to a phrase. Most of the time you can lose the word without changing any meaning.
The same usually applies to words like really, actually, rather and quite.
It also applies to the f-word. It may be fashionable to use it in today’s writing, but nine times out of ten all it does is function as a synonym for ‘very’.
Often there’s a better, more elegant way of expressing the same idea. “The train crawled into the station” is better than saying it was “very slow”.
In practice many adjectives have no substance. You can remove most from your sentences. You won’t lose much, but you will gain clarity.
On a personal note, publishers and others have paid me for years to write by the word. Loading my copy with lucrative filler words including adjectives makes economic sense. Over the years they have paid off my mortgage.
Yet my writing would certainly better without them.
A quick refresher:
Nouns are names of people, places, things and ideas.
Verbs are doing words. They tell you what is going on.
We say Adjectives modify nouns. They tell you what kind it is, how many there are and which one is being talked about.
“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press: Murder your darlings.”
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
This quote, or a version of it, has been attributed to many writers Quiller-Couch was the original source. It’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of him, so this Wikipedia page will help.
The key point here is that often when you think you’ve written something brilliant, you probably haven’t. This is something older journalists would knock out of juniors during training. These days the young ones don’t have time for fancy writing.
Using a word like Murder is a great way of making the message memorable.
Exclamation marks, some people call them bangs, have almost no place in serious writing.
Tabloids use them in headlines. You may use exclamation marks in reported speech or where they form part of a name or title.
And that’s it.
It’s no accident many newspapers and publishing companies ban exclamation marks.
They don’t add drama.
They don’t improve poor writing.
Like laughing at your own jokes
Exclamation marks don’t tell readers a sentence was funny.
They may tell readers a sentence was supposed to be funny. That’s quite different.
In the newspaper business, the exclamation mark is sometimes known as a shriek or screamer. These names give a clue to why they best left on the shelf.
It is often used to add emphasis to sentences. It’s versatile, you’ll see it used to show surprise, anger or joy.
You’ll see it used far too often.
Fake hysteria
The exclamation mark is the punctuation equivalent of raising your voice – maybe hysterically. Hence the name ‘shriek’.
Here’s why you should avoid them:
They distract readers. Not in a good way.
They are an excuse for lazy writing – funny or dramatic writing doesn’t need propping up.
Once people start using exclamation marks, they usually overuse them – which makes writing look amateur.
They hint at a gushing bygone world of “what-ho Jeeves!”, “lashings of ginger beer!” and “golly gosh!”. - Your readers will wonder if they’ve stepped into a time warp.
They make your writing seem inauthentic.
As an editor, I told a young reporter working for me who used one in a story that was his year’s allocation gone.
I was only half-joking. If you must use exclamation marks, use them rarely. Once a year is too often.
The reporter got the message. I never saw another one in his copy.
Orwell on language
Everyone who thinks at all has noticed that our language is practically useless for describing anything that goes on inside the brain.
