News style or news writing is the particular prose style used for news reporting (ie. in newspapers) as well as in news items that air on radio and television. News style encompasses not only vocabulary and sentence structure, but also the way in which stories present the information in terms of relative importance, tone, and intended audience. Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to the patterns of everyday [[speech. ... For other uses, see News (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see News (disambiguation). ... The ASCII codes for the word Wikipedia represented in binary, the numeral system most commonly used for encoding computer information. ...

News writing attempts to answer all the basic questions about any particular event in the first two or three paragraphs: Who? What? When? Where? and Why? and occasionally How? (ie. "5 W's"). This form of structure is sometimes called the "inverted pyramid," to refer to decreased importance of information as it progresses. It has been suggested that Four Ws be merged into this article or section. ... The inverted pyramid is a graphical metaphor that is most often used to illustrate how information should be arranged or presented within a text, in particular within a news story. ...

Overview

While newspapers, like encyclopedias, generally adhere to an expository writing mode and style, this has changed over time as journalism ethics and standards have (debatably) increased to become more objective and less sensationalistic. There are debated degrees of professionalism among particular news agencies, and their reputability or public value, according to professional standards of idealism and depending on what the reader wants from a news story, may be tied to their ability to be objective. In its most ideal form, news writing strives to be intelligible to the vast majority of potential readers, as well as to be engaging and succinct. Within the limits created by these goals, news stories also aim for a kind of comprehensiveness. However other factors are involved, some of which are practical and derived from the media form, and others stylistic. Expository writing is a mode of writing in which the purpose of the author is to inform, explain, describe, or define his or her subject to the reader. ... Journalism ethics or journalistic ethics refers to a set of rules or morals adopted by news organizations or members of the news media. ... Objectivity is frequently held to be essential to journalistic professionalism (particularly in the United States); however, there is some disagreement about what the concept consists of. ... Sensationalism is a manner of being extremely controversial, loud, attention-grabbing, or otherwise sensationalistic. ... A profession is a specialized work function within society, generally performed by a professional. ... A news agency is an organization of journalists established to supply news reports to organizations in the news trade: newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. ...

Among the larger and more respected newspapers, fairness and balance is a major factor for the presentation of information. Commentary is usually confined to a separate section, though each paper may have a different overall slant. Editorial policy dictates the use of adjectives, euphemisms, and idioms. Papers with an international audience for example, usually use a more formal style of writing.

The specific choices made by a news outlet's editor or editorial board are often collected in a style guide or stylebook; common commercial stylebooks are the "AP Style Manual" and the "US News Style Book". The main goals of news writing can be summarized by the ABCs of journalism: accuracy, brevity, and clarity.^[1] Style guides generally give guidance on language use. ...

Terms and structure

Journalistic prose is explicit and precise, and tries not to rely on jargon. As a rule, journalists will not use a long word when a short one will do. They use subject-verb-object construction and vivid, active prose. They offer anecdotes, examples and metaphors, and they rarely depend on colorless generalizations or abstract ideas. News writers try to avoid using the same word more than once in a paragraph (sometimes called an "echo" or "word mirror").

The most important structural element of a story is the lede —namely contained in the story's first sentence. Lede (pronounced /lid/) is a traditional spelling, from the archaic English,^[2] used to avoid confusion with the printing press type formerly made from lead or the typographical term "leading".^[3] The lede is usually the first sentence, or in some cases the first two sentences, and is ideally 20-25 words in length. The top-loading principle applies especially to ledes, but the unreadability of long sentences constrains its size. This makes writing a lede an optimization problem, in which the goal is to articulate the most encompassing and interesting statement that a writer can make in one sentence, given the material with which he or she has to work. While a rule of thumb says the lede should answer most or all of the 5 Ws, few ledes can fit all of these. The printing press is a mechanical device for printing many copies of a text on rectangular sheets of paper. ... For Pb as an abbreviation, see PB. General Name, Symbol, Number lead, Pb, 82 Chemical series Post-transition metals or poor metals Group, Period, Block 14, 6, p Appearance bluish gray Standard atomic weight 207. ... In typography, leading (IPA , rhymes with heading) refers to the amount of added vertical spacing between lines of type. ... In journalism, the Five Ws, also known as the Five Ws (and one H) or simply the Six Ws, is a concept in news style, research, and in police investigations that most people consider to be fundamental. ...

Many people who critiize the media often note how the lede often contain inflammatory or misleading statements to the facts presented in the article. Often times, they argue, that ledes serve to disintrest the reader from the whole article, while "sticking" the editors agenda in their head via the lede.

Inverted pyramid

Journalism instructors usually describe the organization or structure of a news story as an inverted pyramid. The journalist top-loads the essential and most interesting elements of his or her story, with supporting information following in order of diminishing importance. The inverted pyramid is a graphical metaphor that is most often used to illustrate how information should be arranged or presented within a text, in particular within a news story. ...

This structure enables readers to quit reading at any point and still come away with the essence of a story. It allows people to enter a topic to the depth that their curiosity takes them, and without the imposition of details or nuances that they would consider irrelevant.

Newsroom practicalities represent another rationale. The inverted pyramid structure enables sub-editors and other news staff to quickly create space for ads and late-breaking news simply by cutting paragraphs from the bottom ("cutting", literally, at the papers that still use traditional paste up techniques). The structure frees sub-editors to truncate stories at almost any length that suits their needs for space. Paste up refers to a method of laying out newspaper pages without using computerized page design programs. ...

Poor structure typically begins with a faulty lede. Steeped in the raw material of their interviews and research, apprentice news writers often fail to anticipate what readers will find most interesting or to sum up the information quickly. These elements of their story they present only after their lede and in an article's later paragraphs. This is the reason for the popular newsroom admonition: "Don't bury the lede!" In news style writing, burying the lede is beginning a piece with details of secondary importance to the reader, while postponing more essential points of fact or narration. ...

Some writers start their stories with the "1-2-3 lede". This format invariably starts with a 5W opening paragraph (as described above), followed by an indirect quote that serves to support a major element of the first paragraph, and then a direct quote to support the indirect quote..

Feature style

News stories aren't the only type of material that appear in newspapers and magazines. Longer articles, such as magazine cover articles and the pieces that lead the inside sections of a newspaper, are known as features. Feature stories differ from straight news in several ways. Foremost is the absence of a straight-news lede, most of the time. Instead of offering the essence of a story up front, feature writers may attempt to lure readers in. A feature story is an article in a newspaper, a magazine, or a news website that isnt meant to report breaking news, but to take an in-depth look at issues behind a news story, often concentrating on background events, persons or circumstances. ...

While straight news stories always stay in third person point of view, it's not uncommon for a feature magazine article to slip into first person. The journalist will often detail his or her interactions with his interview subjects, making the piece more personal.

A feature's first paragraphs often relate an intriguing moment or event, as in an "anecdotal lede". From the particulars of a person or episode, its view quickly broadens to generalities about the story's subject.

The section that signals what a feature is about is called the nut graf or billboard. Billboards appear as the third or fourth paragraph from the top, and may be up to two paragraphs long. Unlike a lede, a billboard rarely gives everything away. This reflects the fact that feature writers aim to hold their readers' attention to the end, which requires engendering curiosity and offering a "payoff." Feature paragraphs tend to be longer than those of news stories, with smoother transitions between them. Feature writers use the active-verb construction and concrete explanations of straight news, but often put more personality in their prose. Look up Nut graf in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Feature stories often close with a "kicker" rather than simply petering out.

See also

• Article (publishing)

An article is a stand-alone section of a larger written work. ...

References

Further reading

• Ellis, Barbara G. The Copy Editing and Headline Handbook (2007)
• Walter Fox. Writing the News: A Guide for Print Journalists (2001)
• Linda Jorgensen. Real-World Newsletters (1999)
• Mark Levin. The Reporter's Notebook : Writing Tools for Student Journalists (2000)
• Buck Ryan and Michael O'Donnell. The Editor's Toolbox: A Reference Guide for Beginners and Professionals, (2001)
• Allan M. Siegal and William G. Connolly. The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage: The Official Style Guide Used by the Writers and Editors of the World's Most Authoritative Newspaper, (2002)
• M. L. Stein, Susan Paterno, and R. Christopher Burnett, The Newswriter's Handbook Introduction to Journalism (2006)
• Bryan A. Garner. The Winning Brief: 100 Tips for Persuasive Briefing in Trial and Appellate Court (1999)
• Philip Gerard, Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life (1998)
• Steve Peha and Margot Carmichael Lester, Be a Writer: Your Guide to the Writing Life (2006)
• Andrea Sutcliffe. New York Public Library Writer's Guide to Style and Usage, (1994)
• Bill Walsh, The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English (2004)

External links

Look up lede in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Basic News Writing
• lede at the Maven's Word of the Day