Tweaks

Someone made up all these rules about grammar so we can have silly little debates about them. It's kind of like having more than one fork at a dinner table. It adds confusion to a normally pleasant affair. The purpose of language is to communicate in a way that is understood. Pointing out the use of "than me" rather than "than I am" as improper grammar usage is
ridiculous nitpicking.
-- Susie Plemmons

I begin to believe seriously that large numbers of the American people are completely incapable of understanding English. Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence. I ascribe all this to the public schools.
They have been debauching the American mind for years..
-- H.L. Mencken

When I urge writers to strive for cadence, I hope not to be
misunderstood. The idea is not to write sing-song stuff, in which words and phrases are self-consciously warped to a particular rhythm. The music of words can't be scored for kettledrum. Let us not be obvious. We can often
improve a sentence by imperceptible recasting.
-- James J. Kilpatrick

We tell stories in order to feel at home in the universe.
-- Roger Bingham

The most valued quality of the language of journalism is clarity, and its most desired effect is to be understood.
-- Roy Peter Clark

Approach every story as if you were writing a letter to an individual reader who knows nothing about the subject with which you are dealing.
-- Turner Catledge

Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective.
-- W. H. Auden

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which
hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer or the roots of the pine.
-- Henry David Thoreau

When I was a young reporter, the great vice of many journalists was whiskey. Today it's cynicism.
-- Paul Simon

I was going to be a sportswriter until my second year of it, in college, when I noticed the coaches were saying the same things they said the year before. Again, though, the best sportswriters REBEL against this and invent new forms.
-- Bob Baker

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We've been given a "no-no" list of things never to say in memos, reports, etc. Many are good like "thank you in advance" or "at this point in time". But others are just things that many people use wrong like starting a sentence with "However." It's incredibly infuriating to people like me who know how to use grammar, to be prohibited from writing effectively because of poor usage by others.
-- Bob Levey

One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment.
-- Hart Crane

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights, but you make the whole trip that way.
-- E.L. Doctorow

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if it were possible, speak a few reasonable words.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Inside my empty bottle I was building a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.
-- Charles Simic

Reveal character traits to the reader through scenes, details, and dialogue.
-- Roy Peter Clark

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about
he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.
-- Ernest Hemingway

Our work as journalists is based on a particular view of citizens: that they care about their rights, the conduct of their government, their role in governing - that they care about the country as a whole. No matter the period in history, journalism in a democratic society has a continuous duty to offer information that is accurate, rich in context and history, balanced and able to withstand peer review.
Source: Maria Henson, The Sacramento Bee

In essence, Hemingway's dictum of writing about what you know has become an excuse for avoiding risks. Since Hemingway wrote about a wide mix of people, some American, some not, it's clear the great writer wasn't advising those who took up his craft to isolate themselves from the world . . . What you know might be something you took the time and went somewhere to discover.
Source: Stanley Crouch, "The Artificial White Man"

What is the reader's level of tolerance? In other words, based on the background he brings to the story, what do you have to do to make sure he reads it? How much luxury do you have in constructing your story? How many paragraphs can you take in getting to the essence? What do you have to do to hold the reader's interest once you get it? The variables are different in each story.
Source: Bob Baker, author of "Newsthinking"

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. Often the less complex and less subtle the line, the more ambiguous and less interesting is the reading. Stripping the detail out of data is a style based on personal preference and fashion, considerations utterly indifferent to substantive comment.
Source: Edward R. Tufte, author of "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"

As you analyze good writing, ask yourself:
a) What kind of lead was used? Was it a straight narrative, or was it a vignette? Narrative writing acts as a story's "strong spine" that carries you to the end.
b) How did the sentences go together? Was there a rhythm to the prose?
What happens if you take one sentence out? The best writers make that very hard, if not impossible, because each sentence springs from the one before, and each paragraph does the same.
c) How did they use their quotes to tell the story? When did they stop to do the "housekeeping of attribution"? A tip: A writer uses quotes well if you can understand what the story is about by reading just the quotes. If you can't, you need to work on quote-taking by interviewing your friends and relatives.
d) Does the writer break the contract with the reader? When you get into a really good story - fiction or nonfiction - you're making your own movie out of it. The contract is the obligation of the writer to stay out of the way so that the reader can make his own "mind movie" of the story. Anything that breaks the concentration, that calls attention to the fact there's a writer here, when the writer gets between the subject and reader, then the writer's gone too far.
e) Why you were touched?
Source: Mary Knoblauch, Chicago Tribune writing coach

Question: For nonfiction descriptions of people, what should I keep in mind?

Answer: The way they use their eyes. The way they use (or hide) their hands. Their habits and tics, such as tapping a finger, pointing eyeglasses, laughing too loud. The special way they walk or sit. Also ask yourself, would the reader be able to identify the person you're writing about if he were seen in a group of ten people?
Source: Sol Stein, author of "Stein on Writing"

Good writers collect information voraciously, which usually means that they take notes like crazy. They are more concerned with the quality of information than with flourishes of style. They prefer to describe themselves as "reporters" rather than as "writers." They regard the title "reporter" as a badge of honor.
Source: Roy Peter Clark and Don Fry, "Coaching Writers"

I have often told reporters and my students to look for a person or institution with three qualities: wealth, power, secretiveness. The questions are obvious: "What have they done to generate such wealth?" "How did they gain their power, and how do they wield it?" and "Do they have something to hide? If not, why are they so secretive?" From this angle, secretiveness can be seen as a virtue. Writers are often deterred by someone who won't talk, yet closemouthedness should be a signal of something worth discovering.
Source: James B. Stewart, "Follow the Story"

The basic idea is to get reporters to work on their own ideas. Editors should realize that reporters often do have ideas inside their heads, but they may need to learn how to articulate them and how to develop them into stories. The editor's job is to teach and guide them.
Source: William Blundell, author of "The Art and Craft of Feature Writing"

Make me laugh. Make me cry. Tell me my place in the world. Lift me out of my skin and place me in another. Show me places I have never visited and carry me to the ends of time and space. Give my demons names and help me to confront them. Demonstrate for me possibilities I've never thought of and present me with heroes who will give me courage and hope. Ease my sorrows and increase my joy. Teach me compassion. Entertain and enchant and enlighten me.
Tell me a story.
Source: Dennis O'Neil, "The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics"

Narrative denotes writing with (A) set scenes, (B) characters, (C) action that unfolds over time, (D) the interpretable voice of a teller - a narrator with a somewhat discernable personality -- and (E) some sense of relationship to the reader, viewer or listener, which, all arrayed, (F) lead the audience toward a point, realization or destination.
Source: Mark Kramer, Nieman narrative program

Cutline tips
1. Cross-check the facts. Compare every fact in your cutline to the story and to the photographer's information.
2. Check the date. Before you write, determine when the photo was taken. Is it fresh or file?
3. Don't assume anything. Never attribute an emotion to someone unless you're certain how that person really feels.
4. Take one last look. Because cutlines are so well-read, typos stand out and spoil even the best efforts.
5. Don't repeat information that's in the headline, lede or deck. Use your cutline to enhance the overall package and help explain the story.
Source: Bob Howard, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

There is an inner ear. Sometimes you can hear it when you are reading a story quietly, and it is very difficult to explain - but it is musical. It is rhythmic.
Source: Martin Merzer, The Miami Herald

The classic newsman digs by day and drinks by night. Loves
scoundrels and underdogs. Writes tight, bright, juicy.
-- David von Drehle, The Washington Post

You can't serve the public good without the truth as a bottom
line
-- Carl Bernstein, former Washington Post reporter

You erode credibility every time you use an anonymous source
-- William B. Ketter, editor-in-chief of the Lawrence, Mass., Eagle-Tribune

Today we recur to fundamental questions: What is a writer's duty to his readers? And what is a writer's duty to herself? We're off again on the intractable topic of Hard Words.
First, we're not talking about fiction. In that genre, an author's
first obligation is to hold his readers captive to his characters and his plot. Many authors who can write delightful novels would be flops at covering political debate. Neither are we talking about writing in specialized fields of prose composition. The English language has hundreds -- probably thousands -- of sub-vocabularies, ranging from astrology to zoology.
-- James J. Kilpatrick, Universal Press Syndicate

Two types of leads used by inexperienced writers usually fail: quotations and questions. The quotation lead is generally ineffective because most quotations need explanation to be understood, and explanatory material can slow down the lead. Besides, any writer who can't write better than most people speak, is in the wrong field. Having said all that, we should point out that ... in writing all rules are made to be broken. As for questions, a good rule to follow is that a writer's job is to answer them, not ask them.
Source: Andre Fontaine and William A. Glavin, "The Art of Writing Nonfiction"

All good stories have a structure, a backbone, which unifies even seemingly disparate elements. The presence of structure reassures readers that they are in the hands of a skilled storyteller, someone they can trust with their time and interest. They know they are going somewhere, which means they can relax and enjoy the journey.
Source: James B. Stewart, "Follow the Story"

I guess it gets back to being a police reporter and working for this editor. His name was Dick Thomas, and he was an assistant city editor. You would send in a story and he would call back and say, "Are you sure this was Southwest Portland?" "Are you sure it was a one-way street?" "Are you sure the cop had a revolver and not a pistol?" It was beaten into you. You didn't want him to call, and when he called, you'd better have the answer. Working under that system for so many years, I learned to ask all the questions and to really look at the details. At first, it was just a matter of having the details for my story. As I got more into feature writing, I realized that the details were like little bombs going off. They could do so many things in a story and say so much in a way that I, as a writer, could not.
Source: Tom Hallman, The Oregonian

The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.
-- Henry David Thoreau, 1848

If terms like "value-added" and "thinking outside the box" make you want to jam a laser pointer into your eye, you are not alone in your suffering. Having been asked to "leverage their core competencies" one too many times, workers all across the country are offering up a collective response: Stop the insanity.
By Kate M. Jackson, The Boston Globe

Select the right story. Find a story that not only excites you, but has impact on the lives of your readers. Stories that expose a clear danger, a social ill or a significant problem are typically far more compelling than the trend stories made popular in the age of computer-assisted reporting.
Source: Melvin Claxton, The Detroit News

For assigning editors:

Brief: Talk with your reporters before they go out about:
-- potential sources
-- likely length
-- necessary visuals
-- what the story might be about.

Debrief: Talk with your reporters when they return about:
-- what the story's about
-- why the readers should read it
-- the most important points (sections)
-- graphics needed
-- negotiated length.
Source: Don Fry, writing coach

Have you ever been to a concert where the performer introduced each song with a rambling explanation of how the ditty came to him? I want to scream, "Just shut up and sing already!"
Our readers feel the same way about many of our stories. We need to know the inner workings of the institutions we cover to fully understand and report their actions. But we mustn't dump every bit of information we know into our stories just because we went to the trouble of gathering it. We find the political and bureaucratic processes that produce the news far more interesting than our readers do. Information about process sometimes is relevant to the news, but the process rarely is the news.
This is impact: "The average homeowner's property tax will go up $ 100 a year as a result of the 3-percent increase passed by the City Council last night."
This is process: "The 3-percent property tax increase passed by the City Council last night was the culmination of months of bitter Council infighting."
Write the impact.
Source: David Shapiro, The Quill

Be careful of labels: radical, extremist, racist, fanatic, hired gun, vigilante, liberal, conservative, victim, scab, redneck, bureaucrat, cult, militant, deadbeat dad. "Positive" labels may be inappropriate, too: expert, moderate, environmentalist, child advocate, consumer, and advocate. They are all loaded words.
Source: John Rains, The Fayetteville Observer

Reading aloud isn't part of the print-reporting culture. So few newspaper and magazine writers take advantage of this simple polishing tool. Reporters whose words will soon appear before hundreds of thousands of readers are shy about being overheard by the reporter at the next desk. Freelancers who work alone don't even have that lame excuse. If they don't read aloud, they're skipping one of easiest -- and best -- ways to put the final polish on a piece of writing. I read everything I write aloud in my normal cadences. I almost never fail to find some way to improve what I've written. When I read this manuscript aloud, I made 36 changes. And that was after reading the full draft a half-dozen times on my computer screen, as well as a printed version.
Source: Jack Hart, The Oregonian

Clichés, which spare the speaker or writer the effort of original
thought, can be especially unclear. Consider the range of possible meanings
of canned language like:

• "Out of the box"
• "(Taking something) to the next level"
• "Stepping up"
• "Ratcheting up"
• "Taking ownership"
• "Embracing change"
• "Zero tolerance"
  -- By Scott M. Libin, The Poynter Institute

In every story, find one thing that pleases you. One detail, one line, one scene, one bit of dialogue - that makes you happy. Even if they cut it out. Report little stories like big ones, so when a big one comes, you recognize it.
Source: Kelley Benham, St. Petersburg Times

To stay creative as a writer and editor:
Feed your mind: Explore a lot of different sources, especially for different thoughts. For example, read a book of poetry, take a class. Do yoga with your brain.
Source: Tommy Tomlinson, Charlotte Observer

Keep a lookout for new teachers. They are everywhere, often in unexpected places and packages.
Source: Mary Ann Hogan, writing coach

Write in scenes. Get two people talking to each other, rather than just interviewing one on one. I like to watch as they talk and argue. It creates good dialogue.
Source: Barry Newman, Wall Street Journal

We went into the business to tell stories. Writing novels is just another way to tell stories.
Your job as a reporter can help you write fiction.
-- You can collect stories on your beat.
-- Learn a mastery of dialogue.
-- Write what you know, and you know a lot.
Source: Tanya Barrientos, novelist and Philadelphia Inquirer

History is the lies we tell about dead people. Culture is comprised of the lies we tell about ourselves or other people.
-- Steve Devitt, sage

 

Sweet words are like honey: a little may refresh, but too much gluts the stomach.
-- Anne Bradstreet

Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with a first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing.
-- Richard North Patterson

How can you tell if your editor is a good editor? Simple! An editor who is worth his or her salt will never tell the writer how to fix a problem, though he or she may be willing to discuss how to fix it if the writer insists; once pointed out, it is the writer's job to fix the problem in the way that seems best and most logical to the writer.
-- Colleen McCullough

The good writer knows how to use quotes. He knows to use them as punctuation, as transition, as reinforcement. He knows never to use them redundantly, long windedly, or confusingly. The quote is just newspaperdom's sound bite -- a device to move the piece along, to get the reader from here to there -- by adding a dollop of fact or a dash of amusement. The good writer always uses quotes, and always uses them sparingly. But it takes a good ear to get a good quote.
-- Michael Gartner

 

No self-respecting bee ever sat down without leaving a sting.
-- William Polk of the Greensboro News & Record.

No two snowflakes are identical, but their differences are seldom important. No two people, no two situations, no two oak trees are identical, either. Your job is to sort out the important differences.
Source: The Missouri Group, Beyond the Inverted Pyramid

Clear writing begins with clear understanding.
Source: Don Fry, writing coach

Resist easy answers in framing and presenting stories. There can be multiple layers to stories, and context is needed for readers and viewers to better understand a community or issue.
Source: Annie Nakao, San Francisco Examiner

Language, itself, is a collection of metaphors, or words that stand in for things. One points to a bug and exclaims "Beetle!" but the word is not the thing. No fact could be more obvious than that, but like many obvious facts, the metaphorical nature of language seems to slip out of our minds. The minute a word has been invented to stand for a thing, it becomes useful for other purposes.
Source: Jeanne Murray Walker, "The Journalist's Craft"

Get into the habit of often using the phrase "Tell me more."
Source: David Cay Johnston, New York Times

You should spend as much time reading as writing, or you'll never get over the high jump bar to better prose. Read very good papers, like the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New York, St. Petersburg, and Los Angeles Times.
Source: David Halberstam, author of "The Best and the Brightest"

If your story has conflict, emphasize it. It helps. Conflict always makes a story better. And remember that on the front page, by paragraph five, you have to have the outrage factor.
Source: Mary Hadar, The Washington Post

You're looking for humanity. If the story is about real people doing something, then there will often be the opportunity for some kind of narrative touch. That said, never force it. If a story has possibilities, exploit them.
If the story appears to have no possibilities, don't try to inflict narrative elements where they're not welcome. It won't work.
For instance, if you're covering a meeting and there's an explosive or humorous or contentious exchange, report it as dialogue. Set a little scene. Show us the coffee cup bouncing on the table as the county board chairman slammed his fist down for emphasis, or the way the undersecretary grew pale and dropped his pen at the outburst.
But if you're covering a meeting and everything goes according to the agenda and the discussion is just normal discussion, nobody is going to want to read a scene about that, so skip it. Just tell me what they decided.
Source: Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses.
Source: Flannery O'Connor, "Mystery and Manners"

Descriptions should be very brief and have an incidental nature.
Source: Anton Chekhov

Think of yourself as a painter in words. The problems are similar. You must make decisions about inclusions and exclusions, angles, color and light, sharpness or lack thereof, and distance. You can use the impressionistic techniques or expressionistic, the real, the super-real, the surreal.
Source: Peter J. Jacobi, "The Magazine Article"

If you propose to write about the advent of spring, to write effectively about it, you must go to the countryside and look at spring intently: How does a twig grow? How does a bud swell? How does the green leaf uncurl? Is the leaf green? What tint or shade of green? Consider the dogwood blossom, how it grows, the promise of drowsy summer in its chalice. One must smell the earth, put his hands in it, marvel at the tangle of roots and leaves and humus.
Source: James Kilpatrick, "The Writer's Art"

What I love about daily journalism is that I could fail on Monday but I could succeed on Tuesday.
Source: Mark Thompson, Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau

The meaning of the story comes out of the story itself, and is not imposed on the story.
Source: Ezra Pound

A live metaphor is one that that evokes in a reader a mental picture of the imagery of its origin; a dead one does not.
Source: Sir Ernest Gowers, "The Complete Plain Words"

Style is the manner of a sentence, not its matter. But the distinction between manner and matter is a slippery one, for manner affects matter. When Time (magazine) used to tell us that President Truman slouched into one room, while General Eisenhower strode into another, their manner was trying to prejudice our feelings.
Source: Donald Hall, poet

I started these notebooks where I was just teaching myself how to write. I'd pick out things to describe, from a pencil to a man's shoe, to the way a streetlight looks reflected in a puddle of water. I'd put down wisecracks and quips, the dialogue that I'd overhead, the way things sound, trying to reproduce reality in words. I'd be doing that all day, and writing on slips of paper that I'd stick in my shirt pocket. Then I'd go home at night, take out the slips of paper, type them out, and amplify them and edit them and so on because I wanted to learn how to write.
Source: Henry Allen, The Washington Post

Clarity is not the only reason to write short sentences. Let's look at suspense and emotional power, what some people call the "Jesus wept" effect. To express Jesus's profound sadness at learning of the death of his friend Lazarus, the Gospel writer uses the shortest possible sentence. Two words. Subject and verb. "Jesus wept."
Source: Roy Peter Clark, co-author of "Coaching Writers"

A man may be a heretic in truth, and if he believes things only because his pastor says so, or the Assembly so determines, without knowing other reason though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds be comes his heresy.
-- John Milton, "Areopagitica: a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England" (1644)

There be who perpetually complain of schisms and sects, and make it such a calamity that any man dissents from their maxims. 'Tis their own pride and ignorance which causes the disturbing ... They are the troublers, they are the dividers of unity, who neglect and permit not others to unite those dissevered pieces which are yet wanting to the body of Truth.
--John Milton, "Areopagitica"

Readers don't simply read. They evaluate what you write: agree with it, disagree with it, identify with it, become angry or uncomfortable because of it. And all the while, readers are asking themselves if it's worth their while to read on, or it their time might not be spent more enjoyably reading something else, listening to music, watching television, or just staring into space.
Source: Barry Tarshis, How to Write like a Pro

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
Source: Ursula Le Guin, novelist

The journalist wrote:
"We saw the sea sucked away by the heaving of the earth ... a fearful black cloud forked with great tongues of fire lashed at the heavens and torrents of ash began to pour from the sky.
"Although it was daytime, we were enveloped by night - not a oonless night or one dimmed by cloud - but the darkness of a sealed room without light."
The journalist was Pliny the Younger. The event was the volcanic eruption that eradicated Pompeii in 79 A.D. Pliny wasn't satisfied telling us that the disaster was awful or terrible or unforgettable or awesome. He used nouns and verbs to show us what occurred.
Source: Peter P. Jacobi, "The Magazine Article"

Good writing is accomplished by writers who have stopped trying to sound like writers and have learned to sound like themselves.
Source: Don DeLillo, novelist

I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end. This is accomplished only when the narrative moves steadily ahead, not when it comes to a weary standstill, overloaded with every item uncovered in the research.
Source: Barbara Tuchman, historian

It's the monosyllables that are the bedrock and life of the language. And I believe that is so with Shakespeare. The high words, the high phrases, he sets up to then bring them down to the simple ones which explain them. Like "making the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red." First there is the high language, then the specific clear definition. ... Deep feeling probably comes out in monosyllables. He teemed with word invention but in some way the living power of the language comes from the interplay of the two.
Source: John Barton, Royal Shakespeare Company