Writing naturally Posted on June 10, 2022 at 02:53:41 PM by Grammar Cop
People in broadcast should be masters at wordsmithery. Today, they need a little help because newsspeak is filled with both igorance and a certain cultism that does not respect the King's language.
A few thoughts for thouse with journalism degrees which today just specialize in media studies and craftsmanship and not communication skills and language:|
1. Ironically is not a synonym for Coincidentally. Those who use the former should Google it so they'll stop misusing it in situations when irony is not present.
2. There are several style books on clear writing. Written words and phrases are styled differently than spoken ones.
Spoken words, written only as scripts to be said aloud, tend to be short, declarative, and free of dependent clauses. Often repetitive and often just incomplete phrases which would make your high school teacher get out her red pen.
Spoken words are simple words and broadcasters are taught to write to the vocabulary of "the Kansas City milkman." Only English professors who read a great deal and people like CBS' late Edwin Newman and Bill Buckley Jr actually speak written prose naturally.
Say 'buy' or 'bought', not 'purchased(ed)" We TELL, we don't read written copy aloud. We don't say "persons" which is correct, we say "People" which is not but it is more commonly used, thanks to Barbra Streisand's song of the same name.
The best way to get into scriptwriting is to "Talk to your Typewriter" whenever you write copy for others to say aloud.
3. Police, who tend to dictate their reports and use jargon only cops use have a robotic syntax you should avoid. It's 'copspeak. and newscasters should substitute it with PLAIN ENGLISH.
"Juveniles" is copspeak and should be replaced in your copy with more ordinary words like: youngster, teenager, man woman, accused gunman, or 15 year old.
Use "dead", not "Deceased" and that example alone should show you the difference between jargon and natural wording. You can think of so many others, like 'the person' or 'man', not 'the individual' or 'the suspect.'
Avoid common mistakes most people had drilled out of them by teachers. "Often" is spelled with a T, but not pronounced "OFF-ton." It's pronounced "OFF-en."
Similarly, avoid overusing tiresome newsspeak phrases like "...threw his hat into the ring in the gubernatorial race." Replace it with "...is running for governor."
These overused phrases are trite and a waste of readers' and listeners' time. They sound like news copy, and news readers are trying to create the illusion they are TELLING the news, not READING it aloud.
4. Networks are now copying the most recent disaster to infiltrate news, I call "ABC Newsspeak" which conveys less accuracy and more of an impression of 'urgency'. The technique can be irritating once listeners recognize its repetition.
The style is to leave listeners with the impression their news is always happening right now, in real time. To achieve this language abuse it to write copy free of VERBS in order to add drama of immediacy.
At all costs, todays newspeak reporters are forbidden to use past tense verbs or passive voice. Among examples:
"forty people killed in the attack" (verb deliberately omitted) instead of forty people WERE killed". (passive voice now forbidden by producers.) The inaccuracy is that by avoiding the passive voice verb, the actual sentence meaning is that '40 people killed OTHER people' rather than they 'got killed' by someone else. So were the 40 victims or killers? All of this was a deliberate attempt to sacrifice accuracy for the impression of immediatacy. Or put another way, sacrificing CLARITY for BREVITY.
A classic example is "the family dying of their wounds" or "a family dies in the early morning shooting Friday."
More, class, or did you fall asleep enduring my rough draft for another venue? Feel free to criticize, correct, whine or just call me something other than my name, "Grammar Cop."
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