WRITING FOR NEWSPAPERS

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 495.

Text 1

TASK 1

Now you can practice the skills in analyzing news stories. You are offered to split into small groups (or if you wish you may work in pairs) and find any news story in American or British newspapers (or their e-versions on the Internet). Read these stories and identify how the above described discourse categories are reflected in these particular articles. Present your analysis to your groupmates. If you wish you may analyze a news story from the “Supplementary reading” Text 1.

You will agree that all extralinguistic peculiarities are realized in a news story with the help of certain linguistic devices. Though we identify a newspaper style as a separate one, its different genres have some distinguished features. Now it is high time you learnt some things about the linguistic peculiarities of a news story.

& READING AND DISCUSSING 1

You are going to read some useful information about the language of a news item. After reading try to formulate short rules about the linguistic features of this genre.

As a reporter, you should use simple and straightforward language. You also need to get the balance right between being formal enough to sound authoritative but also using the language that is lacking in stuffiness.

As a general rule you should not be using colloquial language or slang apart from in quotes. However, some newspapers do use terms like “cops” and “town hall chiefs” and you need to find out your newspaper's policy on these.

Even if you do not use slang, you need to make sure you are only using words that people use in everyday conversation. For example, never write “in addition to” because a person in the street would be unlikely to say this. Use “as well as” instead.

You also need to make sure you are concise. This means you should go through every story after you have written it to make sure there are no words that do not need to be there. As the maxim goes, if in doubt, take it out.