Analysis of brief news items

To "bury the lead" in news style refers to beginning a description with details of secondary importance to the readers, forcing them to read more deeply into an article than they should have to in order to discover the essential point(s).

Article leads are sometimes categorized into hard leads and soft leads. A hard lead aims to provide a comprehensive thesis which tells the reader what the article will cover. A soft lead introduces the topic in a more creative, attention-seeking fashion, and is usually followed by a nut graph (a brief summary of facts).

Media critics often note that the lead can be the most polarizing subject in the article. Often critics accuse the article of bias based on an editor's choice of headline and or lead. For example: Lead-and-Summary Design Humans will be going to the moon again. The NASA announcement came as the agency requested ten trillion dollars of appropriations for the project. ... For example: Soft-Lead Design NASA is proposing another space project. The agency's budget request, announced today, included a plan to send another person to the moon. This time the agency hopes to establish a long-term facility as a jumping-off point for other space adventures. The budget requests approximately ten trillion dollars for the project. .

"Add the product of another author" Bill Parks writing "Basic news The Lead".

The lead is usually the toughest part of writing a story. The lead is the first word, sentence or paragraph of the story. Sometimes it can be two or three paragraphs. Whatever its length, the lead has several important jobs to do. First, it must interest the reader in the rest of the story. Imagine the reader as impatient, with lots of other things he or she could be doing instead of reading your story.

Imagine the reader saying, "Get to the POINT! Don't waste my time! Tell me the STORY!" If your reader were stranded on a desert island with nothing to read but your story, you could probably get away with a vague, rambling lead. But today's reader has a BART train to catch, the kids are fighting again and the TV never stops blaring. Your story has tough competition. Surveys have shown that most people say they get their news from TV, but many then turn to newspapers for the details behind the headlines. Your job is to write a short, punchy, informative lead to attract readers who have grown accustomed to TV's "sound bite" journalism. But then you must supply the details, the insights, the context that TV doesn't have time for. What are the rules for a good lead? Keep it short. News writing is always tight, but the lead calls for special care. Condense your story into one sentence, then one phrase, then one word. Make sure that word is near the beginning of the lead. As a general rule, no lead sentence should be longer than 10 words.

Get to the point. What is the story about?

Tell the reader in the lead. Don't say, "The city council met last night." Tell the reader what the city council did. "Business taxes were raised a whopping 30 percent on a 6-1 vote of the city council last night." What's the story about? Taxes. So get taxes in the lead.

Focus on the action. Use the "active voice." Use the action word. If nobody did anything, it may not be a news story.

Hook the reader. Put the most important, the most interesting, the most exciting thing in the lead. A novel may take 100 pages to lead up to the climax of the story; a news story puts the climax first and then explains what led up to it. These rules are sometimes thrown out for feature leads, or "anecdotal leads" that start with a little story that sets the scene for the point you are trying to make. But the lean, punchy news lead will work best on most stories. [11, 87]

How to write a news lead?

1. Condense story into one or two words. Put those words as close to the beginning of the first sentence as possible without destroying the flow of the lead sentence.

2. Keep leads short — 20 to 30 words for the first sentence. Or fewer. 3. The news lead should tell the reader what the story is about and be interesting enough to draw the reader into the rest of the story. Remember that the readers won’t know what the story is about until you tell them. 4. Find the action in the story. Put the action in the lead. 5. Always double-check names and numbers. Check spelling, style and grammar. Put everything in order. 6. Attribute opinions. Stick with the facts. 7. Details, description. Report first, then write. Learn all, tell 10 percent. 8. Decide which of the news values best applies to the lead of the story. Write a lead that emphasizes that news value. 9. Write in the active voice. 10. Don’t lead with a name, time or place unless that is the most interesting important thing in the story. English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phrase logical and grammatical means which is perceived by the community speaking the language as a separate unity that basically serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader. Since the primary function of newspaper style is to impart information, only printed matter serving this purpose comes under newspaper style proper. The most concise form of newspaper informational is the headline. The headlines of news items, apart from giving information about the subject matter, also carry a considerable amount of appraisal (the size and arrangement of the headline, the use of emotionally colored words and elements of emotive syntax), thus indicating the interpretation of the facts in the news item that follows.

The function of a brief news item is to inform the reader. It states only facts without giving comments. Newspaper style has its specific vocabulary features and is characterized by an extensive use of: 1. Special political and economic terms; 2. Non-term political vocabulary; 3. Newspaper; 4. Abbreviations; 5. Neologisms. The following grammatical peculiarities of brief news items are of paramount importance, and may be regarded as grammatical parameters of newspaper style: 1. Complex sentences with a developed system of clauses; 2. Verbal constructions; 3. Syntactical complexes; 4. Attributive noun groups; 5. Specific word order.

The function of advertisement and announcement is to inform the reader. There are 2 basic types of advertisements and announcements in the modern English newspaper: classified and non-classified (separate). In classified advertisements and announcements various kinds of information are arranged according to subject-matter into sections, each bearing an appropriate name.

As for the separate advertisements and announcements, the variety of language form and subject-matter is so great that hardly any essential features common to all be pointed out. The editorial Editorials are an intermediate phenomenon bearing the stamp of both the newspaper style and the publistic style.  The function of the editorial is to influence the reader by giving an interpretation of certain facts. Emotional coloring in editorial articles is also achieved with the help of various stylistic devices (especially metaphors and epithets), both lexical and syntactical, the use of which is largely traditional. [13, 44]

 

 

CHAPTER 2

THE PECULIARITIES OF PUBLIC TEXTS IN ENGLISH

 

2.1 Mass Media Language

The world of the media is an area where it is important not to confuse the object with the language. There are newspapers; there is radio; there is television. But there is no such thing as a variety of newspaper language; or of radio language; or of television language . The media reflect all aspects of the human condition, and make available to the public many varieties of language already well known elsewhere, such as those associated with religion, politics, science, and literature, and the more topic-directed aspects of conversation (for example: discussion, interview, debate, argument). When we apply the notion of a language variety to the media, we have to look within each product (a newspaper, a radio or TV channel) for uses of language which have been shaped by the nature of the medium, or whose purpose is to make use of the capabilities provided by the medium. And here, the communication and presentation of news is dominant.

The reporting of news, whether in the spoken or written media, reflects one of the most difficult and constraining situations to be found in the area of language use. The chief constraint is the perpetual battle against the pressures of time and space. These pressures are absolutes. To fit a column, 20 words need to be cut. To fit a radio window, 16 seconds of a script may need to go. There is no argument. If the writer of the original material does not meet the demand, someone else higher up the editorial chain of command will do it instead. The average news report, whether printed or broadcast, is the product of many hands , journalists, editors (chief / check / copy / page sub-editors), typesetters, proofreaders, compositors, printers. There are several distinctive linguistic features of the reporting. Most relate fairly to those  who, when, where, what, how and why, which journalists bear in mind when compiling a story. The headline is critical, summarizing and drawing attention to the story. Its telegraphic style is probably the best-known feature of news reporting. The first (lead paragraph both summarizes and begins to tell the story. This paragraph is the source of the headline. The original source of the story is given, either in by-line (Reuters), or built into the text (A senior White House official said). The participants are categorized, their name usually being preceded by a general term (champ, prisoner, official) and adjectives (handsome French singer J. Bruno). Other features include explicit time and place location (In Paris yesterday), facts and figures (56 people were killed in a bomb blast), and direct or indirect quotations (PM bungles, says expert). [12, 87]

 

         2.2 Broadcasting

In contrast with most newspapers, only a small part of radio and television output is devoted to news and its discussion (current affairs) as little as 5 per cent, on some channels but its significance is perceived to be far greater than this small figure suggests. The core element in this output is well-defined: the news bulletin, consisting of a series of items of varying size, often divided into sections (e.g. general, business, sport, weather), sometimes punctuated by advertising. Each of them fits into a format which may be of any length, but often as short as two minutes. Analysis of a typical day's radio or television broadcasting brings to light several varieties of language which are in use elsewhere. Indeed, probably all conceivable spoken varieties will be found at some point or other in the broadcasting media. If a use of language is important enough to develop predictable linguistic features, the situations to which they relate are undoubtedly going to be of regular interests to listeners and viewers. The only constraint is sensitivity to taboo words.

 

2.3  Weather reporting

Is one of the best examples, especially on radio where, in its specialized form, it is reduced to its bare essentials, as a restricted language. The names of the Meteorological Office sea areas surrounding the British Isles provide British English with some of the most distinctive weather-forecasting lexicon. Along the well-known areas such as Irish Sea, Plymouth, Portland, Thames, there exist a great deal of new coinages applied to meteorological regions, for example, Viking, Cromarty, Dogger, Forties ( in the east), Shannon, Rock all, Bailey (in the west), or even more confusing phrases North Utsire and South Utsire (the western parts of the Scandinavian Peninsula). Most people know at least some of the names by heart, though few could locate more than a handful with any accuracy. Two contrasting styles informal and conversational or formal and formulaic are used on BBC Radio in weather forecasting. A successful weather forecast is a mixture of fluent spontaneity, controlled informality and friendly authority. The fluency is partly a matter of careful preparation, but is largely achieved through the broadcaster is ability to rely on formulaic phrasing (with light winds and largely clear skies, blue skies and sunshine, widespread frost) and on standard sequences of locations. The number of likely weather situations is really quite limited in a particular region, and certain combinations of features frequently recur. [5,18]

The conversational tone may be achieved through the use of: informal lexicon (take a tumble, just a chance, odd rogue shower); everyday turns of phrase which ordinary people use about the weather (become a little bit quieter, turn colder) fuzzy expressions (more or less, round about); contracted verbs (its, that is, we`ll); colloquial sentence connection (anyhow, in actual fact). At the same time, the scientific element in the weather forecast message is evident in the numerical underpinning (eight degrees, minus one or minus two) and the reference to notions which are generally not found in the speech of the amateur (icy patches on untreated roads, well broken cloud, south-westerly wind).

 

2.4  Commentary

Is one of the most distinctive of all uses of English. Its roles extend well beyond broadcasting. It will be heard in such varied contexts as fashion shows, race-course meetings, and cookery demonstrations. Within broadcasting the use of commentary extends beyond sporting occasions. It will be heard accompanying such public events as inaugurations, funerals and other processions.

But the most frequent kinds of commentary are those associated with sports and games. Here, two elements need to be distinguished: the play-by-play commentary, and the colour-added commentary. The latter is important, for it provides an audience with pre-event background, post-event evaluation, and within-event interpretation. But there is little to be said about it stylistically: it is conversational in style, and often in dialogue form. Consider a fragment of colour commentary: It was two dollars before and I just think something`s wrong with those dividends that are showing up on our screen. They`ve got Speedy Cheval the favourite but I`m not exactly sure that that`s correct, but anyway they`re in behind the mobile going towards the starting point now for the first heat of the Lion Brown Rising Star Three-Year-Old Championship just about there. For example: Stylistic interest in commentary lies chiefly in the play-by-play component.

Because commentary is an oral reporting of ongoing activity, it is unlike other kinds of narrative which are typically reported in past time. Indeed, it is unlike any other kind of speech situation. US linguist Charles Ferguson (1983, p. 156) captured its uniqueness when he described radio sports casting as a monolog or dialog-on-stage directed at an unknown, unseen, heterogeneous mass audience who voluntarily choose to listen, do not see the activity being reported, and provide no feedback to the speaker. If such a strange activity is to survive, and to be successful in maintaining fluency and listener interest, it needs special linguistic features. Sports commentary is not identified by its vocabulary: sporting terms and idioms can be found elsewhere, such as in press reports and everyday chat. Other factors are more distinctive:

It is extremely fluent, keeping up with the pace of the activities. The rate is steady, and there is little sign of hesitation noises, false starts, comment clauses, nonsense words, and other features of spontaneous speech. The prosody is suited to the sport, reflecting the atmosphere and drama. Some very unusual prosodies can be heard, and speeds of articulation which differ greatly from everyday conversations (both slower and faster). Some sports (such as horse racing) may be spoken in a monotone, either loudly (as in horse racing) or softly (as in snooker). Others make use of wide variations in pitch range (as in football or baseball). A commentator may have a favorite way of pointing a commentary, and idiosyncrasy can be strong. Distinctive grammar is seen in the use of the Present tense (he sends it back); the omission of elements of sentence structure (Gooch in close), inverted word order (over at third is Smith), and extra modifiers (The quiet Texan Tommy John delivers ; and Smith, who `s scored well this season, runs back). The frequent use of the Passive is another survival ` device: often commentators see a play before they can identify the player, and the Passive (perhaps with a tell-tale pause) allows them to delay mentioning the player `s name (His shot is blocked by Jones).

Discourse structure is cyclical, reflecting the way most games consist of recurring sequences of short activities (as in cricket, tennis, and baseball) or a limited numbers of activity options (as in the various kinds of football ). In racing, the structure is even simpler, the cycling here regularly informing the listener of the varying order of the competitors, with each loop ` of the cycle introduced by its own formulae. This is a state of play summary, crucial for listeners viewers who have just switched on or who have simply lost track of what is happening. [8, 54]

 

2.5 Commercial Advertising

Commercial advertising is the largest and most visible form of advertising; but by no means the only one. Political speeches, sermons, and several other uses of language can be said to be selling something. There is also an overlap with announcements, such as births and deaths (a type of prestige advertising), legal notices, health warnings, and other items whose functions are chiefly to inform. But commercial advertising stands out stylistically on several counts. Like literature, it can employ other varieties of language in its service: any fragments of the human condition (and a fair amount of non-human condition) can be found in an add. Lexically, it tends to use words which are vivid (new, bright), concrete (soft, washable), positive (safe, extra), and universal (best, perfect). Grammatically, it is typically conversational and elliptical and often, as a result, vague (A better deal [than what?] It uses highly figurative expressions (taste the sunshine in K Y peaches), deviant graphology (Beanz Meanz Heinz), and strong sound effects, such as rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme, especially in slogans. It can make effective use of word-play. On television it is also likely to be dramatized and vocalized. Radio uses sound effects, songs and accents to provide a varied brand-name profile.

 

2.6 Analysis of brief news items

The newspapers use in two stylistic devices as "Newspaper style (mass media) Belles-lettres style, Newspaper style special graphical means are used to attract the readers attention. Belles-lettres style the richest register of communication besides its own language means, other styles can be used besides informative and persuasive functions, belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader are aesthetically. Types of meaning (logical, emotive, nominal)

Commercial Advertising

Lexically, it tends to use words which are vivid (new, bright), concrete (soft, washable), positive (safe, extra), and universal (best, perfect). Grammatically, it is typically conversational and elliptical and often, as a result, vague (A better deal [than what?]). It uses highly figurative expressions (taste the sunshine in K Y peaches), deviant graphology, and strong sound effects, such as rhythm, alliteration, and rhyme, especially in slogans. It can make effective use of word-play. On television it is also likely to be dramatized and vocalized. Radio uses sound effects, songs and accents to provide a varied brand-name profile. For example: Winter fresh wind "product name Orbit bubble gum" (this is Similar)

But the most frequent kinds of commentary are those associated with sports and games. Here, two elements need to be distinguished: the play-by-play commentary, and the colour-added commentary. The latter is important, for it provides an audience with pre-event background, post-event evaluation, and within-event interpretation. But there is little to be said about it stylistically: it is conversational in style, and often in dialogue form. Consider a fragment of colour commentary: It was two dollars before and I just think something`s wrong with those dividends that are showing up on our screen. They`ve got Speedy Cheval the favourite but I`m not exactly sure that that is correct, but anyway they`re in behind the mobile going towards the starting point now for the first heat of the Lion Brown Rising Star Three-Year-Old Championship just about there. For example: Stylistic interest in commentary lies chiefly in the play – by - play component. For example: The ball flew into the gate as a bullet (this is Similar). [9, 42]

The conversational tone may be achieved through the use of: informal lexicon (take a tumble, just a chance, odd rogue shower); everyday turns of phrase which ordinary people use about the weather (become a little bit quieter, turn colder) fuzzy expressions (more or less, round about); contracted verbs (it`s, that`s, we`ll); colloquial sentence connection (anyhow, in actual fact). Example: At the same time, the scientific element in the weather forecast message is evident in the numerical underpinning (eight degrees, minus one or minus two) and the reference to notions which are generally not found in the speech of the amateur (icy patches on untreated roads, well broken cloud, south-westerly wind.) And the last example I’m took in the newspaper "The Sunday Times" and that's what's written example "How lust a caught a hot rabbit" this is (Metaphor) writing The Sunday Times in UK about one chief’s World Bank Association IMF (Dominique Strausskahn’s ) For year he is philandering was in bulged, details are emerging of the former IMF chief’s past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUMMARY

 

Functional styles (F.S) are the subsystems of language, each subsystem having its own peculiar features in what concern vocabulary means, syntactical constructions, and even phonetics. The appearance and existence of F.S is connected with the specific conditions of communication in different spheres of human life. So, The F.S They are five parts 1) Official "documents and papers" 2) Scientific "brochures, articles, other scientific publications" 3) Publicistic "essay, public speech" 4) Newspaper style "mass media" 5) Belles-lettres style "genre of creative writing".

Each of mentioned here styles can be expressed in two forms: written and oral. Stylistics is a sides that examines the complex of stylistically marked elements of any language level.

1. Scientific style is employed in professional communication to convey some information. It’s most conspicuous feature is the abundance of terms denoting objects, phenomena and processes characteristics of some particular field of science and technique. Also precision clarity logical cohesion.

2.Official style is the most conservative one. It uses syntactical constructions and archaic words. Emotiveness is banned out of this style.

3. Publicistic style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader in accordance with the argumentation of the author.

4. Newspaper style - special graphical means are used to attract the readers attention.

5. Belles-lettres style - the richest register of communication besides its own language means, other styles can be used besides informative and persuasive functions, belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader are aesthetically.

 

 

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