Polonius: ‘What do you read my lord?’
Hamlet: ‘Words, words, words.’
(William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.2)
An English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious.
(Dr Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets: Addison)
This is a book about words, words that are usually spoken aloud and received into the brain via the ear, rather than the eye. Specifically, it is about the language and style of broadcast news. It is designed to help journalists working in radio and television to write scripts that will be clear, concise, accurate and elegant. This new edition also has an extended section on writing for online news sites, because many broadcast journalists must do this routinely as the electronic media converge.
There are an estimated ten thousand broadcast journalists working in Britain, with about thirty thousand more studying media or journalism at any one time. Overseas, there are countless thousands more writing in the English language. I have yet to meet one who admits to being a poor writer. But inaccuracies, confusing usage and newspaper-style journalese can be heard on the airwaves every day.
All journalists in broadcasting should aspire to be among the best in their chosen profession, not merely to be competent enough to hold down a job. In any medium, it is impossible to be a great journalist without being a very good writer. So I hope this book will stimulate younger broadcast journalists to become more familiar with the English language, and encourage established reporters and news producers to reassess their own writing style. It should help them to write scripts with more ambition, and I hope it will encourage them to love the language, and enjoy the process of writing.
This book is not about writing for newspapers or magazines, a technique completely different from writing for broadcasting. Nor does it attempt to deal with TV, radio or online production. Many other books and guides cover in detail the various ways news or documentary programmes are planned and assembled, including research, ethics, interviewing techniques, editing sound and pictures, studio design, and the technical aspects of broadcasting such as camerawork, sound recording, satellite newsgathering or studio transmission. For example, other books by Routledge include Researching for Television and Radio, Production Management for Television, The Television Handbook, The Radio Handbook, and Producing for Web 2.0.
Of course, there is no universal writing style. The approach of this book is to recognise the paradox that many writers like to have a set of rules, yet the best writers are individualists, even innovators. Clearly there are generally accepted standards of English. Without a firm footing in those standards, it is much more difficult for a journalist to develop an individual voice that is liked and admired. Clichéd writing is a product of clichéd thinking. So this book tries to give many examples of usages or phrases best avoided. It also gives examples of good technique, but recognises that truly creative writing cannot be copied or even taught.
Style is subjective. In this book, if I wish to express a personal dislike or preference, I try to make it clear that this is my own view. You can judge for yourself whether or not you agree. But I have also included many comments and suggestions taken from interviews with leading professionals with many years’ experience, and have referred to in-house style guides from different news organisations (see Further reading). These include the first BBC TV news style book, A Question of Style, written in the ’70s by the late Peter Elliot; the later BBC News Styleguide, compiled by John Allen in 2003; the BBC’s internal World Service Radio Guide; and the section on broadcast skills on the BBC College of Journalism website, which became publicly accessible in 2009, as well as house-style booklets from independent radio and television. There are also references to long-established guides to print journalism. So this book is a distillation of the experience and ideas of many others. A key theme is that writers should know precisely what they are doing, using language deliberately and carefully rather than casually and thoughtlessly.
Many of the examples used to illustrate the main points come from BBC News. There are several reasons for this. First, the British Broadcasting Corporation is widely recognised as the benchmark for spoken English. For nearly 90 years, it has developed, studied, considered and debated the best way to write factual scripts for broadcast, and has set a standard of writing practice in the industry. Secondly, with nine TV channels, two of them offering continuous news, about sixty national and local radio stations, the World Service radio network and its big online site, the BBC produces far more electronic and broadcast news than anyone else in Britain, indeed it claims to produce more than any other broadcaster in the world. A third reason is that, during the many years when I worked in the BBC, I was able to collect examples and ideas from the corporation’s news programmes. Of course, there are many fine writers working for commercial broadcasting companies, and examples and opinions from independent radio and television news are also included in this book.
The concept of ‘BBC English’ is not fixed in stone, and the language of newsreaders may seem remote or antiquated to many people who live in the diverse communities of Britain and the English-speaking world. Writing for Broadcast Journalists recognises the dynamic nature of the spoken word, and the growing number of different voices on the airwaves. In the age of twittering, blogging and bite-sized news on the move, it tries to give sensible advice to balance the preferences of traditionalists with the rapidly changing usages of younger generations.