Write as you would talk. Better still, write as you would hear.
(Peter Elliott, A Question of Style, BBC Television, internal publication, 1979)
So what principles should guide us as we try to write our bulletins, introductions, voice-pieces or commentaries? The first is that we must try to write scripts that sound natural when spoken aloud. All the broadcasting style guides emphasise this point. ‘The script should sound as if the presenter is talking to the viewer or listener, not just reading out loud’, advised a BBC News Training booklet in the ’70s. More than a generation later, the BBC’s Director of News was still urging all his journalists to remember this essential guidance:
The basic principles of writing for broadcast news haven’t changed for a long time. They are the same as when I came into the business 25 years ago. You have to write conversationally; you have to write as you would speak to someone … it’s very different from the written text.
It’s notable that, even before the age of broadcasting, many writers believed that the spoken language was the original model and the purest form of communication. Printing it on to a page became the problem. Shakespeare’s greatest lines were written to be spoken. William Hazlitt said, ‘To write in a genuine, familiar, or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation.’
Of course, we don’t write exactly ‘as anyone would speak in common conversation’. We should not write slang or repeat common grammatical errors. The language of TV news – the version of the language that I have called ‘Good Spoken English’ – is precise, and will be regarded by listeners and viewers as correct. It will not offend the listener, but it will seem to be natural and conversational.
It is interesting to note that the way scripts are produced in TV and radio newsrooms has changed a great deal in a relatively short time, and in some ways the technology has not encouraged writing for speech. I started as a young journalist in the dark ages before the personal computer. News scripts were typed on stencil sheets, then duplicated on a Gestetner printer, which was wound by a handle. Mistakes were very difficult to change. A red fluid had to be brushed on to the offending letter or word, and after it had dried, a type-over might or might not duplicate successfully. It paid to employ specialist typists, who were fast and very accurate. Some of the newsroom typists at BBC Television in the ’70s and ’80s could rattle out scripts at dazzling speed. Many journalists dictated their scripts to these typists. Newsrooms were noisy places, with several reporters dictating simultaneously, the typewriters clattering and the duplicating machine making noises like a cement mixer. The appearance of the electronic newsroom system (ENS), based on networked computers, was a revolution bringing huge benefits. But journalists stopped dictating their scripts. I strongly recommend any writer to read his or her script out loud before clicking it into the bulletin or programme. Don’t be embarrassed to do it. It’s good professional practice.
‘Audience focus’ is one of the few essential tenets of successful broadcasting. It means knowing the target audiences very well indeed, and developing a service that satisfies their needs, tastes and lifestyles. For the journalist, audience focus means selecting the right stories, but also understanding what kind of language might distract or offend some of the audience. Clare Morrow says,
The key difference in broadcast news is that you are trying to tell a story rather than write a story. Picture the person you are speaking to and tell them your story. Then you will use the words you would use if you were telling a friend a story rather than writing something official. When I was a reporter, I always tried to imagine the person I was speaking to. It’s a good thing for others to do. It produces more animation in the voice, and it makes you use normal words.
Audience focus also means that we should never forget how broadcast news is consumed most of the time. One of the key differences between newspapers and broadcasting is the way readers or listeners use the various products. Reading a newspaper is, to use a modern word, interactive. Readers can choose which page to read first (it seems that many men start with the back page), and which article on any page to read. They can browse an article at their own pace. They can stop reading, maybe to pour milk on the breakfast cereal, or sort out the kids’ packed lunches, then rejoin the article. And, crucially, they can re-read a sentence if it is a little complicated or if they have been distracted.
In television and radio we, the professionals, make all the choices. We decide in which order the audience will receive the news stories, and the pace of the information. Millions have to follow it at exactly the same speed. Our audiences must be able to understand immediately what they hear. Listeners and viewers cannot re-read a difficult paragraph. The internet is much more interactive, and digital technology is delivering more personal selection for TV news. But at the time of writing, most new media observers believe there will be a strong appetite for conventional broadcast news for many years to come, either as constructed bulletins in general channels or on 24-hour news outlets, where the editors decide the running order. And even click-and-play reports on multi-media websites must be written to hold the audience’s attention throughout.
When BBC radio first started, news bulletins were read twice, as the presenter explained, ‘First at normal speed, then at dictation speed so that listeners can take notes.’ During the Second World War, most families in Britain would gather round their bakelite radio to tune in to the BBC’s Nine o’clock News, and apart from a little determined knitting or fierce pipe-smoking, I imagine all other household activities were suspended. There would have been absolute concentration on the information. Radio is not consumed that way now. It is almost entirely a ‘secondary activity’. We listen to the radio while we are doing something else, such as cooking, ironing, having a bath, eating a meal, driving to work, or working – whether it be in the office, in the shop, on the shop floor, in the car, or in the cab of a tractor, taxi or HGV.
Television viewing seems to be following radio with this trend, according to surveys showing that a surprising number of families have their TV set switched on all day and watch television as a kind of moving background. One survey even informed us that nearly 10 per cent of viewers confess to have used the opportunity of the news programme to have sex on the sofa or rug. Of course, TV is more of a primary activity than radio. Nonetheless, many people watch it rather casually. They are certainly not sitting on the edge of their seat taking notes.
So, in broadcasting, we must write our Good Spoken English simply, clearly, accurately, directly and compellingly. The BBC’s Tim Orchard says,
I think the golden rule is that in broadcasting you don’t have a second chance. When reading a newspaper or magazine, you can always re-read a paragraph to try to understand it. So the clarity of the writing is absolutely the first priority.
Sir David Nicholas, former Editor in Chief, ITN, puts it this way:
Unlike reading a newspaper, the viewer can’t go back over the previous sentence. Each sentence in broadcasting must stand on its own legs with vertical content and thought, with no hanging thoughts or subordinate clauses.
So are viewers and listeners treated to this simplicity, clarity, accuracy and style to help them understand the news and to be interested in it? I fear that a lot of the time they are not, because the language of broadcast news is infected by the virus of so-called journalese. It is rampant. There seems to be no known cure.
Over the years, newspaper journalists have developed a style of writing for print that does not transfer to broadcasting. A popular newspaper needs short, dynamic words for headlines that will attract the eye. ‘Bid. Probe. Shock. Row. Clash. Blast. Plea.’ And print writers may be encouraged to sell their stories with colourful adjectives. ‘Dramatic. Angry. Miraculous. Massive. Shocking.’ The venerated newspaper columnist Keith Waterhouse identified two versions of this journalese. The first is ‘officialese’. It can be found everywhere, in official documents, press releases and corporate literature, and includes convoluted phraseology and pompous adjectives to denote great significance. The second version, which he called ‘tabloidese’, is characterised by bolted-together monosyllables and sensationalism. Both types of journalese have this in common: people don’t speak like that! So journalese can take the form of:
1. The Prime Minister is actively contemplating a fundamental restructuring of Whitehall departments. (Sunday Times)
2. A 20-year-old mother of two is making a desperate last-ditch bid to save her tots from the evil clutches of their runaway father. (Daily Star)
Unfortunately, many broadcast journalists seem to think that this journalese, or newspaper jargon, is the proper currency of all journalism. It is not. Shoddy English that is riddled with clichés irritates many people. It displays a poverty of original ideas. It is often inaccurate as well. Not every difference of opinion is a ‘row’ or a ‘clash’. Not every medical advance is a ‘breakthrough’. We would not say to our colleagues in the office, ‘Adverse weather conditions foiled my bid to get to work on time.’ But reporters and newsreaders talk to their listeners that way with – dare I say – monotonous regularity.
Here are just a few examples from recent years.
A bid to save stricken telecom giant, Marconi … (Saga Radio)
A Birmingham couple are to sue Thomas Cook after their dream wedding on a paradise isle ended in disaster. (BRMB Radio)
British Rail have reduced speed limits amid fears that the rails may buckle … (Five News)
Does anyone other than a journalist say ‘amid fears that’?
Police in Paris are questioning a baggage-handler who was arrested at Charles de Gaulle Airport with an arsenal of weapons. (BBC Radio 4)
How many weapons in an arsenal? I don’t know, but I think it would be more than the two pistols and four blocks of explosive apparently found in this man’s bag. It would have been more natural, and a little more precise, to write ‘… with guns and explosives’.
I do not want to suggest that all newspaper editors are content to print reams of journalese. The campaign against it is being waged in the quality press in Britain almost as vigorously as in broadcasting, and much of the finest writing is to be found in newspapers. The style guide for journalists working at the Independent on Sunday acknowledges that headline writers will need very short words, but continues,
The Independent on Sunday is written in ordinary English such as you might encounter in books or conversation. Usages particular to newspapers should be avoided as far as possible. Headline words such as row for dispute, plea for request and cash for money should be kept out of text. Bid and probe, along with slam for attack, are banned even in headlines.
All journalists are familiar with the type of officialese used by police officers, members of the emergency services and some spokespeople, when they are choosing their words carefully. We must try to translate this strange patois into normal English without altering the meaning. Here are a few examples. You will be able to think of many more.
The perpetrators appear to have gained access to the rear of the premises.
(The thieves got into the back of the shop/house.)
He made good his escape on a motorcycle.
(He got away on a motorbike.)
The premises are well alight.
(The building is burning fiercely. Why do fire officers seem to sound so pleased when they say, ‘well alight’?)
A young person’s pedal cycle has been recovered.
(A child’s bike has been found.)
The driver was fatally injured.
(The driver was killed.)
Adjacent to …
(Near)
Approximately …
(About)
Accordingly …
(So)
He was dead on arrival at hospital.
The frequently-used phrase ‘dead on arrival’ should hardly ever find its way into a news script. It usually comes from an ambulance service duty officer reading to a journalist the official log, which he/she is required to keep. (Sometimes the ambulance officer will say ‘he was DOA’ or ‘it was a DOA’.) News agencies often include this ‘dead on arrival’ line. But we are not compelled to broadcast it. Doing so seems to suggest that the victim died on the way to hospital, which may not be true, and it displays a slightly ghoulish interest in the details of the death. In most cases, the main fact will be that the victim was killed in the accident or crime, and that is how we should report it.
The motor vehicle appears to have been in collision with two male persons.
We should not scoff at police officers who use this kind of language. Most have been trained to give witness statements in court in this guarded style. But it sounds preposterous if we repeat it on the air. Better to say that the car, van, bus – try to be specific – hit two men. It’s worth noting that the journalistic tradition of ‘in collision with’, supposedly neutral to avoid any implication of blame, is not supported by many media lawyers when pedestrians are involved. A BBC lawyer, Roy Baker, advised:
If we report that a bus hit a man, it does not necessarily indicate blame. In common parlance it’s a fair description of what happened. Clearly we must not indicate that a driver was being reckless, or report anything else which could be regarded as libelous or prejudicial. But in cases involving two vehicles, there may be an argument about whether they were both moving at the time. So ‘a bus hit a car’ could be contentious. ‘A bus and a car collided’ is better.
Even then, ‘collided’ is not a word used very often in spoken English, and can often be avoided by referring in your script to a crash or serious accident.
In September 2003, the Independent reported that two people were injured ‘when their van collided with a train at a level crossing’. I think to say ‘when their van was hit by a train’ would be more natural, and does not indicate blame in any way.
In the United Kingdom, there is a special language that can be heard in the Palace of Westminster, the national assemblies and local government council chambers, and it can spill out along the corridors and into the press rooms. I think it takes quite an effort of will to avoid repeating phrases such as ‘The government are contemplating the introduction of a series of measures …’ or ‘the party will be bringing forward a set of initiatives to underpin their policy …’. If you feel you should not change the words used in such phrases, then attribute them to the person who used them.
Political statements quite frequently use the passive tense to conceal individual actions beneath a cloak of collective responsibility. So they might say, ‘errors of judgment were made’ instead of, ‘we made mistakes’. Or ‘at the time it was considered necessary…’ rather than, ‘at the time I decided …’. The active tense is better in broadcast scripts.
Even some individual words have the ring of officialese. The columnist Miles Kington campaigned wittily against cliché-journalism for many years. For example, he observed, ‘The word signally, which I challenge anyone to define, seems only to be used with the word, fail. Nobody signally succeeds. Nobody signally promises or delivers anything.’
The BBC News Styleguide (2003) indicates a growing trend to use the word ‘raft’. ‘The bill has attracted a raft of amendments.’ ‘The government has unveiled a sweeping raft of proposals.’ The guide asks, ‘What is a sweeping raft? When was the last time you heard someone in the pub say “I must get home. I’ve got a raft of ironing to do”?’ Another word much loved by politicians, diplomats and journalists is ‘broker’. Again, do you hear people saying ‘We have brokered a good price for our house’? They would be much more likely to say ‘negotiated’, or ‘agreed’, or even ‘got’.
In 2008, the Centre for Policy Studies published a ‘Lexicon of Contemporary Newspeak’ pointing out that ‘what George Orwell described as euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness now dominates political discourse’. The director of the think tank, Jill Kirby, was scathing about this ‘often impenetrable vocabulary’.
Replete with sustainable aspirations and ambitious targets, they promise to use key performance indicators to address the issue, bring about step-change and implement a progressive consensus, to raise awareness and streamline joined-up delivery in order to fast-track transformation. But how many problems have they really succeeded in solving?
Jill Kirby believes that ‘the corruption of language has infected all political parties, is endemic in public service, and is rapidly spreading into the media’. I think this is a serious point. All good broadcast journalists not only must avoid this kind of political jargon and stick to everyday spoken English, they should also point out to their audiences, through direct quotes or attribution, that their elected leaders are deploying this kind of obfuscation.
For example, it was interesting that after the start of allied bombing in the first Gulf War, the Pentagon declared that the Iraqi Air Force had been ‘decimated’. Many people would take this to mean that most of the aircraft had been destroyed; but technically it meant that one in ten had been destroyed. It emerged later that most of the Iraqi pilots had flown themselves and their planes to safety in neighbouring countries. I think that ‘decimated’ is a rather unusual word for a Pentagon statement, and guess it had been chosen carefully to suggest more that it actually meant. The way to report such an announcement is with the exact words of the statement, and perhaps to raise the question – what exactly does it mean?
Politics and diplomacy are not the only spheres that have a special vocabulary. All professions, industries, services and hobbies have their own jargon, which can be very clubby for those in the know, but which excludes everyone else. The military is well practised at developing its own terminology. So is broadcasting. But I feel sure that radio, television and online journalists should learn to recognise jargon and avoid it as much as possible. There will be occasions when there is a narrow focus on a specialist target audience and jargon is deemed acceptable. The financial TV channels CNBC and Bloomberg TV may feel confident that all their viewers are inside the jargon bubble. But for mainstream channels, I think that even the financial news should be access ible to a wide general audience, and that means the language should be jargon-free.
Many senior news editors feel very strongly about this subject. Bob Jobbins, for many years Director of News at the BBC World Service, says with some feeling that one of his main hates is the use of jargon by correspondents. He believes that it says to the listener, ‘Hey, I’m on the inside. You may not be quite sure what this means, but I do!’
Daniel Dodd, for ten years the Head of the BBC News Business and Economic Unit, acknowledges that the financial world is particularly prone to exclusive words and phrases: ‘I dislike all the jargon connected with business. We try to avoid the language of like for like sales, or the numbers, or M&A activity.’ On the other hand, it may be impractical to explain a financial term such as a ‘rights issue’ every time you use it. As ever, a sharp focus on the audience of a particular programme or channel should help the writer decide how much explanation is required. A short financial slot in a breakfast television programme or in a local radio drive-time sequence should tell the story in plain English, with plenty of explanation.
In general terms, I believe that broadcast-correspondents who specialise in financial news overestimate how much most listeners will know about their particular subject area. I wonder how many contestants on The Weakest Link would know the difference between a bear market and a bull market? And it gets much more complicated than this. A recent Barclays report explained to shareholders, ‘We continue to seek out value-creating non-organic opportunities in selected European markets.’ This is the opposite of clear spoken English. It is often designed to be vague. Richard Teffler, when Professor of Accounting and Finance at Cranfield School of Management, commented on a new website designed to detect jargon, ‘Jargon is used primarily to obfuscate and mislead. It is a way of denying what’s going on.’
Here are a few of the fashionable words and phrases used in business, but which do not figure very often in Good Spoken English. synergy … scenario … leading edge … overarching … underpinning …
downsizing … human resources … brand ascendancy … added value … meaningful … step-change … pivotal … exponential … throughput … blue-sky thinking … pushing the envelope … take on board
On this subject, The BBC News Styleguide adds, ‘In your haste to use blueprint, escalation, ceiling and target, do not forget the plainer alternatives, plan, growth, limit and objective.’
Financial Times correspondent Lucy Kellaway has been campaigning for many years against what she calls brainlessly upbeat office-speak, with regular contributions to her column from a fictional manager called Martin Lukes, who ‘talked the talk, or rather he added value by reaching out and sharing his blue-sky thinking’. In 2008, she spotted the rapid growth of ‘going forward’, meaning ‘in the future’. She hates it. So do I, mainly because it is part of the insincere optimism, enthusiasm and caring that businesses think they must exude to succeed. (Lucy Kellaway pointed to an advertisement from one of the big banks that was seeking ‘passionate banking representatives to uphold our values’. ‘This is a lie’ she says. ‘It wants competent people to follow instructions.’) But when she heard a man from the National Farmers’ Union on BBC Radio’s Farming Today uttering three ‘going forwards’ in less than 30 seconds, she admitted, ‘This most horrid phrase is with us on a going forward basis, like it or not.’
Business jargon has a general tendency to leak into mainstream reporting. In September 2009, BBC Breakfast reported that ‘there’s been a big spike in the number of people taking canal holidays’. Ouch.
Use of Latin phrases in business reporting can be particularly irritating. To some listeners, they will indicate the language of a public school elite, who may have complained about doing their Latin prep, but now in their well paid jobs in the city like to flash their classical knowledge by using per capita, per annum, ad hoc and similar phrases ad nauseam.
At its worst, financial news can turn into a sort of meaningless babble, which has the sound and texture of news, but which is really something I call ‘newsak’ – the journalism equivalent of the music played on aircraft before take-off, designed to numb the brain rather than stimulate it. I once heard a business reporter on CNN telling the anchor, ‘These are not particularly good figures. Most people were expecting them to be pretty much in line with expectations.’
Financial journalism is just one of many specialist areas of expertise that have expanded in broadcast journalism in recent times. Not so many years ago, specialist correspondents were mainly to be found working for broadsheet newspapers and magazines. Apart from the journalists devoted to politics, international affairs, business and sport, there were very few specialist correspondents working for radio or television news. Now the bigger broadcasters all have experienced reporters who specialise in a much wider range of subjects – subjects that interest viewers and listeners because of their direct relevance to their daily lives – such as health, education, transport, crime, the environment and consumer affairs.
But there can be a tension between the correspondent’s desire to demonstrate expertise and the medium’s need for simplicity. The more you know about the background to a story, the more difficult it can be to pare it down to the essential facts. If you know a great deal about a subject, you must remember not to try to show off. Expertise should be used to give the general audience a special insight and clear understanding of difficult issues. It should be used to explain complex matters in a clear and concise way.
The area of specialism that takes the gold medal for the greatest displays of jargon, the largest number of clichés per minute, and the highest scoring rate for journalese is – of course – sport reporting. It’s a significant part of journalism. Very many viewers and listeners tune in to their preferred news programme or news channel to find out what has happened to their favourite team or favourite sport star. They may be much more interested in a World Cup qualifier than the speeches at the party conference. Sport can be magnificent, a liberating contrast with a boring week at work, a community bond, a drama or a ballet – with more spectators than any conventional drama or ballet. It can be exciting, spectacular, emotional, breathtaking, beautiful, frustrating, ugly, unifying, divisive or completely pointless, depending on your point of view.
I have absolutely no sympathy with any young aspiring journalist who says, ‘Oh I don’t know anything about sport. I really hated it at school.’ Any trainee journalist who tells the editor, ‘I don’t know a single thing about cricket! And football is really not me, you know?’ is signing his or her career-termination warrant. News editors are loath to let loose in their newsroom anyone who hasn’t a clue about sport. The credibility of the radio station or TV channel can be blown away by a writer who may have a double first in literature and linguistics, but who doesn’t know the difference between a birdie and a bogie, doesn’t know the name of the manager of Manchester United, or doesn’t know what LBW means. (Incidentally, I was editing a national TV news programme when the newsreader said that England’s opening batsman had been dismissed ‘one-B-W’. She was rapped on the pads later.)
Sport reporters, particularly when describing the world’s most popular sport, football, have developed a jargon of their own. Here come some highlights from the second half:
after the break … making his debut … elected to shoot … always going wide … spared his blushes … the jeers turned to cheers … was on hand to head home … a wicked deflection … back on terms … upended in the box … marching orders … early bath … made no mistake from the spot … gave the keeper no chance
I particularly dislike ‘flatters to deceive’. Apparently, it means the player looked good, but didn’t actually deliver the incisive passes or goals that would help get a result. But how many people would use this phrase in normal conversation? How many don’t understand it? Another hateful expression in football reporting is ‘turned provider’. It means that a player who had scored a goal earlier gave a pass to a team mate so that he could score. It is hateful not because it is concise, which it is, but because it is an expression exclusive to a small club of football anoraks, and it is not the way we speak! Can you imagine someone in a pub telling you about the game, and saying, ‘Then Torres turned provider …’? I think not. You might say ‘The goal-scorer then laid on the second for Gerard’, or ‘Torres tormented the centre-backs, scoring the first and making the second.’
Some in-house news guides seem resigned to the idea that football jargon is here to stay. Some sport journalists defend it confidently. They argue that this kind of language is a convenient shorthand, which all soccer fans understand and accept. And they point out that there is no perceptible tide of complaint to the TV and radio stations every Saturday night, condemning the use of sport clichés. I find these to be very poor arguments.
The best football reporters on radio and television do not resort to a pathetic string of clichés. There are an infinite number of colourful and original ways of describing football action in Good Spoken English. I write with some feeling on this point, because one of my first tasks with the BBC was to be a regional sport reporter, doing some live radio commentary (frightening), but mainly presenting scripted sport news on TV and radio. I promised myself to avoid all sport clichés. It was difficult. These handy and clubby phrases are embedded in our brains. I urge broadcast journalists to write scripts in the natural spoken tongue, not in the sterile jargon of the newspaper back pages. We should not accept that tabloidese is the right way to broadcast sport stories.
When trying to avoid jargon and journalese, writers of broadcast scripts should be wary of copy from news agencies. Readers of this book who work in regional, national or international news agencies will probably be tut-tutting and claiming they all write beautifully. In my experience, that is not quite true. Some agency copy is very stylish. But a lot of it seems to be written in a kind of Lego-language, with sentences composed of easily snapped-together stock phrases. The main difficulty for broadcast journalists is that agency copy is not usually written for the ear, it is written for newspapers. And it is raw material. The agency writers know it is going to be rewritten most of the time.
The newsroom computer system makes it tantalisingly easy to drag-and-drop chunks of agency copy. I think this temptation should be firmly resisted. In November 2002, BBC News 24 reported on the Italian Fiat company’s plans to cut over 12,000 jobs. The report began, ‘Management and unions began crisis talks Monday …’. This is fairly standard agency style, but will not do when we are telling the news to viewers in a natural way. International agencies use ‘Monday’ rather than ‘today’ to avoid confusion in different time zones, and to be clear for newspapers that will be read ‘tomorrow’. In broadcasting, at the very least the sentence should be changed to ‘The management and the unions began crisis talks today’, or ‘Fiat’s management and unions …’ but it would be even better to use the present tense (the talks are clearly in progress), and the company name can indicate the management without the need to use the word. ‘Fiat are in urgent talks with union leaders this morning, trying to head off an all-out strike….’ Just write it as you would tell someone.
By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.
(George Orwell, Politics and the English Language)
The most blatant, the most disliked and the most derided form of journalese is the cliché, defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as ‘a hackneyed phrase’, which implies that it plods along like a tired or overworked horse. (Clichés are certainly used by the hack, which the same dictionary defines as, ‘a dull, uninspired writer’.) Clichéd writing reveals clichéd thinking. In interviews for this book, Richard Sambrook, then the BBC’s Director of News, says, ‘A cliché is a phrase whose power has gone through over-familiarity, and is used unthinkingly’, and Rob Kirk, Editorial Development Manager at Sky News, sums it up neatly:
Clichés are annoying because they’re lazy and insulting; lazy because they indicate that the correspondent hasn’t the wit or energy to think of a more creative word, and insulting because they patronise the audience. Real people don’t stay tight-lipped about what they might want for breakfast, comb the house for a lost mobile, or leave no stone unturned in their search for a magazine.
But can we all agree which clichés annoy because they are lazy, vague and patronizing? Richard Sambrook says,
It’s sometimes the most difficult thing to avoid writing clichés. They are all over the place. And some phrases that start off as innovative, interesting pieces of writing become clichés very quickly.
When the Queen first brushed aside security guards and walked up to the crowds in Australia, I remember being impressed when a reporter used the phrase, ‘went walkabout’. It was witty and memorable. Now, when handshakes with the crowd are part of the routine for the royals, the phrase is in danger of being a tedious cliché. When a correspondent described the discrepancy in Enron’s accounts as a ‘black hole’, it indicated the huge scale of the missing funds and the way the uncontrollable debt was sucking in more victims. But when, in December 2002, Saga FM News attributed a relatively minor suspension of share dealing to ‘a black hole in the accounts’, the phrase had entered cliché-land.
I would not want younger writers to confuse the journalistic cliché with the many colourful figures of speech that make English such a vigorous and picturesque language. Time-honoured phrases such as ‘flat as a pancake’, ‘hale and hearty’ or ‘as right as rain’ will always have their appropriate place in the spoken language, though in broadcasting they are probably more comfortable in the live, ad-libbed report than in the tightly written script. No, the clichés to banish from your mind are the wearisome expressions that journalists wheel out all too readily, but which people would not think of using if they were relating something interesting to a member of their family.
You would be unlikely to say, ‘Did you hear that there was a blaze at the nursery school this afternoon, following a blast in an adjacent boiler room? Fleets of ambulances attended the scene and ferried the injured to nearby hospitals. One toddler is fighting for her life …’
You will have your own pet hates. Here are a few of mine. There are many more in the list of ‘dangerous words’ at the end of this book.
ahead of (meaning before or in advance of) amid tight security amid fears that angry clashes bid (meaning attempt) blueprint brutal reminder | catch-22 situation calm but tense cocktail of drugs crackdown death toll famine-stricken (especially when the whole continent of Africa is thus described) |
fighting for his/her life (very ill) glaring omission going forward (in future) gunned down gunshot wounds (bullet wounds or shotgun wounds?) helping police with their enquiries ironically major boost | massive heart attack meanwhile quantum leap riot of colour sniffer dogs sweeping changes the situation remains confused war-torn walked free from court wreak havoc |
It may be an old joke, but it is worth remembering to ‘avoid clichés like the plague’.
The small word ‘the’ gets its own small section in this book, because one of the most common examples of journalese used in broadcasting is when the definite article is dropped. ‘The’ is clearly in danger from scores of unfeeling hacks.
The use of the definite article is central to the main theme of this guide – that broadcasters should write stories as they would speak them. Far too many bulletin writers, in search of a brisk style and a pacey read, copy the newspapers and agencies by dropping the ‘the’ before titles. So we hear:
Chairman of Leicester Social Services, David Smith says …
… accused of murdering Leeds teenager Sharon Bailey.
Spokesman for Severn Trent Water John Williams denied …
This is not how people speak. ‘The spokesman for Severn Trent …’ takes a fraction of a second longer to say, but it is fluent and natural.
Let’s get technical about this for a moment. One of the reasons why dropping the definite article sounds awkward is the effect it has on the grammar of the sentence. ‘The England Captain, Andrew Strauss …’ has as the grammatical subject of the sentence, ‘The England Captain’ with captain as the primary noun. ‘Andrew Strauss’ is in parentheses. If the ‘the’ is dropped, the grammar is altered. ‘England Captain Andrew Strauss …’ has turned the first two words into a bolted-together adjective, describing Andrew Strauss. It’s all right in print. And broadcast journalists may well feel, even subconsciously, that they want the name Andrew Strauss to be the main subject of the sentence. But the fact remains that no-one would speak like this in normal conversation. I am aware that dropping the definite article in this way is very widespread in news summaries. I also know that many senior editors dislike it on the air.
The main point is that dropping the definite article makes newsreaders sound as though they are reading newspaper cuttings, rather than telling the audience what’s going on in Good Spoken English. I urge all aspiring writers to drop this habit of dropping the ‘the’. Listen carefully to the news, and you will hear that the most successful and respected correspondents on radio and television never do it!
We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
(Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost)
You say to-may-to and I say to-mah-to … Let’s call the whole thing off.
(Ira Gershwin, sung by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Shall We Dance)
In addition to the dangers of journalese, jargon and clichéd phrases, writers in Britain must avoid a further linguistic pitfall. As I indicated earlier, anything regarded as American English is disliked by large sections of the British audience. Journalists reading this book in the United States, or Canada, or Australia, or other parts of the English-speaking world, may find it difficult to grasp the strength of feeling this subject uncovers back in the UK.
I should emphasise that the main principles that are developed in this book – those of accuracy, conciseness, the use of a natural spoken form of language, sensitivity, clarity, and style – apply equally well to English-language writers of broadcast news anywhere in the world. But in the British Isles, the preferred version of the language does not have much room for – or perhaps I should say does not have much truck with – American usage.
The differences were brought home in the Second World War, when Britain was flooded with GIs. Winston Churchill is said to have remarked that Britain and America were ‘one nation divided only by the language’. And the subsequent influence of American pop music, films (sorry, movies), and television programmes (sorry programs) has been enormous. Now Bill Gates is teaching the world US-style grammar and spelling with Microsoft’s little red and green lines. There are countless differences in vocabulary and pronunciation. Here’s a short American story.
Chuck, a realtor who was going to check out a nearby duplex, picked up his garbage can from the yard, stowed it in the trunk of his compact, and drove to the dumpsters at the lot out back of the gas-station mini-mart.
Charlie, an estate agent who was going to inspect a nearby semi-detached house, picked up his dustbin from the garden, put it in the boot of his family car, and drove to the bins in the car park behind the garage shop.
Bill Bryson, an American writer who has made his home in England, reckons that in common speech about 4000 words are used differently between the USA and the UK. ‘That’s a very large number indeed’, says Bryson in his book Mother Tongue. ‘Some are well known on both sides of the Atlantic: lift/elevator, dustbin/garbage-can, biscuit/cookie; but many hundreds of others are still liable to befuddle the hapless traveller.’ He points out that a tramp in Britain is a bum in America, while a bum in Britain is a fanny in America, and a fanny in Britain is something else again. In Britain, to ‘table a motion’ means to put it forward for discussion, whereas in the USA it means to set it aside. ‘Presently’ means ‘now’ in America; in Britain it means ‘in a little while’. (But it’s interesting that the American meaning is the original, which we in Britain are now re-importing.) Quite a few so-called American words are preserved eighteenth-century usages that have changed in the homeland. Most are more recent inventions, some of which seem to me to be better than their English equivalents. Surely ‘thumb-tack’ is more descriptive than ‘drawing pin’ and is slightly easier to say. Is it not better to describe a baby’s ‘dummy’ as a ‘pacifier’?
It is worth noting how quickly some useful American words or phrases become widely accepted in Britain. Not so many years ago, commuters, teenagers, gatecrashers and babysitters could be found only in the USA. When I started writing news stories and traffic reports for BBC radio, ‘tail-back’ was unacceptable. In the UK, cars formed queues. These days they also tail-back. I remember a news editor warning me against any temptation to call a large vehicle a ‘truck’. ‘Trucks run on rails; lorries run on roads’, he explained. Not so many years later, trucks, it seems, are jumping the rails.
Logically, we should not resist these imports into a language composed of imports. But our attitude to language is not logical. The letters of complaint to broadcasters indicate that many British people loathe ‘Americanisms’. They seem to believe that American usage is sloppy, ignorant and imprecise.
The BBC News Styleguide says,
Our listeners and viewers must not be offended or have their attention diverted by the words we use. American speech patterns drive some people to distraction. Adding unnecessary prepositions to verbs is guaranteed to cause apoplexy in some households. Problems which were once faced are now faced up to … British people keep a promise rather than deliver on it. Expressions such as deliver on, head up, check out, free up, consult with, win out, divide up and outside of are not yet standard English.
And they all take more time to say. In Ireland, too, there’s growing concern about American influence on the language. Karen Coleman, for several years the Foreign Affairs Editor of the Dublin Radio Station Newstalk 106, is worried about less precision and a shrinking vocabulary.
When I was lecturing in journalism for a year, I was appalled at the careless use of language by educated young people. Younger Irish students, and those entering the news industry, use a lot of American slang and what I call ‘Friends-speak’. The language of the TV sitcom Friends is creeping into their scripts. It shows how we are all subject to the neocolonial powers of American Television! As an Irish person who has lived outside my country for a long time, I’ve come back to a country with a rich language and a rich tradition of great writing, and I find it depressing that kids are using more uniform language, and losing all the subtleties and idiosyncrasies.
In Britain, I have certainly noticed many more American words and phrases in news reports than a generation ago. I suppose that’s inevitable. In 1993, BBC Radio 4 reported on the Waco siege, ‘David Koresh, who was wounded in the original shooting incident, is thought to be too sick to talk to negotiators.’ I wrote in my notebook – No, in English he was too ill. But now the American usage is everywhere. ‘Relatives of the executed man had told the Chinese authorities he was sick’, reported BBC Five Live in December 2009, referring to a man with mental illness. Let me emphasise that this changing usage is not to be condemned. After all, ‘administering to the sick’ and ‘in sickness and in health’ are long-established phrases in formal English. But the sensitive scriptwriter will know that many people in the audience much prefer ‘ill’ to ‘sick’, and will not want them to feel either with a perceived Americanism.
In 2002, a BBC TV report on a night-time search for two missing schoolgirls said how the police had used ‘flashlights’. Most British people would have said ‘torches’. In August 2003, a GMTV presenter said, ‘He dove into the swimming pool’. A BBC programme about novice clergymen was called Rookie Reverends(!). In 2008, the ITV News at Ten was reporting ‘the idea is that people will be able to drop by their local surgery’.
In November 2003, a BBC health correspondent told us that super-bugs in hospitals were ‘getting smarter’. I don’t think he was referring to their dress-sense. By 2007, BBC Breakfast was reporting that ‘breast-feeding your children makes then smarter’. With smart bombs and smart electricity meters, and the Sky TV quiz show Are You Smarter than a 10-year-old?, the American meaning has firmly taken root. But many older listeners and viewers will not have accepted it yet.
In June 2009, a distinguished presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme described a newspaper picture as showing ‘a bloodstained Iranian protester sprawled across the hood of a car’. A BBC reporter in Port au Prince, in January 2010, said, ‘I can see the airplanes coming in’ (he wasn’t American).
My advice to all young journalists working in the UK is to become aware of which words and usages are regarded as being from America, and to avoid them until they have been truly adopted into the mainstream of the language. Traditional English will annoy no-one and please many.
So don’t stretch words needlessly. Transport not transportation. Instruments not instrumentation. And watch out for the American tendency to turn nouns and adjectives into verbs: to hospitalise; to trash; to author a book; to debut; to guest (on a talk programme); to fast-track; even, recently, to euthanise. When a main road in Warwickshire was downgraded, the council announced that it had been de-trunked. This was because the bypass had been dualled. And how about, ‘This car is alarmed’! In 2002, Google’s Senior Vice-President talked about the possibility of charging for the use of the search engine: ‘We may experiment with ways of monetising …’. The American runner Michael Johnson, commenting on the 2003 World Athletics Championships on the BBC, said, ‘She did well. She medaled.’ Despite the fact that we British have accepted many of these coinages in the past, such as finalise, publicise or editorialise, the newer versions irritate British listeners and viewers very much.
Some American usages gain acceptance quite rapidly because they have a particular meaning, and are concise. Some correspondents have adopted ‘to meet with’ instead of ‘to have a meeting with’ because it is shorter, and they probably think it indicates a formal occasion, whereas ‘to meet’ could sound like a chance encounter. ‘The President met with his Defence Secretary …’;
‘The Prime Minister met with senior party officials this evening …’; ‘The Somali Prime Minister has met with relatives of the couple feared kidnapped by pirates …’ (BBC Breakfast, October 2009), Personally, I dislike ‘met with’. Surely ‘met’ will be perfectly clear, and will keep the purists happy.
Other American usages that annoy many Brits are those which drop the word ‘against’, as in: ‘Germany decides to appeal EU’s tobacco advertising ban’ (Euractiv European News Agency); or ‘Thousands turned out to protest the ban’ (CNN). These shorter usages are starting to enter the mainstream in UK broadcasting. ‘Amanda Knox’s parents intend to appeal the verdict’ (BBC TV News, 2009). ‘Eighty MPs are appealing these judgments’ said a BBC political correspondent in December 2009. I think most viewers and listeners would not use this phraseology themselves, so broadcasters should avoid it.
An American usage that has been gaining ground in Britain quite recently is the shortened way of saying dates. I first noticed this on a television trailer for a forthcoming programme in 1997: ‘Starting Monday October 6th …’. Surely, I mused, it should be ‘Starting on Monday October the 6th’? These days, this kind of usage is the routine for programme trails and commercials, presumably because it saves a fraction of a second, and is more punchy and arresting. Sometimes you will even hear ‘Starting Monday October six …’.
And this American style of saying dates is starting to creep into some news scripts: ‘When the Pope arrives here Monday …’; ‘The Polish referendum on June seventh …’ It’s a fair bet that a lot of listeners and viewers will regard this as an unwelcome American habit. Even ‘Nine-Eleven’, as the short way of referring to the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, is not used by many people in Britain, and I would advise writers in the UK to stick to the longer version, ‘September the eleventh’.
In fact, since the end of the 1900s, there has been some confusion about how we should say the number of each year. Most people have been saying ‘two thousand and one; two thousand and two’. But in two thousand and three, BBC Breakfast told us that a company was expected to be in profit by ‘two thousand seven’. This shortening will be widely regarded as American usage, unrelated to normal spoken English in the UK, and will be disliked. My personal view is that the ‘two thousand and …’ form will give way to ‘twenty …’. This is partly because the novelty of the year two thousand is wearing off, but mainly because it is one syllable shorter and faster to say ‘the London Olympics in twenty-twelve’ rather than ‘two thousand and twelve’. This form has emerged in the past. The Battle of Waterloo was in ‘eighteen-fifteen’. And more pertinently, the Battle of Hastings was in ‘ten-sixty-six’, not ‘one thousand and sixty-six’. As they say in so many pieces to camera, only time will tell.
In broadcasting, unlike print, differences in pronunciation are just as noticeable as differences in vocabulary or grammar. For example, English retains a tendency to stress the first syllable of the word, which dates back to Anglo-Saxon roots. The epic poem Beowulf (part of the oral tradition of story-telling, which broadcasters might like to bear in mind) has strong stresses at the beginning of each word and phrase, and the rhymes in each line are ‘front-rhymes’ or alliterations, which pre-date the French tendency to stress the end of the word, with rhymes at the end of each poetic line. So the traditional English pronunciation of ‘harass’ and ‘harassment’ puts the stress on the first syllable. But these traditions are not cast in stone, and pronunciations are changing all the time. As suggested earlier, good broadcasters are aware of these shifts, and try to judge what will not upset any significant section of their audience.
A classic example of a changing pronunciation is ‘schedule’ as ‘skedule’. Very many young people now say it this way. This American pronunciation will take over eventually because it is slightly easier to say, and because the only other common word in the language which begins with ‘sch’ is school. So the new pronunciation of ‘skedule’ seems to be falling into line. But ‘skedule’ hasn’t taken over yet, and is disliked by many people. I urge younger news presenters and reporters to stick to saying ‘shedule’, which is widely regarded as correct English.
In 1906, the brothers H.W. and F.G. Fowler wrote in their authoritative book The King’s English as follows: ‘The English and the American language and literature are both good things; but they are better apart than mixed.’ A century later, few news editors would disagree.