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Index
Media Skills
Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
WHAT THIS BOOK COVERS
WHAT THIS BOOK DOES NOT COVER
THE APPROACH
2 Good spoken English
ARE STANDARDS SLIPPING?
Standards in broadcast news
The pressures on broadcast journalists
WHICH MODEL OF THE SPOKEN WORD?
The Queen’s English
Standardising English
BBC ENGLISH AND BROADCAST NEWS ENGLISH
English as a global language
Popular acceptance
Tradition versus changing usage
Authority versus accessibility
3 The language of broadcast news
WRITING THE SPOKEN WORD
How the audience watches and listens to the news
Journalese
Officialese from the emergency services
Officialese from politicians
JARGON
Business news jargon
Specialist reporting
Sick as a parrot: reporting sport
News agency copy
CLICHÉS
THE DEFINITE ARTICLE
AMERICANISMS
American imports
Increasing use of Americanisms
A date in the USA
American pronunciation
4 Writing broadcast news scripts
THE PRINCIPLES
Clarity, simplicity and conciseness
Short sentences work better
WHAT’S THE STORY?
Subjects and events are not necessarily stories
Story-focus in the treatment of subjects
Writing the key point of the story first
THE DIRECT STYLE
Not too many subordinate clauses
The active voice
Redundant words
Adjectives and adverbs
Adjectives and value-judgements
ACCURACY
Accuracy in language
The meaning of words
Ambiguity
Precision
Questions of attribution
ACCURATE NAMES
Names and titles: the establishment
The judiciary
The church
The military
Gongs
Lords and Ladies
Names and titles: lesser mortals
On first-name terms?
Names of organisations
Abbreviated names
Registered names
ACCURATE GEOGRAPHY
My country – right or wrong?
A sense of place
Different organisations in the UK
Different social trends and patterns
The nations of the UK
Scotland
Scottish politics
Scottish courts
Scottish education
Wales
Welsh politics
Northern Ireland
The political landscape in Northern Ireland
England
Europe
The EU – getting it right
European courts
Around the world
THE NUMBERS GAME
Simple numbers
Up to …
Vague numbers
Number or amount?
Measurements
Foot or feet?
Figures in opinion polls
Writing the numbers
Ages
QUESTION OF GRAMMAR
The split infinitive
Collective nouns
His and hers
Blatant errors
Reported speech
Quoting direct speech
SENSITIVITY
Stereotyping and loaded language
Sexism
Sexual orientation
Race
Racism
Colour
Asian
Religion
Disability
PRONUNCIATION
Saying it aloud
Do’s and don’ts and won’ts and can’ts
STORY STRUCTURE
Short bulletin items
Kipling’s questions
WRITING INTROS
The latest development
The length of an intro
The inviting intro
Involve the listener or viewer – especially at the local level
Intros on television
Graphics in TV intros
The ‘split-intro’ on television
Special occasions
Exclusive?
Intros written on location
Casualty figures in the intro
The intro in summary
NARRATIVE JOURNALISM
Patterns and stories
Pyramids or lines?
Chronology
Picture sequences on TV
Setting the scene first
Other familiar patterns
5 Different techniques for radio and television
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
WRITING RADIO NEWS
Using actuality and description
Big stories need more description
WRITING TELEVISION NEWS
Write commentary first or edit the pictures first?
Shot-lists
Short stories and longer packages
Writing to pictures
Words and pictures are complementary
What am I looking at?
Pictures from the library or archive
The present tense
The play-on-words and the pun
Natural sound on television
Using graphics
Full-screen and integrated graphics
Writing to graphics
Spellings on graphics
An example of a full TV package
Headlines on TV
Why headlines?
An inviting style in headlines
Clichés in headlines
Howlers in headlines
How long and how many headlines?
Split headlines
A mini-production
Closing headlines
24-HOUR TV NEWS
Live on location
Live in the studio
6 Writing online news
VERSIONING YOUR STORIES FOR THE WEBSITE
A DIFFERENT WRITING STYLE
A NEW KIND OF JOURNALISM
FASTER AND DEEPER
FRESH AND EASY
MORE THAN WORDS
NEWS TO MOBILE
BLOGGING AND TWEETING
7 And finally …
ORWELL’S SUMMARY
WHAT OF THE FUTURE?
Appendix Dangerous words
Further reading
BROADCAST JOURNALISM AND BROADCASTING TECHNIQUES
THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
GUIDES TO WRITING STYLE IN JOURNALISM AND OTHER REFERENCES
Index
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