Essential English for Journalists, Editors and Writers

by Crawford Gillan, Harold Evans

Overview

Essential English is an indispensable guide to the use of words as tools of communication. It is written primarily for journalists, yet its lessons are of immense value to all who face the problem of giving information, whether to the general public or within business, professional or social organisations.

FULLY REVISED AND UPDATED BY CRAWFORD GILLAN

RECOMMENDED BY THE SOCIETY OF EDITORS

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781446412114
Publisher:	Random House
Publication date:	11/30/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	517 KB

About the Author

Sir Harold Matthew Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. He has written various books on history and journalism, including Essential English. Since 2001, Evans has served as editor-at-large of The Week Magazine and since 2005, he has been a contributor to the Guardian and BBC Radio 4. He lives in New York with his wife and childen.

Table of Contents

Foreword to the Pimlico edition

ix

Editor's Preface

xi

1

The Making of a Newspaper

1

The Copydesk

2

The Text Editor

4

The Copy-taster

5

The Projection Editor

6

The Revise Editor

7

Standards in Editing

8

What Makes a Good Text Editor?

10

2

Good English

14

Sentences--Limit the Ideas

17

Be Active

22

Be Positive

25

Avoid Monotony

27

3

Words

30

Use Specific Words

32

Write with Nouns and Verbs

44

Strike Out Meaningless Modifiers

46

Avoid Needless Repetition

48

Avoid Monologophobia

51

Watch the Prepositions

53

Care for Meanings

56

Avoid Cliches

63

Story Sources of Wordiness

64

4

Watch this Language

75

Wasteful Words

76

Redundancies

83

Stale Expressions

87

5

The Structure of a News Story--Intros

91

Chronology

97

Source Obsession

100

Overloading

105

Three Aids to Better Intros

109

Special Intro Problems

114

6

The Structure of a News Story--The News Lead

121

Action Stories

121

A Good News Narrative

126

Statement-Opinion Stories

132

How the Dailies Handled the Story

135

An American Example

143

Speeches and Reports

147

Running Statement-Opinion Stories

149

7

Background

162

Background for Intelligibility

162

Background for Interest

178

Story-telling

180

Exercises in Choice of Style

186

News-features Editing

195

8

Headlines

204

What the News Headline Says

204

The Headline's Purpose

205

How Many Ideas?

208

Grammatical Traps

210

Impartiality

212

Accuracy

213

How the News Headline Says It

214

Verbs

215

Subject Omitted

220

Who's Who

222

Be Specific

224

Saying Where

226

Be Positive

228

Single Thoughts

230

The Key Word

232

Labels That Work

233

Headlines in Practice

235

Free-style Headlines

237

Letting the Words Take Over

239

Good and Bad Puns

240

Feature Headings

241

Specialised Pages

243

Headlinese

244

The Seven Deadly Sins

245

9

Headline Vocabulary

254

Notes

286

Index

288

Editorial Reviews

"Demonstrates how to clear whole jungles of vagueness and verbal clutter"

EBOOK COMMENTARY