Headline Advice

You want to write headlines? Here are five tips.

1.) Avoid writing them as questions.
2.) Don't be cute just because you can.
3.) Don't engage in wordplay that makes no sense.
4.) Accurately reflect the story.
5.) If you don't have the space you need, ask for more.

Boiling those five points down to one produces this:

Don't write headlines for yourself or your pals on the desk. Write them for your readers. We don't create the newspaper to amuse ourselves.

Future of Newspapers Update

I haven't seen as much hand-wringing in the past couple of weeks. Perhaps people want to watch how the Knight-Ridder business works itself out.

Interesting points have been made, though, on the difficulties of establishing "citizen journalism." Exhibit one: The Bayosphere. Analysis here. And the founder of Craigslist thinks too much has been made of it altogether.

He says: "The deal is, there's no substitute for professional-level writing and fact-checking and editing. One of the tenets of the effort I'm involved with is to drive more traffic to professional news sites. People have gotten too excited about citizen journalism, and they're not addressing the balance well."

Hmm. (That's my profound point. Hmm.)

What an Editor Does

I picked up a copy of "The Years With Ross," humorist James Thurber's account of his time with New Yorker editor Harold Ross. In the introduction to this new edition, essayist Adam Gopnik offers one of the best descriptions of editing that I've read.

Editors are, he writes, "before anything else, taker-outers, lighteners of the overpacked sentence."

He also reflects on the writer-editor relationship:

"In their hearts, writers think of editors as little as society ladies think of maitre d's: one tips them heavily and listens wide-eyed to their advice on the menu, but the point is to keep that table." (And, in their hearts, all editors think of writers as maitre d's do society ladies: spoiled, demanding children -- if only, sigh, you could run a restaurant without them.)"

Not that I personally think this way.

Recent Searches

How do people get here? They type:

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... And about 50 billion terms having to do with massage. Minds out of the gutter, folks!

Follow-up and Another Blog

Response to the dietitian / dietician post of a few weeks back came quickly.

The word is not really a legitimately formed word, and I'm pretty sure both are correct (or incorrect, depending on how you view it). The OED lists both uses (all condescendingly). I remember reading about 'beautician' (Fowler?), and how ridiculous they made it seem. Generally, the -ician suffix is reserved for words ending in -ic (etc.) Mathematic(s)-> mathematician.Readers of this blog reveal new wells of information all the time.

I suppose I can understand usage experts' disdain, but what the heck do you call the person who's an expert on meal planning? The diet guy? The diet dude? Diet-woman the magnificent?

I mean, come on. Sometimes, inelegant uses persist because we don't have a better alternative. AP's mention suggests they haven't figured out a better way.

The reader who left that response has an interesting usage blog. You can find it here. The creator promises "some of the most boring, academic pedantry on the web." Who can resist?

Poynter on Grammar

Mervin Block, "a newswriting coach" and author of "Writing Broadcast News -- Shorter, Sharper Stronger," critiques recent slips by "60 Minutes."

A couple of examples:

3) "She was big box-office, made a total of 50 movies." (April 3, 2005.)

Delete a total of. Without it, the sentence means the same, except that now it's leaner. Strunk and White tell us in their "Elements of Style": "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words ... for the same reason a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

5) "The Brooklyn Bridge was built in 1869. It's still one of the best-looking things on Earth." (Oct. 9, 2005.)

Work on the bridge began in 1869. It was completed in 1883. Thing is something I was taught to avoid. My teacher had a thing about it.

Block catches some poor writing, yes, but some of those quoted "mistakes" are attempts at colloquialism. I don't know if those should be put at the same level as factual errors. We should banish cliches. But we should first verify those quotes and dates.

Stuff like this makes writers hate editors. We put our own prejudices ahead of what works for the story and the basic facts it contains. I would say we don't see the forest for the trees, but I don't want to lapse into dreaded cliche.

Note from the 'Real World'

The partner and I have spend most of the past week preparing for a guest. Although the guest has nothing whatsoever to do with copy editing, grammar or journalism as a whole, these preparations have taken up valuable blog-cogitation minutes.

Not to worry. Many small, annoying bits of grumbling float in my brain. I merely have to pluck them from the ether.