Читать книгу The Writing of News - Charles G. Ross - Страница 9

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“Boil it down” is an injunction frequently heard in the newspaper office. The requirements both of the public and of the newspaper demand that the story be concisely told. The hurried reader has no time for the story clogged with unnecessary words and trivial detail; the newspaper has no space for it.

Daily there comes to the newspaper a stream of copy from various sources. The local room contributes its share, while the telegraph editor receives scores of dispatches from special correspondents, besides the regular service of one of the great news gathering organizations. It would be neither possible nor desirable to print all of the immense amount of news matter received. The paper as the reader sees it is the result of a process of careful selection. Many stories have been omitted, some of them having been “killed” after progressing as far as the type forms, and others have been “boiled down” to a few sentences.

The news writer, then, should study to be terse. Verbosity merely makes work for the copy reader’s pencil. Try to say in one word what the writer who strains after effect might put into half a dozen. Don’t say “devouring element” when you mean “fire.” “Fire” is a good Anglo-Saxon word that everybody understands and uses—and it is twelve letters shorter. “A house is building” is simpler, shorter and more effective than “A house is in process of construction.” “The society met last night and elected officers for the year” is the simple, natural equivalent of “At a meeting held last night the society perfected its organization for the year by the election of officers.”

Wordiness, like bad spelling, is a sign of mental laziness, and the newspaper office has no room for the lazy.