SUBJECT:
BASIC CREATIVE WRITING TECHNIQUES
DESCRIPTION: By reading the news text, news reader can transfer their information to everyone. The information can be right or wrong, it depends on the technical mastering that had by the personality of the news reader (presenter). On this modul, the topic decide to explain about the technical knowledge that will be shared to the student that in case will be the one of news reader or presenter hopefully.
GOAL : By learning and understanding modul 9, wish the students can:
1. Have the good spelling and writing techniques
2. Understanding the differences of spelling a word that have same sound.
3. Can read the news text of English perfectly.
REFERENCES:
- Broadcast Journalism, written by Andrew Boyd (Focal Press)
- Tata Bahasa Bahasa Inggris, written by Erhans Anggawirya and friends (Indah)
- An Indonesian-English Dictionary, written by John M. Echols and Hasan Shadily (Gramedia)
- An English-Indonesian Dictionary, written by John M. Echols and Hasan Shadily (Gramedia)
Most broadcast organizations have a view about good style, and though they differ in detail, most would agree that good style is usually whatever makes good sense.
Geoge Orwell wrote Politics and the English Language in 1946, but his advice still holds true today;
- Never use a metaphore, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Clichēs
Eric Partridge, in his Dictionary of clichēs, defines the clichēs ‘a phrase so hackneyed as to be knock-kneed and spavined.’
They not only fail to envilen dull copy, clichēs make even the most significant item sound trite. If we accuse council tax payers of taking up cudgels against city hall whenever they write a letter of complaint, what are we to say the day owner-occupiers really do drive nails through wooden clubs and set about their elected representatives?
What will be left to say when war is declared?
Journalese
The clichēs owes much to journalese, described by writer John Leo as the native tongue of newsgatherers and pundits. It is the language of the label and istant metaphor, drawing its inspiration from sapce-starved newspaper headlines to make pronouncement of stunning clarity over matters which to everybody else appear decidedly muddied.
More disturbingly, an evening’s sport of name-calling, stone-throwing and petty crimes against property by rival gangs of schoolboys in Nothern Ireland (which is devided along sectarian, religious, tribal and political lines) becomes a ‘fresh outbreaks of violence between loyalists and republican supporters.’
Clichēs and journalese are devils disguised as angels. They lie in wait for the moment Inspiration turns her back, before overpowering her, stealling her clothes and sneaking up on the reporter as a deadline approaches.
Hyperbole
Another blood relation of journalese is hype. Hype can be found scattered throughout the media, and in especially large concentrations whereever advertising copywriters gather.
Many journalist readily callon hype’s assistance to lend support to a flaccid story on a quiet news day. For example;
‘Children’s live could be at risk if they swallow quantities of a lethal drug which have gone missing in Harare.’
Translated: Somebody dropped their sleeping tablets on their way home from the shops.
Hype of this order is unpleasant, distasteful and unnecessary. If the story can’t stand up without it, it should not be run.
If the news is to remain a reliable source of factual information, hype should be kept within the confines of the commercial break.
Adjectives
How many adjectives you use will depend on your house style and whether the station’s image is ‘quality’ or ‘popular’. Contrast the versions below;
‘Fireman with oxy-acetylene cutters took three hours to free the body from the wreckage. They saud it was one of the worst chrashes they’d seen.’
‘Fireman with oxy-acetylene cutters struggled for three hours to free the mangled body from the shattered cab. They said the horrific crash was one of the worst they’d seen.’
Most stations would think twice about the tasteless ‘mangled’. Adjectives add color but too many make the piece sound like an extract from a lurid novel. Remove them all and the item can sound dull or bland. Handle with care.
Quotations
A choice quotation can add considerably to the flavour of a report, but there are hazards in using quotes in broadcasting.
In print a quote is immediately obvious because of the quotation marks, but broascast audiences cannot hear when a quote begins and ends, so they should be kept short and clearly attributed:
‘The Prime Minister rounded on the ptotesters, accusing them of “behaving like a bunch of anarchists’
The newsreader can help with the signposting, by pausing for a fraction of a second before reading the quote.
Attribution
Information should be attributed clearly to leave the audience in no doubt about who is speaking – remember, listeners can never refer back. This said, attribution can be overdone and badly clutter a piece of copy:
‘The honorable Peter Threeple, Junior Minister in the Department of Health, said today than an injection of 20 million pounds would be made available to improve wages in the National Health Service.’
Not exactly an attention grabber, so the sentence should be turned around to put the facts before the attribution, and the attribution shortenned to be still accurate, but much more manageable:
‘A cash injection of 20 million pounds is to be made available to improve wages in the Health Service.’
‘Health minister Peter Threeple told the Commons today that the money...etc.’
The message is often more important than the messenger. In the case the news of the funding is more important than the name of the minister. So the information should be run before the attribution.
Stories should begin with a perso’s name is widely known. If the audience cannot immediately identify the person, this become apoint of confusion at the start of a story.
To avoid cluttering an introduction it is sometimes necessary to choose between giving a person’s name or title in the first line. If their name is better known than their job or organization, then the name should be given before the title, and vice versa.
The art is to attribute a statement clearly without lwtting the attribution get in the way. Television has a major advantage over radio – interviewees can appear without a verbal introduction because their names and titles can be displayed on the screen over the pictures.
Contentious statements
When statements are controversial or contentious the attribution has to be made clearly and cannot be hels back until the second sentence:
‘America’s unemployed are a shiftless, lazy bunch of spongers, who should be forced to sweep the streets until they find a decent job.’ So said governor Richman at a news conference today.
This first sentence has turned a highly debatable assertion into a statement of fact, and the danger is that the audience may miss the attribution that follows and identify the opinion with the newsreader. The station could lose a large section of its audience – the unemployed. Maintain impartiality by keeping a safe distance from such statements.
This problem is avoided by giving the attribution in the same sentence and signposting than this is a matter of opinion and not facts:
‘Governor Richman launched a scathing attack on America’s unemployed today ... calling them a shiftless, lazy bunch of spongers. And speaking at a news conference, he said they should be forced to sweep the streets until they could get themselves decent jobs.’
This gets the broadcaster off the hook and leaves Governor Richman dangling firmly on it.
Careful attribution is crucial where facts are being asserted which have yet to be proven true. It is not uncommon with war reporting to find both sides claiming substantial victorities over each other at the same time.
Immediacy
One of the great strengths of broadcast news is its immediacy. It wipes the floor with newspapers when it comes to reacting quickly to changing events. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when the world stood on the brink of nuclear was has been accredited as the catalyst which caused the switch from papers to TV as the prime source of news.
Broadcasters are able to follow events as they theu unfold. They understandably play to their strengths, and most newsrooms highten the sense of immediacyin their copy by using the present or perfects tenses.
The word ‘yesterday’ is taboo in broadcasting. Nothing sounds more incongruous than a station with hourly bulletins giving a time reference that barks back 24 hours. If ‘yesterday’ on ‘last night’ have to be used, they should be kept out of the opening sentence and buried further down the story.
Similarly, phrases such as ‘this morning’, ‘this afternoon’, or ‘this evening’ can date copy. In the small hours of the morning, references to events ‘last night’ can be confusing, and should be replaced with ‘overnight’ or ‘during the night’.
Time references have to be handled even more carefully when a station is broadcasting over several time zones. Canada, for example, spans seven such zones. To avoid confusion over their copy, news agencies that file stories over a wide area usually include the day of the week in brackets.
Active
News is about movement, change and action. Yet too often newswriting is reduced to the passive voice – instead of actions that have occured as a result of actions. ‘The car smashed into the wall’ becomes the limp and soft-centred ‘the brick wall samshed into by the car’.
The passive version on the left could be said to be lacking something of the snap of the original. The active voice is tighter, crisper and more concrete.
Positive
News is about is happening, so even what is not happening should be expressed in an active, positive way. ‘He did not succeed’, becomes ‘he failed’; ‘He was asked to move, but didn’t’, becomes ‘he refused to move’; ‘Plans for the hospital would not go ahead for the time being’, becomes, ‘Plans for the hospital have been shelved’.
Double negatives should be unravelled; ‘Doctors say it is improbable that the illness will not prove terminal’ becomes ‘Doctors admit the patient will probably die’.
Redundancies
Redundancies are words that serve only up the copy. They should be ruthlessly eliminated:
Check out
End result
Period of a week, etc.
Now read the sentence again and leave out the words in bold.
Every word should earn its place in the copy. Newswriting is too streamlined to carry any passengers. Modifiers such as ‘very’, ‘quite’, and ‘almost’ are excess baggage and should be dumped.
Alliteration
In Indonesian language, we know it as pengulangan bunyi kata yang diucapkan. Alliteration means that the presenter or news reader must knowing how to spell the English words or terminologies in the right rule.
For example: The sun sunk slowly
The person who hear someone said that sentence will predict as They sung slowly. So, it will give wrong direction to the person who watch television if that sentence read by the news reader.
The news reader or presenter of television must having good knowledge in spelling words perfectly. The wrong spelling will make the people who hear their statements will have wrong perception in their own mind hopefully, then it probably will give the wrong information that causes the message that given by the presenter or news reader to the people by television, getting wrong or missing.
Repetition
Unnecessary repetition of words can jar the ear and should be avoided, but if no alternative can be found, and if it sounds right, then don’t be afraid to repeat. No one has yet come up with a way of avoiding saying ‘fire’ in a story about a ... well, a conflagration, without sounding absurd. Common practice is to alternate the words ‘fire’ and ‘blaze’.
Where a proposal is involved, alternatives such as scheme, plan, or programme may be used.
The meaning of this term is little bit same with alliteration above, but repetition is not having the same sound of spelling terminology or word but also the same written. Or on the other hand, alliteration is more global than repetition.
For example: read (V1), read (V2) or read (V3)
Even the written of third above words are same, but the spelling are extremelly different. The news reader or presenter have to be able in knowing it. Otherwise, the meaning of their statement will be getting wrong.
Homonyms
Homonyms are words that sound like others with different meanings:
Bare and Bear
Bright and Plight
Ate and Eight
Billion and Million
Fatal and Facial
Confusing fatal and facial injuries in an accident report could give somebody’s mother a heart attack! Usually the context will make the meaning of word clear, but beware of baffling the listener.
Singular or plural
Should it be the Government says or the Government say? Opinions differ and many newsrooms settle the issue by writing whatever sounds right to the ear. The trouble starts when inconsistencies creep into the copy:
‘The Conservative party say their policies will defend Britain’s position in Europe. The party wants and end to what it describes as “European meddling” in Britain’s affairs.
‘The Consevative party says’ and ‘The party wants’ may both sound right individually, but they do not sound right together. Journalists must make up their own mind.
Pronouns
Using pronouns in broadcasting requires a special discipline to get round the problem of muddling the listener who can’t go back over what has been said:
‘Film star Richard Cruise was involved in an ugly scene with fellow actor Tom Gere outside a Hollywood restaurant today. Cruise called Gere a has-been, and Gere responded by casting doubt on Cruise’s parentage. He said he would sue.’
Is Gere suing Cruise or is Cruise suing Gere? The way around this is to swap the pronoun for a name:
‘Cruise said he would sue.’
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