Newspaper Grammar

The following grammar peculiarities of newspaper English may be regarded as typical for newspaper style:

Occasional breaking the rules of tenses and rules for reporting speech. These tendencies in newspaper writing modify the well-established grammatical norms. What is considered a gross violation of grammar rules in other kinds of writing, becomes increasingly common in the newspaper style, e.g.: "It was announced in Cairo yesterday that elections will be held...". Past events are denoted with present tense verbs: “Diana finds death in Paris”.

Attributive noun groups are another powerful means of effecting brevity in news items, e.g., 'heart swap patient', the national income and expenditure figures', 'Labor backbench decision', 'leap into space age'. Nominalization is an effective way of condensing and encapsulating information.

Verbal (infinitive, participial, gerundial) constructions and verbal noun constructions, e.g.: "Mr. Nobusuke Kishi, the former Prime Minister of Japan, has sought to set an example by announcing the disbanding of his own faction".

The verb «be» is often omitted in headlines: “255 released”.

Future actions may be expressed with infinitives: “Phone repairers to strike”.

Infinitive complexes, especially the so-called complex subject. This construction is largely used to avoid mentioning the source of information or to shift responsibility for the facts reported, e.g.: "The condition of Lord Samuel, aged 92, was said last night to be a little better." ; "A Petrol bomb is believed to have been exploded ." 

Complex syntactical structure. As reporters should be brief, they naturally try to cram all the facts into the space allotted. Newspaper materials are characterized by complex syntactical structure: "There are indications that BOAC may withdraw threats of all-out dismissals for pilots who restrict flying hours, a spokesman for the British Airline Pilots' association said yesterday." 

Specific word order. Unconventional sentence patterns. Newspaper tradition, coupled with the rigid rules of sentence structure in English, has greatly affected the word order of newspaper items. The word order in leads (the initial sentences in longer stories) is more or less fixed. Journalistic practice has developed the "five-w-and-h-pattern rule" (who/what- why-how-where-when . In terms of grammar this fixed sentence structure follows the pattern: Subject — Predicate (object) — Adverbial modifier of reason (manner) — Adverbial modifier of place — Adverbial modifier of time, e.g.: "The US Consul-General, Mr. Maxwell McCullough, snooped incognito round the anti-Polaris art exhibition "Count Down" in the McLellan Galleries here this morning". (The Daily Telegraph)

The newspaper has developed new sentence patterns not typical of other styles. Consider a typical pattern of brief news sentence structure: "Derec Heath, 43, yesterday left Falmouth for the third time in his attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 12ft dinghy"; "Brighton council yesterday approved а & 22,500 scheme to have parking meters operating in the center of the town by March". 

Exercise 1. Answer the questions:

1. Can you define the English newspaper style?

2. What is the difference between terms and non-terminology?

3.In what spheres of life do we come across many neologisms?

4. Is it good for an article to abound in emotionally colored words?

5.What are the purposes of colloquial words in newspaper stories?

Exercise 2. Mark the statements as T (True) or F (False)

1. Newspaper style does not differ much from the fictional style.

2. Newspaper clichés are almost inevitable in any type of articles.

3. Elements of appraisal are sometimes not very obvious but still implicitly present.

4. Journalists never break the rules of spelling or syntax because it is not allowed by their code of ethics.

5. A lot of nouns and noun phrases are a means to condense the information and achieve lexical density.

6. Inverted sentence structures are typically used in the lead .

7. Information in the lead is arranged so that it should answer the five Wh-questions.

Exercise 3.Choose the expression that best completes the sentence:

Stylistic device, jargonism, extensive use, interrelated means, gross violation, increasingly common

1. The term _____________ refers to a word used by representatives of a particular social group or professional community.

2. There are many _____________ that perform the function of increasing expressive force of the story and making it stand out of the crowd of similar articles.

3. The _____________of legal norms is considered a crime.

4. The editor didn’t approve the _____________ of complex syntactical structures in the article targeting tabloid readers.

5. Today video and printed materials are combined as _____________ of communicating message to the audience.

6. Freelance journalism has become _____________.