English for Journalists, 4th Edition

Introduction: how this book began

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In the first edition of English for Journalists I thanked the Wolverhampton Express and Star for permission to use material from A Journalist’s Guide to the Use of English by Ted Bottomley and Anthony Loftus. As I said then, this book ‘owes much to theirs, now out of print’.

In fact there would have been little incentive to write EfJ if the Guide had remained in print. It covered the basics pretty well, giving clear advice and putting such things as grammar and punctuation into a journalistic context. It also had useful things to say about style. For several years, when I was teaching periodical journalism at (what was then) the London College of Printing, I ordered bulk ...