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Writing for Journalists, 3rd Edition
book

Writing for Journalists, 3rd Edition

by Wynford Hicks, Adams Sally, Harriett Gilbert, Tim Holmes, Jane Bentley
April 2016
Beginner content levelBeginner
200 pages
5h 43m
English
Routledge
Content preview from Writing for Journalists, 3rd Edition

8Style

 

Murder your darlings

The traditional view on English style is simply put. Be clear; avoid ornament; let the message reveal itself. From Samuel Johnson and Jonathan Swift in the eighteenth century to George Orwell in the twentieth and Elmore Leonard in the twenty-first, writers and literary critics have agreed. Style is not something to be strained for or added on: it is there in the writer – or the subject – waiting to be expressed. What is needed is plainness, decorum, economy, precision – above all, clarity. What is not needed is rhetoric or embellishment.

Quoting a college tutor, Dr Johnson pronounced: ‘Read over your compositions, and where ever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.’ And echoing ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781317394198