对比英文(最新)《新闻英语与范文评析》笔记

《新闻英语与范文评析》理论题笔记

1. The Function of Headlines

A: Five main functions.

First, a headline summarizes a news story with the most important

and attractive words. A reader usually doesn’t have time for every

piece of news that’s printed. With the guidance of

terse headlines,

readers can quickly find the parts they want to read.

Second, it sparkles the whole page. One can imagine how suffocative

a newspaper could be if there were not a single headline and dozens of

news stories just piled up. Third, it beautifies the form of edition.

Headlines are good decoration to the page as they appear in various

sizes and typefaces.

Fourth, a headline sometimes is used to attract the readers’

attention.

Fifth, a headline can be used to make some comment.

2. Grammatical features of headlines

First, there are omission of article, conjunction, pronoun, link

verb and auxiliary verb. It is used to summarize and highlight the

content. For example, “China sees

housing as (an) engine to drive (the) economy.”

Second, present tense is used to show things that happened in the

past.

Three reasons:

First, it saves space. In most cases past tense is longer in space

than the present tense, with an “ed” in extra. So present tense can

save some space for a headline.

Secondly, present tense is active. It puts the reader into action

and gives him a feeling of participation, so that it attracts readers’

attention.

Thirdly, a present-tense emphasizes the timeliness of the news. It

gives the reader a sense of freshness and immediacy, although he might

well understand that a head in the present tense in today’s newspaper

is presenting yesterday’s news.

More:

First, use “be to do” instead of “will do” to present the future

tense, and “be” is often omitted in order to save space.

Second,

use “be doing” to present things that are happening, and

“be” is often omitted in order to save space.

Thirdly, sometimes present tense can also present things that are

happening or will happen, for example,”Labour plans BBC shake

-

up. ”

Third, active voice is more often used. It is more colorful and

appealing, more forward and powerful in transferring meaning than

passive voice. The word ”be” or “by” are often omitted only use past

participle to express passivity. Fourth, punctuations are used sometimes

in headlines. English headlines are known for its terse structure, and

punctuations are used in much rarer cases than in the text. Punctuations

only appear in the head for two reasons. First, they are used to save

space. For example, comma is used to subst

itute “and” only to save

space. Secondly, they are used to show the relation between two groups

of words. For example, a dash is used to connect a quotation and its

attribution. 3. Why sometimes in headlines, “and” ,“the” or “to

be” are not omitted?

A: They are not to be omitted in two occasions. One, when they are

in set phrases,

such as in the headline, “TB on the rise again”. Two, when they

can fill up the

space hole in a headline. For example, “Four killed and five hurt

in a house fire.”

4. The language feature of headlines

A: A headline is aiming at summarizing a whole article with a few

words. So journalists make great effort in choosing the right words

which are clear in meaning and economy in space.

There are some preference for journalists and editors

First, they use abundant of simple words. Some are teeny tiny little

words that lively express some meaning. “Hit” or “ruin” are often

used instead of “damage”

Second, initials are often used to save space, like “WTO” or

“ABM”

Thirdly, Abbreviations are used, which can be easily recognized by

readers. Such as “ad” and ”biz” which can be easily found in the

English newspaper.

Fourthly, there is flexible use of journalistic coinages. To save

time and space, journalists often combine two or more words into one

word in practice and coinage then comes into being. They are very

impressive and catchy, some even have the characteristic of originality,

like “newscast.”

5. Different styles of the typefaces

America/Canada: capitalize the first alphabet of every notional word.

English: capitalize the first alphabet of the first word in a headline.

Exceptional: New York Times: capitalize every alphabet to beautify the

edition

styles for headlines

A: flush-left head, dropline head/indented head, crossline/keyline,

centered head, inverted pyramid head, banner head/streamer and jump head.

ence between Chinese headline and English head

？

A:They are different in four ways.

First, Chinese headlines usually provide more information than

English heads. Chinese heads are often multi-deck, and English heads are

often one-deck, thus Chinese headlines tend to focus on the totality of

the news. And if it cannot include all the facts that is needed in the

head, the subhead can do the job. Another reason it usually carries more

info is that each Chinese character takes up equal space, while English

words are not. As a result, Chinese heads tend to be like mini-story in

capsule form, while English heads accentuate on one important factor of

the news. The second difference is the difference in the use of words.

Like in English heads, it’s a no

-no to begin a head with a verb. But in

Chinese headlines, it’s ok. There are abundant use of simple words

which serve to save space in English heads, but you can need not to

follow that rule for every Chinese character takes up equal space. For

another example, people seldom use adjectives or adverbs in English

heads following the principle of “ABC”(accuracy, brevity and clarity),

but you can easily grasp a piece of Chinese news with adjectives or

adverbs in the headline. Thirdly, they are different in tense. English

heads often use present tense which had been called “historical present

tense” to present yesterday’s news, and avoid time

-indicating words

like “yesterday’ or “last night”. But Chinese heads use

them to indicate the happening time.

The last difference should be in the word layout. You can never lay

the English headlines in vertical form, but you can certainly do that in

Chinese heads. People use single quotation mark in English headlines but

double quotation mark in Chinese headline.

8. News value determiners

A: timeliness or freshness;

Importance/consequence/impact/significance;

Prominence;

Proximity/locality/nearness

Unusualness/bizarreness/oddity/novelty

Human interest;

Conflict

9. Hard news and soft news

Hard news (spot news/straight news): Events that are timely and are

covered almost automatically by print and electronic media. They are

often very serious and important news.

Soft news: Events that are usually not considered immediately

important or timely to a wide audience.

10. Genre of news reporting

News

Feature

Commentaries and columns

Interpretive reporting

Investigative reporting

New journalism

Skit/essay

Picture news/photojournalism

11. News structure

Inverted pyramid style: it is the most frequently used structure in

news writing. In this structure, events are written in descending order

of importance. First of all, a terse lead is formed. The lead offers the

most essential elements telling who, what, when, where, why and how of

the story.

Advantages: First, it is convenient for editors to decide the news

value and cut the news from the bottom; Second, it is convenient for

journalists to meet the deadline without missing any key facts; Third,

it can help readers to find the main facts of the news quickly.

Disadvantages: First, the main facts all frequently appear in the

headline, lead and body, which would be suffocative to most readers;

Second, the writing is not tightly o

rganized and fully deployed, what’s

more, the style is top heavy and lack of suspense interest.

Pyramid style/the chronological style

It is composed by three parts, they are beginning, body and ending.

To write a piece of news in pyramid style, a beginning is given first

and events are written in

time sequence. Writers can take advantage of narrative and

descriptive writing, so it flows better and involves readers. At the

meantime, it adds suspense interest to the story.

Mixed form of invented pyramid and pyramid style (Circle style)

After a lead, events are written in time sequence. It has the

advantages of pyramid style and important facts can be presented high in

the story. The most important information is repeated in the narrative,

so that readers can have a chance to absorb it. It is more effective

storytelling and can keep readers interested until the end then leads up

to a real conclusion. Comparing with the other styles, this form is more

balanced. But it discourages editors slash the story from the bottom.

List technique

Wall Street journal formula: It tends to focus on individual.

12. Forms of reporting

Single event coverage/brief

Roundups: it tends to focus on the totality and integrity. There are

two types of this kind: horizontal roundups and vertical roundups.

Follow-ups/ follow-up stories (second cycle stories/ development

stories) Advantages: First, it attracts readers’ attention by

accentuating on one important fact of the news; Second, it tends to

fully deploy the news from different aspects, which can well make up for

the contradiction in terms of freshness and integrity; Third, it helps

to form the public opinion.

Content: Facts that are not mentioned in previous stories or some

background of

events.

The developments of the events;

Different opinions from people of all walks of life;

The prediction of the events;

Important facts that previously reported.

In-depth reports: Including investigative reporting and interpretive

reporting emphasize on WHY.

es of leads

A: Succinct. A summary lead should outline a news story in no more

than 35 words Informative. A summary lead should contain the 5Ws of news.

Intriguing. Leads are sometimes called “grabbers”, which means it

serves the

duty to grab the readers’ attention.

W

hat’s more, leads should also be straightforward, varied, clear

specific and active.

That why English journalists struggle for the best wording and leave

no stone unturned.

of leads

Summary lead/roundup lead

Main fact lead

Descriptive lead

Direct address lead

Quotation lead (full quotation lead/partial quotation lead)

Suspense lead

Delayed lead/multi-paragraph lead Contrast lead

Question lead

Anecdotal lead

Combined lead/multiple element lead Label lead (empty lead)

presses

AP

，

Associated Press

，

UPI

，

United Press International

，

AFP (L’Agence France Press)

Reuters (The Reuter Ltd)

Kyodo; Itar-Tass; ANSA; PTI

，

Press Trust of India

，

;DPA(

德新

); EFE

，

埃菲社

,

西班牙，

ent of the dateline

English: place, date, press name

中文

: press name, place, date

s of news reporting

Accurate news sources: with the name of organization, people or

agency;

Implied news sources: people who do not want to be told the name, or

sources

from nonsense people that readers do not have interest in, as used

like “witness

said”

Use fuzzy words to imply the sources such as “it is said”

ence between feature and news.

A: Three differences.

First, their focus is not the same. News reporting provides all

facts that are related. It tends to focus on inclusiveness and integrity

of the news, while features only present the most characteristic and

impressive episode of the story. A piece of news shows a panorama, but a

feature gives an enlarged close- up.

Secondly, their writing purpose is not exactly the same. News only

tries to inform the readers, while features try harder to attract the

reader’s attention with more detailed and descriptive writing.

Thirdly, their composition structure is not always the same. News

reporting for most cases adopts inverted pyramid form, but features

follow no such rule. It can be very flexible in terms of structure.

of features

1) News-oriented, interest-oriented