The Associated Press Guide to News Writing Chapter 5 Review


A lot of genres have a sub-category and, in some cases, a sub-language. Like in sports you have sports talk. There are many variations of things like this and journalism is no different. Journalese is the so-called language of journalism as aptly put by Rene J. Cappon in his guidebook The Associated Press Guide to News Writing. This week we will be looking at Journalese, the fifth chapter in Cappon’s guidebook.

In the chapter, Cappon talks about journalese. Journalese is an artificial language of news style used in popular media. In journalese, phrases that are not necessary to the story are often pushed in for dramatization.

Cappon again inserts his overarching message of directness and simple writing. Journalese is used to get attention and Cappon believe it is not the best way to get it. Overall, this chapter was bit repetitive for explaining what journalese is and could have been trimmed down to be a shorter chapter.

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