Top 20 Tips From Newspaper Style Guides

A century ago, long before the arrival of The Associated Press Stylebook, practically every American newspaper had its own style guide--a list of dos and don'ts cobbled together by the paper's quirky and opinionated editor. Surprisingly, perhaps, much of that editing advice still holds up--as shown in these excerpts from five early-20th-century style sheets.

1. If a man is "well known" it is not necessary to say so.¹


2. If superlatives are used only when they are warranted, they will mean something; they are seldom warranted.²


3. Two words may be discarded generally in the phrase "whether or not." Write it: "He doesn't know whether he will go."³


4. When there is a choice between two terms for an idea, one specific and the other general, it is better to choose the specific.⁴


5. Prune the rank luxuriance of language. Avoid "those fine things" which [Thomas B.] Macaulay says, "boys of fifteen admire." Young reporters are liable to be too fond of that ornate style that passes under the name of "highfalutin." The copy editors repeatedly "massacre fine sentences" before the offenders are cured.⁵


6. The use of the word "about" should be avoided when possible. If you write "There were two thousand people in the hall," the round numbers are a sufficient indication that there was not an actual count of those present.¹


7. Don't say "possibly may" or "possibly might." The verb conveys the idea of possibility.³


8. Don't say "invited guest." It is supposed that a guest is invited.³


9. Don't write that he has a "brilliant future before him." Futures do not lie in the past.³


10. Be sparing in the use of epithets and of adjectives and adverbs generally.³


11. Avoid the four frequent errors in the use of too many words:
    (a) Prolixity--the introduction of too many details, unnecessary to clearness, destructive to force.
    (b) Tautology--the repetition of an idea.
    (c) Redundancy--the use of a word serving no grammatical or rhetorical purpose in the sentence.
    (d) Verbosity--circumlocution, the use of a long expression in place of an equivalent shorter one.⁴


12. Avoid redundancy of ideas, superfluous words and crude, hackneyed expressions. "A regular monthly meeting," "some time past," "all day long," "all day yesterday," "which he had in his possession," and all like expressions are examples of the superfluous.⁵


13. Don't confound "amateur " with "novice." An amateur may be the equal of the professional in experience and skill; a novice is a beginner.¹


14. Don't "try and" write correctly, but "try to" write correctly.¹


15. Don't spell forward, backward, homeward, afterward, downward, toward, earthward, and heavenward with a final "s."¹


16. Don't forget that "death is the wages of sin," and that "the wages of sin are death." Verbs agree in number with their subjects and not with their predicates.¹


17. Write in a style that is natural to you. If you strain after effect, you are certain to burst a rhetorical blood vessel.⁵


18. There can be no more important morsels of advice given to the young reporter than these: (a) acquire new words every week; (b) know the distinct shade of meaning; (c) cultivate the habit of using synonyms; (d) aim at freshness, not at eccentricity.⁴


19. After the writing is complete, try to eliminate at least one useless word from each sentence.²


20. To gain grace in writing one must either be born with a natural aptitude in the use of words--and such men: Stevenson, Poe, Walter Pater and others, are geniuses--or one must study the writings of these masters of prose and attempt to discover the secret of their success. It is not necessary that a good writer should know rules of grammar, but he must know enough to observe them. A writer may be unable to tell why a dangling participle is faulty English by testing it with a rule, but he may nevertheless avoid such a construction because his ear tells him it is not the best style.³

Sources:

_{1 "Cautions taken from the instruction sheet of the Chicago Tribune," as reported in Journalism by Charles H. Olin (Penn Publishing Company, 1910)
2 "Suggestions" from Chapter 8, "Clean Copy," in Handbook for Newspaper Workers by Grant Milnor Hyde (D. Appleton and Company, 1921)
3 The Style Book of the Detroit News, edited by Albert Loren Weeks (Evening News Association, 1918)
4 Chapter 2, "Words and Phrases," in Essentials in Journalism by H.F. Harrington and T.T. Frankenberg (Ginn and Company, 1912)
5 Chapter 15, "Writing and Editing of Stories," in The Newspaper Worker by James McCarthy (The Press Guild, 1906)}