Style Of Journalistic English

Front 1

1.What are the functions of the headline?

Back 1

1. It summarizes a news story with the most important and attractive words.
2. It sparks the whole page.
3. It beautifies the edition and layout.
4. It can be used to attract readers’ attention and arouse readers’ interest.

Front 2

2.Grammatical feature of headlines can be summarizes as:

Back 2

1. Omissions
2. Tenses
3. Voice
4. Punctuations

Front 3

3. Why and when omissions are used in headlines

Back 3

Why
1. To keep the headline concise and terse so as to save room.
2. To emphasize the newsworthy information.
When
1. The article such as “a” and “the”.
2. The conjunction words “and” - always using comma instead.
3. The modifier pronoun before nouns - such as “her”, “his”.
4. The linking verb.
5. The auxiliary verbs.

Front 4

4. Why sometimes in headlines, “and”, “the”, “to be” are not be omitted?

Back 4

1. They are set phrases.
2. They can fill up the space hole.

Front 5

5. Are there good reasons for the use of simple present tense in headlines?

Back 5

1. It saves space. In most cases, the verb in simple present tense is shorter than that in past tense.
2. It is active. It puts readers into action and gives them the feeling of participation.
3. It stresses on the timeliness of the news. It gives readers a sense of freshness and immediacy of the story.
4. It can also be used to represent the present and future happenings or possibilities besides past happenings.

Front 6

6. Why in headline writing active voice is much rather used than passive voice? When to use the passive voice?

Back 6

Why in headline writing active voice is much rather used than passive voice?
1. It is more colorful, appealing, forward and powerful in disseminating information than passive voice.
2. It is active. It puts readers into action and gives them the feeling of participation.
3. It can save space.
When to use the passive voice?
1. When recipient of the action is more important than the executor.
2. When the use of passive voice can give prominence of the recipients of action and attract reader’s attention.

Front 7

7. Why sometimes the punctuations can be used in the headlines?

Back 7

1. It saves space.
2. It can show the relations between two groups of words. Comma is used to instead of “and”. Dash is often placed behind a quotation without quotation mark followed by attribution, introducing the speaker.

Front 8

8. What are the functions of colon in the headline?

Back 8

1. It can instead of the word “say”.
2. It can instead of the linking verb “be”.

Front 9

9. What are the language or wording features of the headline?

Back 9

1. Short words are abundantly used.
2. Acronyms(首字母缩写) are often used.
3. Abbreviations(缩写) are often used which can be easily understood by readers.
4. Journalistic coinages(生造词) are flexibly used to save space.
5. Witticisms(妙语) and puns are often used to entertain and attract readers.

Front 10

10. What are the common style of a headline?

Back 10

1. Flush-left headline (左侧齐列式)
2. Dropline (等长阶梯式)
3. Crossline (单行式)
4. Centered head (中心式)
5. Inverted-pyramid form (倒金字塔式)
6. Banner head / streamer (通栏)
7. Jump head (转页标题)