ADVERTISEMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

C. NEWSPAPER STYLE

N e w s paper style was the last of all the styles of written literary English to be recognized as a specific form of writing standing apart from other forms.

English newspaper writing dates from the 17th century. At the close of the 16th century short news pamphlets began to appear. Any such publication either presented news from only one source or dealt with one specific subject. Note the titles of some of the earliest news pamph­lets: "Newe newes, containing a short rehearsal of Stukely's and Morice's Rebellion" (1579), "Newes from Spain and Holland" (1593), "Wonderful

and strange newes out of Suffolke and Essex, where it rayned wheat,the space of six or seven miles" (1583). News pamphlets appeared only from time to time and cannot be classed as newspapers, though they were unquestionably the immediate forerunners of the British press.

The first of any regular series of English newspapers was the Weekly News which first appeared on May 23, 1622. It lasted for some twenty years till in 1641 it ceased publication. The 17th century saw the rise of a number of other news sheets which, with varying success, struggled on in the teeth of discouragement and restrictions imposed by the Crown. With the introduction of a strict licensing system many such sheets were suppressed, and the Government, in its turn, set before the public a paper of its own—The London Gazette, first published on February 5, 1666. The paper was a semi-weekly and carried official information, royal decrees, news from abroad, and advertisements.

The first English daily newspaper—the Daily Courant— was brought out on March 11, 1702. The paper carried news, largely foreign, and no comment, the latter being against the principles of the publisher, as was stated in the first issue of his paper. Thus the early English newspa­per was principally a vehicle of information. Commentary as a regular feature found its way into the newspapers later. But as far back as the middle of the 18th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying on its pages news, both foreign and domestic, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.

The rise of the American newspaper, which was brought onto Ameri­can soil by British settlers, dates back to the late 17th, early 18th cen­turies.

It took the English newspaper more than a century to establish a style and a standard of its own. And it is only by the 19th century that newspaper English may be said to have developed into a system of lan­guage media, forming a separate functional style.

The specific conditions of..newspaper publication, the restrictions of time and space,^have left яп.indelible mark on newspaper English. For more than a century writers arid linguists have been vigorously, attacking "the slipshod construction and the vulgar vocabulary" of news­paper English. The very term newspaper English carried a shade of disparagement. Yet, for all the defects of newspaper English, serious though they may be, this forrq of the English literary language cannot be reduced — as some.purists have claimed — merely to careless slovenly writing or to a distorted literary English. This is one of the forms of the English literary language characterized— as any other style — by a definite communicative ainrand its own system of language means.. •

Not all the printed matter found in newspapers comes under newspa­per style. The modern newspaper carries material of an extremely di­verse character. On the pages of a newspaper one finds not only news and comment on it, press reports and articles, advertisements and announce­ments, but also stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems and the like. Since the latter serve the purpose of entertaining the reader, they cannot be considered specimens of newspaper style. It is newspaper

printed matter that performs the function of informing the reader and providing him with an evaluation of the information published that can be regarded as belonging to newspaper style.

Thus, English newspaper style may be defined as a system of inter­related lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is per­ceived by the community as a separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader.

Information and evaluation co-exist in the modern English news­paper, and it is only in teftns of diachrony that the function of informa­tion can claim priority. In fact, all kinds of newspaper writing are to a greater or lesser degree both informative and evaluative. But, of course, it is obvious that in most of the basic newspaper "genres" one of the two functions prevails; thus, for example, news of all kinds is essentially informative, whereas the editorial is basically evaluative.

Informatio.i in the English newspaper is conveyed, in the first place, through the-medium of:

1) brief'news items,

2) press reports (parliamentary, of court proceedings, etc.),

3) articles purely informational in character,

4) advertisements and announcements.

The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other "matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and way of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabula­ry, such as allege and claim, casting some doubt on the facts reported, and syntactic constructions indicating a lack of assurance on the part of the reporter as to the correctness of the facts reported or his desire to avoid responsibility (for example, 'Mr. X was said to have opposed the proposal'; 'Mr. X was quoted as saying...'}. The headlines of news items, apart from giving information about the subject-matter, also carry a con­siderable amount of appraisal (the size and arrangement of the headline, the use of emotionally coloured words and elements of emotive syntax), thus indicating the interpretation of the facts in the news item that fol­lows. But, of course, the principal vehicle of interpretation and apprai­sal is the newspaper article, and the editorial in particular. Editorials (leading articles or leaders) are characterized by a subjective handling of facts, political or otherwise. They have much in common with classi­cal specimens of publicistic writing and are often looked upon as such. However, newspaper evaluative writing unmistakably bears the stamp of newspaper style. Thus, it se^ms natural to regard newspaper articles, editorials included, as coming within the system qf English newspaper style. But it should be noted that while editorials and other arti-. cles in opinion columns are predominantly evaluative, newspaper feature articles, as a rule, carry a considerable amount of information, and the ratio of the informative and the evaluative varies substantially from ar­ticle to article.

To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyse the following basic newspaper fea­tures:

1) brief news items,

2) advertisements and announcements,

3) the headline,

4) the editorial.

BRIEF NEWS ITEMS

The principal function of a b r i e f news i te т is to inform the reader. It states facts without giving explicit comments, and whatever evaluation there is in news paragraphs is for the most part implicit and as a rule unemotional. News items are essentially matter-of-fact, and stereotyped forms of expression prevail. As an invariant, the language of brief news items is stylistically neutral, which seems to be in keeping with the allegedly neutral and unbiased nature of newspaper reporting; in practice, however, departures from this principle of stylistic neutral­ity (especially in the so-called "mass papers") are quite common.

It goes without saying that the bulk of the vocabulary used in news­paper writing is neutral and common literary. But apart from this, news­paper style has its specific vocabulary features and is characterized by an extensive use of:

a) Special political and economic terms, e. g. Socialism, constitution, president, apartheid, by-election, General Assembly, gross output, per ca­pita production.

b) Non-term political vocabulary, e. g. public, people, progressive, nation-wide, unity, peace, A characteristic feature of political vocabulary is that the border line between terms and non-terms is less distinct than in the vocabulary of other special fields. The semantic structure of some words comprises both terms and non-terms, e. g. nation, crisis, agreement, member, representative, leader.

c) Newspaper cliches, i. e. stereotyped expressions, commonplace phrases familiar to the readert e. g. vital issue, pressing problem, informed sources, danger of war, to escalate a war, war hysteria, overwhelming ma­jority, amid stormy appiause. Cliches more than anything else reflect the traditional manner of expression in newspaper writing. They are com­monly looked upon as a defect of style. Indeed, some cliches, especially those based on trite images (e.g. captains of industry, pillars of society, bulwark of civilization) are pompous and hackneyed, others, such as welfare state, affluent society^^are false and misleading. But nevertheless, cliches are indispensable in newspaper style: they prompt the necessary associations and prevent ambiguity and misunderstanding.

d) Abbreviations. News items, press^ reports and headlines abound in abbreviations of various kinds. Among them abbreviated terms— names of organizations, public and state bodies, political associations, industrial and other companies, various offices, etc.—known by their initials are very common, e.g. UNO (t/nited Nations Organization), TUG (Trades Union Congress), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organiza­tion), AFL-CIO (Лтепсап Federation of Labour-Congress of /ndustrial Organizations), EEC (.European Economic Community), TGWU (Trans­port and General Workers Union), FO (Foreign Office), PIB (Prices and /ncomes Board),

e) Neologisms. These are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily and often even spring up on newspaper pages, e.g. lunik, a splash-down (the act of bringing a spacecraft to a water surface), a teach-in (a form of campaigning through heated political discussion), backlash or white backlash (a violent reaction of American racists to the Negroes' struggle for civil rights), frontlash (a vigorous antiracist movement), stop-go policies (contradictory, inde­cisive and inefficient policies).

The above-listed peculiarities of brief news items are the basic vocab­ulary parameters of English newspaper style.

The vocabulary of brief news items is for the most part devoid of emotional colouring. Some papers, however, especially those classed among "mass" or "popular" papers, tend to introduce emotionally col­oured lexical units into essentially matter-of-fact news stories, e.g.

"Health Minister Kenneth Robinson made this shock announce­ment yesterday in the Commons." (Daily Mirror)

"Technicians at the space base here are now working flat out to prepare GeAiini 6 for next Monday's blast-off." (Daily Mail)

"Defence Secretary Roy Mason yesterday gave a rather frosty reception in the Commons to the latest proposal for a common defence policy for all EEC countries." (Morning Star)

Important as vocabulary is, it is not so much the words and phrases used in brief news items that distinguish them from other forms of news­paper writing. The vocabulary groups listed above are also commonly found in headlines and newspaper articles. The basic peculiarities of news items lie in their syntactical structure.

As the reporter is obliged to be brief, he naturally tries to cram all his facts into the space allotted. This tendency predetermines the pe­culiar composition of brief news items and the syntactical structure ^,of the sentences. The size of brief news items varies from one sentence to several (short) paragraphs. And generally, the shorter the news item, |\ the more complex its syntactical structure.

The following grammatical peculiarities of brief news items are of paramount importance, and may be regarded as their grammatical parameters.

a) Complex sentences with a developed system of clauses, e. g.

"Mr. Boyd-Carpenter, Chief Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster-General (Kingston-upon-Thames), said he had been asked what was meant by the statement in the Speech that the po­sition of war pensioners and those receiving national insurance ben­efits would be kept under close review." (The Times)

"There are indications that BO AC may withdraw - threats of all-out dismissals for pilots who restrict flying hours, a spokesman for the British Airline Pilots' association said yesterday," (Morn­ing Star)

b) Verbal constructions (infinitive, participial, gerundial) and verbal noun constructions, e.g.

"Mr. Nobusuke Kishi, the former Prime Minister of Japan, has sought to set an example to the faction-ridden Governing Liberal Democratic Party by announcing the disbanding of his own faction numbering 47 of the total of 295 conservative mem­bers of the Lower House of the Diet." (The Times)

c) Syntactical complexes, especially the nominative with the infin­itive. These constructions are largely used to avoid mentioning the source of information or to shun responsibility for the facts reported, e. g.

"The condition of Lord Samuel, aged 92, was said last night to be a 'little better.'" (The Guardian)

"A petrol bomb is believed to have been exploded against the grave of Cecil Rhodes in the Matopos." (The Times)

d) Attributive noun groups are another powerful means of effecting brevity in news items, e.g. 'heart swap patient' (Morning Star), 'the national income and expenditure figures' (The Times), 'Labour backbench decision' (Morning Star), 'Mr. Wilson's HMS fearless package deal' (Morning Star).

e) Specific word-order. Newspaper tradition, coupled with the rigid rules of sentence structure in English, has greatly affected the word-order of brief news items. The word-order in one-sentence news para­graphs and in what are called "leads" (the initial sentences in longer news items) is more or less fixed. Journalistic practice has developed what is called the "five-w-and-h-pattern rule" (who-what-why-how-where-when)and for a long time strictly adhered to it. In terms of grammar this fixed sentence structure may be expressed in the following manner: Subject—Predicate (+Object)—Adverbial modifier of reason (manner)— Adverbial modifier..of place-4Adverbial modifier of time, e.g.

"A neighbour's peep through a letter box led to the finding of a woman dead from gas and two others semiconscious in a block of council flats in Eccles New Road, Salford, Lanes., yesterday." (The Guardian)

It has been repeatedly claimed by the authors of manuals of journalis­tic writing that the "five-w-arid4i" structure was the only right pattern of sentence structure to use in news reports. Facts, however, disprove this contention. Statistics show that there are approximately as many cases in which the traditional word-order is violated as those in which it is observed. It is now obvious that the newspaper has developed new sentence patterns not typical of other styles. This observation refers, firstly, to the position of the adverbial-modifier of definite time. Com­pare another pattern typical of brief news sentence structure:

"Derec Heath, 43, yesterday left Falmouth for the third time in his attempt to cross the Atlantic in a 12ft dinghy." (Morning Star)

"Brighton council yesterday approved а £ 22,500 scheme to have parking meters operating in the centre of the town by March." (The Times)

This and some other unconventional sentence patterns have become a common practice with brief news writers.

There are some other, though less marked, tendencies in news item writ­ing of modifying well-established grammatical norms. Mention should be made of occasional disregard for the sequence of tenses rule, e.g.

"The committee —which was investigating the working of the 1969 Children and Young Persons Act — said that some school children in remand centres are getting only two hours lessons a day." (Morning Star)

What is ordinarily looked upon as a violation of grammar rules in any other kind of writing appears to b£ a functional peculiarity of news­paper style.

ADVERTISEMENTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Advertisements made their way into the British press at an early stage of its development, i.e. in the micHTth century. So they are almost as old as newspapers themselves.

The principal function of a d v e r t i s e>m en ts and announce-men ts, like that of brief news, is to inform the reader. There are two basic types of advertisements and announcements in the modern English newspaper: classified and non-classified.

In classified advertisements and announcements various kinds of information are arranged according to subject-matter into sections, each bearing an appropriate name. In The Times, for example, the reader never fails to find several hundred advertisements and announcements classified into groups, such as BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, IN MEMORI-AM, BUSINESS OFFERS, PERSONAL, etc. This classified arrangement has resulted in a number of stereotyped patterns regularly employed in newspaper advertising. Note one of the accepted patterns of classified advertisements and announcements in The Times:

BIRTHS

CULHANE.—On.November 1st, at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, to BARBARA and JOHN CULHANE — a son.

All announcements in the 'Birth' section are built on exactly the same elliptical pattern. This tendency to eliminate from the sentence all elements that can be done without is a pronounced one in adver­tisement and announcement writing. The elliptic sentence structure has no stylistic function; it is purely technical—to economize space, expensive in what newspaper men call the "advertising hole." Though, of course, having become a common practice, this peculiar brevity of expression is a stylistic feature of advertisements and announcements which may take a variety of forms, for example:

TRAINED NURSE with child 2 years seeks post London preferred. — Write Box C. 658, The Times, E.G. 4.'

Here the absence of all articles and some punctuation marks makes the statement telegram-like. Sentences which are grammatically complete also tend to be short and compact.

The vocabulary of classified advertisements and announcements is on the whole essentially neutral with here and there a sprinkling of emotionally coloured words or phrases used to attract the reader's attention. Naturally, it is advertisements and announcements in the PERSONAL section that are sometimes characterized by emotional colouring, for example:

ROBUST, friendly student, not entirely unintelligent, seeks Christmas vacation job. No wife, will travel, walk, ride or drive and undertake any domestic,- agri­cultural or industrial activity. Will bidders for this curiously normal chap please •write Box C. 552, The Times, E.G. 4.

Emotional colouring is generally moderate, though editors seem to place no restrictions on it. See the following announcement in the PER­SONAL section of The Times:

Alleluia! I'm a mum.

(A jocular modification of the chorus of the well-known American song "Alleluia,

I'm a bum". A young woman is stating that she has become a mother.)

As for the non-classified advertisements and announcements, the variety of language form and subject-matter is so great that hardly any essential features common to all may be pointed out. The reader's attention is attracted by every possible means: typographical, graphical and stylistic, both lexical and syntactical. Here there is no call for brev­ity, as the advertiser may buy as much space as he chooses.

The following are the initial lines of a full-page advertisement of Barclays Bank carried by an issue of The Guardian:

WHAT WE WANT

A bank's business is with other people's money, so we want people whose integrity is beyond question. Money is a very per­sonal business, so we want people who like people. Banking is work that calls for accuracy, so we want people who can work accurately. Our staff has to have integrity, personality, accuracy, We want them to have imagination too,

THE HEADLINE

The headline (the title given to a news item or an article) is a dependent form of newspaper writing. It is in fact a part of a larger whole. The specific functional and linguistic traits of the headline provide suf­ficient ground for isolating and analysing it as a specific "genre" of journalism. The main function of the headline is to inform the reader briefly what the text that follows is about. But apart from this, headlines often contain elements of appraisal, i.e. they show the reporter's or the paper's attitude to the facts reported or commented on, thus also per­forming the function of instructing the reader. English headlines are short and catching, they "compact the gist of news stories into a few eye-snaring words. A skilfully turned out headline tells a story, or enough of it, to arouse or satisfy the reader's curiosity." l In some English and American newspapers sensational headlines are quite common. The practices of headline writing are different with different newspa­pers. In many papers there is, as a rule, but one headline to a news item, whereas such papers as The Times, The Guardian, The New York Times often carry a news item or an article with two or three headlines, and sometimes as many as four, e.g.

BRITAIN ALMOST "CUT IN HALF"

Many Vehicles Marooned in Blizzard

(The Guardian)

STATE AUDIT FINDS NEW CITY DEFICITS IN LAST

2 BUDGETS

Asserts Bookkeeping Errors Led Controller to Overstate Anticipated Revenues

$ 292-MILLION INVOLVED

Report Asserts Both Beame And Goldin Issued Notes Without Proper Backing

(The New York Times)

FIRE FORCES AIRLINER TO TURN BACK

Cabin Filled With Smoke

Safe Landing For 97 Passengers

Atlantic Drama In Super VC 10

(The Times)

Such group headlines are almost a summary of the information con­tained in the news item or article.

The functions and the peculiar nature of English headlines predeter­mine the choice of the language means used. The vocabulary groups considered in the analysis of brief news items are commonly found in headlines. But headlines also abound in emotionally coloured words and phrases, as the italicised words in the following:

End this Bloodbath (Morning Star) „ Milk Madness (Morning Star) Tax agent a cheat (Daily World)

No Wonder Housewives are Pleading: 'HELP* (Daily Mirror) Roman Catholic Priest sacked (Morning Star)

Furthermore, to attract the reader's attention, headline writers often resort to a deliberate breaking-up of set expressions, in particular fused set expressions, and deformation of special terms, a stylistic device capable of producing a strong emotional effect, e.g.

Cakes and Bitter Ale (The Sunday Times) Conspirator-in-chief Still at Large (The Guardian)

Compare respectively the allusive set expression cakes and ale, and the term commander-in-chief.

Other stylistic devices are not infrequent in headlines, as for example, the pun (e.g. 'And what about Watt'—The Observer), alliteration (e.g. Miller in Maniac Aiood— The Observer), etc.

Syntactically headlines are very short sentences or phrases of a va­riety of patterns:

a) Full declarative sentences, e.g. 'They Threw Bombs on Gipsy Sites' (Morning Star), 'Allies Now Look to London' (The Times)

b) Interrogative sentences, e. g. 'Do-you love war?' (Daily World), 'Will Celtic confound pundits?' (Morning Star)

c) Nominative sentences, e.g. 'Gloomy Sunday' (The Guardian), * Atlantic Sea Traffic' (The Times), 'Union peace plan for Girling stew­ards' (Morning Star)

d) Elliptical sentences:

a. with an auxiliary verb omitted, e.g. 'Initial report not expected until June!' (The Guardian), 'Yachtsman spotted" (Morning Star)]

b. with the subject omitted, e.g. 'Will win' (Morning Star), lWill give Mrs. Onassis $ 250,00(Xa year'.(77i£ New York Times);

c. with the subject and part;of-the predicate omitted, e.g. 'Off to the sun' (Morning Star), 'Still in danger' (The Guardian)

e) Sentences with articles omitted, e. g. 'Step to Overall Settlement Cited in Text of Agreement' (International Herald Tribune), 'Blaze kills 15 at Party" (Morning Star) ^

Articles are very frequently omitted in all types of headlines.

f) Phrases with verbals—infinitive, participial and gerundial, e.g. Tog^US aid* (MorningStar), To visit Faisal' (Morning Star), \Keep-ing Prices Down' (The Times), 'Preparing reply on cold war' (Morning Star), 'Speaking parts' (The Sunday Times)

g) Questions in the form of statements, e.g. 'The worse the better?' (Daily World), 'Growl now, smile, later?' (The Observer)

h) Complex sentences, e. g. 'Senate Panel Hears Board of Military Experts Who Favoured Losing Bidder' '(The New York Times), 'Army Says It Gave LSD to Unknown GIs' (International Herald Tribune)

i) Headlines including direct speech:

a. introduced by a full sentence, e.g.', 'Prince Richard says: "I was not in trouble"' (The Guardian), 'What Oils the Wheels of Industry?

Asks James Lowery-Olearch of the Shell-Мех and B. P. Group' (The Times);

b. introduced elliptically, e.g. 'The Queen: "My deep distress'" (The Guardian), 'Observe Mid-East Ceasefire—UThant' (MorningStar)

The above-listed patterns are the most typical, although they do not cover all the variety in headline structure.

The headline in British and American newspapers is an important vehicle both of information and appraisal; editors give it special atten­tion, admitting that few read beyond the headline, or at best the lead. To lure the reader into going through the whole of the item or at least a greater part of it, takes a lot of skill and ingenuity on the^part of the headline writer,

THE EDITORIAL

The function of the editorial is to influence the reader by giving an interpretation of certain facts. Editorials comment on the political and other events of the day. Their purpose is to give the editor's opinion and interpretation of the news published and suggest to the reader that it is the correct one. Like any evaluative writing, editorials appeal not only to the reader's mind but to his feelings as well. Hence the use of emotionally coloured language elements, both lexical and structural, Here are examples:

"The long-suffering British housewife needs a bottomless purse to cope with this scale of inflation." (Daily Mirror)

"But since they came into power the trend has been up, up, up and the pace seems to be accelerating." (Daily Mail).

In addition to vocabulary typical of brief news items, writers of edi­torials make an extensive use of emotionally coloured vocabulary. Along­side political words and expressions, terms, cliches and abbreviations one can find colloquial words and expressions, slang, and professionalisms. The language of editorial articles is characterized by a combination of different strata of vocabulary, which enhances the emotioiial effect, for example:

FAT GIFTS FOR SOME

THE TOPMOST boss of the giant Bank Organisation, Sir John Davis, has sacked the lesser boss Mr. Graham Dowson, who gets £, 150,000 from the company's till as "compensation" for loss of office.

Were there screams of agony in the capitalist press or from the Tories about the size of this golden handshake? There were" not.

Fat gifts are the usual thing when big bosses go. The bigger and richer they are, the fatter the cheques. (Morning Star)

(2) THATCHER

MRS. THATCHER has now arrived back from her American jamboree proudly boasting that she is now "totally established as a political leader in the international sphere."

This simply goes to show that the fawning American audiences drawn from the top drawer of US capitalist society to whom she spoke will buy any farrago of trite and pious platitudes.

When she arrived back brimming over with her new-found international fame, she regaled us all once again with her views on equality and the opportunity to be unequal.

One thing is certain. The capitalist system for which she stands can never be accused of denying the majority of the British people of this opportunity to be unequal. (Morning Star)

(3) LOCAL BLOODSUCKERS

Local Government was once dull. But looming for ratepayers this spring are rate increases of an average of 25 per cent, outside London and above 60 per cent, within it. These follow last year's - stratospheric increases. Alas, if rapacious demands of this kind can emerge from them, what goes on in Britain's town halls can­not be so tedious. Chaotic, frightening, scandalous, yes; dull, no.... (The Daily Telegraph)

The above quoted examples from English newspaper editorials abound in emotionally coloured vocabulary units. Along with neutral and literary (common and special) vocabulary one can find words used with emotive colouring: topmost, giant, screams (of agony) (1), fawning, pious, platitudes (2), scandalous, frightening, rapacious, alas (3); colloquial vocabulary units: to sack, fat(\), jamboree (2); slang: to buy (in the sense of 'accept') (2); "and instances of linguistic imagery: this golden handshake (1), the top drawer of US capitalist society (2), stratospheric increases (3), etc. All these lexical means are highly emotive and thoroughly evalua­tive.

Emotional colouring in editorial articles is achieved with the help of various stylistic devices,, both lexical and syntactical, the use of which is largely traditional. Editorials abound in trite stylistic means, espe­cially metaphors and epithets, e.g. international climate, a price explosion, a price spiral, a spectacular sight, an outrageous act, brutal rule, an astound­ing statement, crazy policies. Traditional periphrases are also very common in newspaper editorials, such as Wall S//^(American financial circles), Downing.Street (the British Government), Fleet Street (the Lon­don press), the Great Powers (the five or six biggest and strongest states), the third world (states other than socialist or capitalist), and so on.

Most trite stylistic means commonly used in the newspaper have become cliches.

But genuine stylistic means are alsor sometimes used, which helps the writer of the editorial to bring his idea home to the reader through

the associations that genuine imagery arouses. Practically any stylistic device may be found in editorial writing, and when aptly used, such de­vices prove to be a powerful means of appraisal, of expressing a personal attitude to the matter in hand, of exercising the necessary emotional effect on the reader. Note the following example:

"That this huge slice of industry should become a battleground in which public cash is used as a whip with which to lash workers is a scandal....

Yet it is the workers who are being served up as the lambs for sac­rifice, and it is public money that is used to stoke the fires of the sacrificial pyre." (Morning Star)

The stylistic effect of these sustained similes is essentially satirical. A similar effect is frequently achieved by the use of metaphor, irony, the breaking-up of set expressions, the stylistic use of word-building, by using allusions, etc. Two types of allusions can be distinguished in newspaper article writing: a. allusions to political and other facts of the day which are indispensable and have no stylistic value, and b. his­torical, literary and biblical allusions which are often used to create a specific stylistic effect, largely—satirical. The emotional force of ex­pression in the editorial is often enhanced by the use of various syntac­tical stylistic devices. Some editorials abound in parallel constructions, various types of repetition, rhetorical, questions and other syntactical stylistic means.

. Yet, the role of expressive language means and stylistic devices in the editorial should not be over-estimate.d. They stand out against the essentially neutral background. And whatever stylistic devices one comes across in editorials, they are for the most part trite. Broadly speaking, tradition reigns supreme in the language of the newspaper. Original forms of expression and fresh genuine stylistic means are comparatively rare in newspaper articles, editorials included.

However, although all editorials, as a specific genre of newspaper writing, have common distinguishing features, the editorials in different papeis vary in degree of emotional colouring and stylistic originality of expression. While these qualities are typical enough of the "popular" newspapers (those with large circulations), such "as the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail, the so-called "quality papers", as The Times and The Guardian, make rather a sparing use of the expressive and stylistic means of the language. Whatever stylistic "gems" one may encounter in the newspaper, they cannot obscure the essentially traditional mode of expression characteristic of newspaper English.

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