By Thomas Oliver

Examine any well-written newspaper or magazine article. Here’s what you will find, says Thomas Oliver of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Strong, active verbs will carry the story; adjectives will be scarce. Adverbs modifying adjectives will be hard to find.

Most sentences will be short; those that aren’t will read easily, crafted with a purpose, and with an ear in mind. Never will a long sentence be occasion for overwhelming the reader with information-laden journalism.

What will be missing?

Words like: implement, finalize, approximately, prior, utilize.

No sentence will stagger under the weight of bureaucracy or jargon; the cute cliches of the latest fad will appear only in stories about the latest fad.

Attribution will be clear without being obtrusive, written for reasonable readers, the source

of new, starting information, or points of contention will be identifiable from the story.

Quotations will be memorable and therefore minimal, though never repeating what has already been said.

Paraphrases will be more than simply removing quotation marks and rearranging words; the meaning of what was said will take precedence over merely repeating the words.

-- Thomas Oliver is Assistant Managing Editor/Special Projects at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This information originally appeared in the July 2000 Cox Academy Training Newsletter and is used with permission.