The biggest fault of most writing by young reporters or executives is, they try to impress someone. The editor, maybe, or the boy friend or the girl friend.
So the writer makes sure that he uses a lot of polysyllables. And he writes long sentences and involved paragraphs. He is going to prove that he can handle the King’s English as well as the next fellow. The result is sometimes full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Somewhere, he got the wild idea that this kind of writing makes him appear intelligent. But somewhere he lost the real idea: that he is writing to inform his readers – to get facts from his head into their heads.
When you are writing primarily to inform, use words generally familiar to young readers and keep your sentences reasonably short and simple. Write to express, not to impress. The person who can express complex ideas simple is likely to go farther in the world than the person who writes gobbledygook. Some people may be impressed if you write economic reports this way: “An exercise that seeks quantitative answers relating to a period that is some distance away in the future must by its very nature be highly tentative.”
But your readers will understand this betters if you just write: “What followed was largely guesswork.”
So the writer makes sure that he uses a lot of polysyllables. And he writes long sentences and involved paragraphs. He is going to prove that he can handle the King’s English as well as the next fellow. The result is sometimes full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Somewhere, he got the wild idea that this kind of writing makes him appear intelligent. But somewhere he lost the real idea: that he is writing to inform his readers – to get facts from his head into their heads.
When you are writing primarily to inform, use words generally familiar to young readers and keep your sentences reasonably short and simple. Write to express, not to impress. The person who can express complex ideas simple is likely to go farther in the world than the person who writes gobbledygook. Some people may be impressed if you write economic reports this way: “An exercise that seeks quantitative answers relating to a period that is some distance away in the future must by its very nature be highly tentative.”
But your readers will understand this betters if you just write: “What followed was largely guesswork.”
39 comments:
When your trying to impress your readers, readers would actually be able to tell that you are TRYING. When they see you are trying, they see the lack of sincerity, which leads to boredom and loss of credibility. Also, trying to impress leads to a plethora of flowery and long words, adjectives and other pathetic attempts.
When you communicate you want to document an event, a scene, a person or whatever and not showcase your awesomeness.
Lastly, the very point of writing is to express--to put into words something in your head so that others may know or understand. We don't write for the applause.
If you want to impress audiences, better go to creative writing. In journalistic writing, impressing the readers is a big sin. Your goal in writing jouranlistic writings is to inform or express. Don't let the temptation of the applause from the people distract you from doing your real purpose.
Often people write very intellectually that is why their work become very difficult to understand. This is because they write to impress not to express. It is better to consider other people's level of comprehension and write to express to everyone rather than making your work exclusive only to those who are intellectual enough to understand it.
Newspaper are made to inform. If you want to impress then do it in a paper and send it to a contest.
Readers know when you are sincere and when you are not. When you attempt to pursue a reader by pretending, you can never achieve that goal. Expressing your real emotions and not trying to impress by making things up is a good thing. Through writing, you communicate with your readers, so why tell lies to them? your sole purpose why you write it to express not to impress.
Impress when you are meant to impress. Expressing yourself or the substance of the article is your aim here. If your here to impress, better not be here in the first place. People read articles to know the truth and be informed of what you want to proclaim. You don't need to boast what you know that others might not. Keep it to yourself. Just think writing for everyone, not just the fulfillment in yourself that you wrote something so deep that no one understands anymore except your on selfish thoughts.
Always focus on the reason why we are writing, it is not to let other person see how good and how smart we are but it is to give them informations. Writing to impress can make us APPEAR smart but a simple one would always be better and would show how good we really are and that we are bot just seemingly good.
Rule no. 3,Use familiar words, is connected with this rule. We write because we want our readers to know what the truth is. The readers don't read articles to find new words that will increae his vocabulary. Readers read articles because he wants to know the information that you hold. Journalists are writing because we want to share ideas not to brag that we have that idea.
Every writers goal is to inform their readers. In order to achieve that goal, in order to convey your message, one must write to express, not to impress. Trying to impress your readers often lead to violating the other rules.
Just like what i have said in the previous comments, Journalistic writing does not have to look pretty. It does not have to sound too flowery. When we write, we should prioritize the purpose of informing the people. Impressing the readers by highfalutin words is senseless for they are not interested whether the writer is intellectual or not. What they only care about are the information they could get in your writing.
Some writer's main aim is to impress. They use flowery words, highfalutin words and incredibly long sentences. Why not doodle some hearts while they're at it? This mistake will only destroy the main purpose of writing-to inform
Again ,I agree with the first comment, writing to impress is not a news writer thing.
This just sums up some of the rules:
Omit verbal deadwood and keep your sentences and paragraphs short and simple; do not try to make them feel like you are a very intellectual person who uses jargon and all. Use adjectives sparingly, stop cheesiness, start being serious. Get to the point, use the active voice and write as you talk, do not think that if you can confuse your readers, you are better than they are.
You inform in journalistic writing so express, not impress.
In journalistic writing, we tend to express what we know and not to impress that we know.
It’s pretty silly to think that you should write just to impress someone in particular. I have met some people who do this. We should write generally, and inform. It will come off obvious if you try to impress, and it will just bore your readers. And using flowery words will only lead to confusion.
Of course, if you are a journalist, you should write to inform and gives information and not to impress your readers. This rule implies the other rules.
Our objective in journalistic writing is to inform everyone about the news and story we bring. And for that reason we go straight to the point without any unnecessary delays when we write.
Writing aims to inform. That main purpose can sometimes be neglected when we are trying to impress somebody. Do you think that when the person whom you are trying to impress reads your article that is mixed with verbal deadwood, long sentences and highfaluting words? I think not. Often, writing to impress leads to these dilemmas, and proves your article to be a piece of rubbish. Next time you write, try to write more simply and clearly, and the person you are trying to impress will be impressed, not because of your long but vague article, but because of your effectiveness as a writer.
It’s fun to hear applauses when you impressed your audience with what you did. But wouldn’t it better if you have expressed yourself and you got applaud for it? Impressing someone sometimes lead to boastfulness. You’re trying to hard when you want to impress someone and it is really obvious. But when you express yourself, you don’t have to try.
Writers are born to express their thoughts not to impress somebody except if you are a poet or a lover writing to his loved one. Writers should really remember to use familiar for this will result to the idea being well expressed. Maybe, you can never know somebody might be impressed with your work for expressed your idea very clearly.
Wting is a skill use to express one's emotion. With the help of this,an Indivivual can released his feelings. We must avoid to impress others with our skill, but instead be thankful for the talent.
Remember that in Journalistic writing you write to inform people. If you are trying to impress someone with your writing then your article would be complex and hard to understand. A journalist who writes to impress is a lost one. He forgot the true purpose that he became a journalist- to get the facts from his head to the heads of the readers.
Journalistic writers are not paid to impress, but to express and inform. Impressive articles may carry no more than impressiveness. It is better to have an informative, concrete, and useful article than one full of empty words and phrases.
We should write because we want to inform, not to say something good about someone so as to impress. You should not boast and make one impressed with what you've written. Be realistic, not idealistic.
A journalist informs, not the other way around. We do not want our readers to be impressed with us. Our job is to express the thought that we want them to understand.
This rule is definitely correct. We should not use flowery words in journalistic writing, like what the other rules state, we should use brief, straight and direct words. We write to inform and express, not to let others know that we are intellectual. The use of polysyllables does not necessarily indicate intellectuality but it only denotes insecurity like what I said in the other rule.
Leo Amadeus Gerella Ruiz
Yes, write to express and never to impress. A work of journalism is made to inform the public on evernts, not increase the writer's popularity to the public. Never aim to impress.
Some may write for themselves to be known to mankind. But that is not the main goal of journalism. It is about informing people and expressing your thoughts. It is not about telling people you are great at this because when one tries hard to do so, writing becomes vague.
You did not write to just show off. You wrote to inform. If informing is not your priority, you better get your life straight or get a new job.
I agree to what Cedy said. News are for you to inform, contests are for you to impress. Writing news or articles is not a contest. It's just for you to inform readers and let them know what your article is all about. Impressive writing makes your readers think that you are arrogant. Better follow this rule to avoid turn-offs.
Ma Inna Paulina Egamino Palana
IV - Enrico Fermi
Fe-15
We write because we have something to tell everyone. We write because we want to express ourselves through writing down what it is about. But, we must never write to impress because if we do, the outcome is terrible. Sometimes, readers would not be able to understand what you are trying to tell them because you use deep words, long sentences, long introduction, unnecessary terms and such. If you believe that using complicated things in writing will make readers think you are intelligent, think again. It is the other way around most of the time. They will have terrible reactions because they cannot understand what you are trying to say
Writing news is not a contest. Better go to a contest if you aim to impress. We write news to inform and give some facts about a specific topic. Impressive writnings make your readers think that you are a big-headed writer.
Famous reportes and journalists did not become famous byimpressing editors and reader. The became famous because they wrote articles full of information. That is the real deal here. A journalistic writing is for giving information. It is not like the works of Shakespeare or Edgar Allan Poe.
Journalistic writing aims not to impress readers but to inform. You do not have to risk the quality of your work just to impress your readers. Journalistic articles do not have to be flowery or poetic. Actually, it has to be simple.
As journalistic writngs have the need to be direct and sensible, we should write mainly to express our thoughts and not impress or brag about all the words we know. Usage of flowery words would just hinder the writer's goal to express what he wants to write. All we need in writing articles is to inform and never to impress.
If you want to impress, go find yourself a nice tree, hug it and make a cute poem about it. Or you can join a creative writing class.
Remember that you are trying to convey a message. People who tends to impress someone often forgets the purpose of his works. Don't be like them.
This rule is as easy as dividing a cake into two equal parts. You express the message that should be clear to the reader in a journalistic writing, because that is the goal of any journalist. While, creative writers impress their audience through fancy,flowery and informal tongues of indecency.
As what I've said in my previous comments, in jounalism, we write to inform and not to show off what we got. We should use familiar words than the complicated ones, shorten our sentences and paragraphs, and limit the use of unnecessary adjectives. In short, follow the previous rules. They will make your articles short yet much informative.
The primary objective of a journalistic writer is to express ideas to be able to inform the readers what happened in a certain situation. Journalistic writers don't have to use their knowledge in figures of speech, idioms or deadwoods to beautify their work. In journalism, the simpler the article, the easier the reader can understand what your are saying.
If you want to impress someone, you should join a reality show like showing your incredible talents of swallowing some knifes and all. But writing is not definitely made to impress. We write to express, not to impress.
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