Can you write a three-word intro? Do three-word intros work?

Here is the three-word intro Sam Borden wrote for a golf story in The New York Times:

It was in.

To understand why it is a great intro, you will need to read a little bit more. But don't take my word for it. Instead let a master, the man I consider my journalism guru, Roy Peter Clark, guide you through the story's spectacular structure. Here is Clark's post: Want a lesson in focusing your writing? Read this hole-in-one lead.

PS: Marvel too at the nut graf in the original news report — again, just three words.

• Learn more about Roy Peter Clark: The power of writing. Commits students can also borrow from our library three wonderful books written by Clark: Help! for Writers, How to Write Short, and The Glamour of Grammar.
• On New Year's Eve, Roy Peter Clark retired from Poynter, a legendary journalism institute. His first piece since retirement was published six days later: 40 things I learned about the writing craft in 40 years. There are so many great points on the list, these three especially:

8. Tools not rules: We could think of writing as carpentry, learning how to use a set of tools. Rules were all about what is right and what is wrong. Tools are all about cause and effect, what we build for the audience.

9. Reports vs. stories: Reading scholar Louise Rosenblatt described a distinction I adapted to journalism: that reports were crafted to convey information — pointing you there. Stories were about vicarious experience, a form of transportation — putting you there. 

19. Emphatic word order: The journalist with news judgment decides what is most interesting or most important. That judgment can be conveyed in word order, placing the key words at the beginning or end. Not “The Queen is dead, my lord.” But “The Queen, my lord, is dead.”

Every writer needs an editor. Or, why subs are worth their weight in gold

I am a huge, huge fan of Poynter. In my opinion, it is the No. 1 journalism site. Which is why there are numerous pieces on The Reading Room that refer to articles that were first published on Poynter.org.

The most recent Poynter post is a brilliant example of writing that not only promotes good journalism but also offers a new way to think about some of the processes involved in putting together a good story. The post, by Alison MacAdam, is titled "Journalism has an editing crisis, but we can do something about it".

Unfortunately, the column is also a good example of the time-honoured dictum: Every writer (including Alison MacAdam) needs an editor.

Here are the comments I posted after I read the column this morning:

Ramesh Prabhu • 4 hours ago In India, too, there is an immense lack of strong editors. Which is why I tell my students (I teach journalism at a media college in Bangalore) good subs, or copy editors, are worth their weight in gold. Having said that, may I point out an editing error in this piece? "We now create far more content that any reasonable human being could ever read..." should have been edited to read "We now create far more content than any reasonable human being could ever read..."

Ramesh Prabhu • 4 hours ago Also, "...we’re 'creating content' for 25-34 year-old women or Latino millennials" should have been edited to read "...we’re 'creating content' for 25- to 34-year-old women or Latino millennials." Suspensive hyphenation, anyone?

I'm not the only one who has spotted errors in the article:

MM Greene  Hugh Vandivier • 8 hours ago Don't forget the three misplaced cases of "only." Look, editors exist!

N.B: Don't let the editing issues detract from the sound argument Alison MacAdam is making on behalf of editors. You can read the post in its entirety here.

Also read:

Suspensive hyphenation

Why subs, or copy editors, are the lifeblood of a news organisation

And this is what happens when subs fall asleep on the job

Point your mouse to Poynter... and to Roy Peter Clark

We can't ignore typos in a blog post by a sub-editor, can we?

If you had to think up a six-word motto for journalism, what would it be?

Would you pick "Get it right, write it tight"? Or "Feed the watchdog, euthanise the lapdog"?

Maybe you would opt for "No news is not good news". Perhaps, in this technology-driven age, you would prefer "Who, what, when, where, why, Web" or "Got stry — will txt u asap".

These are just a few of the many "six-words mottos for journalism" that were submitted to Roy Peter Clark's contest. Clark, about whom I have written on this blog many times before, is an American journalist I have great admiration for. He is one of the pillars of the venerated Poynter Institute, and author of the hugely useful Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (a copy is available in the Commits library).

Coming back to the six-word mottos, Clark's contest drew hundreds of entries, from which he created a list of finalists as well as a list of honourable mentions. You can go through both lists here: "Six-Word Journalism Mottos" (the contest was held a while back but I came across the link in my "must-read" file very recently).

And if you want to know who won the contest, go to this post for the complete results, "voting scandal" and all: "Poynter Online now acknowledges that it goofed last Friday by choosing finalists for the six-word motto contest before the deadline for applications had been reached."

PS: If the contest were to be held today, this motto would be my entry:

Engage, entertain, enlighten. Do not frighten.

"Three Little Words": A multi-part true story that keeps you wanting to read on. This is what journalism is really about

Journalism guru and Poynter doyen Roy Peter Clark, whose writing and teaching skills I have the greatest admiration for, is the author of a true story, Three Little Words, which he wrote as a multi-part series for The St Petersburg Times in 1996. This is how the newspaper introduces Three Little Words on its website:

Author Roy Peter Clark worked for two years to piece together this intensely personal family history. The story, which unfolded here and on the pages of the St. Petersburg Times over 29 days, challenges us to reconsider our thoughts about marriage, privacy, public health and sexual identity.

It is a touching story about a journey of trust, betrayal, and redemption. Make time to read it. You will marvel at the writing style — this is what journalism is about. Read it here: "Three Little Words".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Point your mouse to Poynter" and "Roy Peter Clark's scintillating analysis of film critic Roger Ebert's intros".

• EXTERNAL READING: Roy Peter Clark takes us step by step through an American reporter's story about the Boston bombing and explains "not just why it works, but how it works". With this one blog post, Clark gives us a masterclass in news writing. Read this marvellous piece in its entirety here: Boston Globe reporter shows how news writing can unfold ‘like a story in a book’.

Scintillating analysis of Roger Ebert's film review intros

Any experienced writer can master the short snappy sentence.  It takes a good writer to master the long sentence, the one that takes the reader on a journey of discovery, the one that leads you to a special place you could not have imagined when you stepped on board the bus.

That is Roy Peter Clark, a brilliant journalist and writer himself, paying tribute to Roger Ebert by explaining why he thought the late film critic was a good writer.

Good? Why not "great"? Clark writes:

Notice I am not using the word “great” because good is good enough, especially if you’ve been good for more than forty years.

And then Clark examines the intros, what he calls "leads", from the first three examples of Ebert's work that he could find online.

Read Clark's post in its entirety here to understand why I am saying this is a scintillating piece of writing from which media students, journalists, and people who simply love reading good writing can learn plenty.

PS: Don't miss the punchline — Roy Peter Clark gets a zinger from Roger Ebert.

ADDITIONAL READING: "Point your mouse to Poynter".

ALSO READ: "Roger Ebert: A film critic like no other".

What is a writer's work worth?

That is the question posed in a thought-provoking column by senior journalist Kelly McBride on Poynter. She wrote her piece after freelance journalist Nate Thayer wrote on his blog about how The Atlantic magazine tried to get him to write for free.

McBride says the internet has totally messed up a simple pay scale. She explains:

Back in the day, freelancers got paid roughly by the word. Sometimes it was as low as 10 cents a word. Everyone was shooting for $1 a word, and some people got more than that. Hotshots might get $10,000-$20,000 for a fabulous magazine piece. There was a lot of variation, but there was also a standard rate that people were shooting for.

Now, trying to pin down how much a writer should be paid is an impossible task. It’s simply unknowable.

Read the column in its entirety here: "Most everyone gets asked to write for free, only some people say yes".

And read the blog post that started the whole debate here: "A Day in the Life of a Freelance Journalist—2013".

Is it "Charles's book"? Should that be "Charles' book"?

I prefer "Charles's book". So do Strunk and White.

And so does Poynter guru Roy Peter Clark, whose post on the subject I re-discovered when I was going through old e-mails.

Clark is a superlative journalist who writes with felicity and fluency. And he's extremely well-read to boot. Read the post I'm referring to, as well as his other columns on the Poynter website, to better appreciate what I'm talking about.

But to return to "Charles's book" vs "Charles' book". Here's an excerpt from Clark's post:

Professor Strunk tells us to add apostrophe plus s no matter the final consonant in the noun and cites as examples “Charles’s friend” and “Burns’s poems.”

This makes great sense to me because it echoes the way we would speak the word aloud. So it puzzles me that the “Associated Press Stylebook,” an influential work for journalists, argues that a simple apostrophe suffices after proper nouns ending in s, as in Agnes’ book and Jules’ seat. I don’t know about you, but when I read those aloud, the missing s hurts my ears, and on the page it hurts my eyes. I would say Agnes’s book and Jules’s seat.

Read the post in its entirety here and you will no longer wonder about the so-called extra s in Bridget Jones's Diary.

How to persuade people to participate in your survey: An e-mail from Poynter's News University

A Little Help, Please: What's the Future for Journalism Education?

Poynter's News University 

newsunewsletters@email.poynter.org

Dear Ramesh, There's lots of talk swirling around the topic of the value of a journalism degree. Roger Ailes, the Fox News chairman and CEO, in a speech at the University of North Carolina recently, told journalism students they should change their major. "If you're going into journalism if you care, then you're going into the wrong profession … I usually ask (journalists) if they want to change the world in the way it wants to be changed,” Ailes said. Tom Huang, Poynter adjunct faculty member, has a slightly different take: "Actually, you should go into journalism if you want to save the world. My point is that you don't get to choose the time that you're called upon to be brave and do your best work. Don't forget: A time of crisis and change is a time of incredible opportunity,” he wrote for Poynter.org. What's your take on this? Whether you are a student, educator or professional, we would like to know what you think about the value of a journalism degree. Poynter's Howard Finberg, who has been thinking about the future of journalism and journalism education for years, will be giving a talk at the European Journalism Centre on the future of journalism education, and he hopes you'll fill out a very short [four to five questions only] survey. He'll share what he learns at AEJMC this summer as well. Here's the link to the survey: www.surveymonkey.com/s/journ_edu_future2012. As Poynter NewsU's gift to you for taking the time to share your thoughts, we'll give you a 35 percent discount code to any of our Webinars or Webinar Replays. You'll get the code when you complete the survey. In advance, thanks for your help. The NewsU Crew Poynter's News University is one of the world's most innovative online journalism training programs ever created. From multimedia techniques to writing and reporting, we've got more than 250 courses to help manage your career. As the e-learning home of The Poynter Institute, NewsU extends Poynter's mission as a school for journalists, future journalists and teachers of journalism. For more information, please visit,  www.newsu.org. For information about Poynter, go to www.poynter.org. Follow us on

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• Also read: Move your mouse to Poynter.

The best writing tip of all time: Sit

Having trouble getting the writing done?

Chip Scanlan of Poynter Online, the best resource for journalists that I know of, has some helpful advice for you.