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.”

“More than 300 women were shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, bludgeoned, or burned to death over the past decade by men in South Carolina, dying at a rate of one every 12 days while the state does little to stem the carnage from domestic abuse.”

Journalism guru Roy Peter Clark considers that to be the best lead, or intro, from among this year's Pulitzer Prize winners. Here he explains why: "The winner for the best Pulitzer Prize lead is…"

In the same post you can also read Clark's analysis of the next best leads.

For copy editors and reporters everywhere, Clark is a godsend. Check this out, too:

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

• "How journalism guru Roy Peter Clark helped to turn a classified ad into a heartwarming newspaper story"

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

AND WHILE ON THE SUBJECT of the Pulitzer Prize, you should read this:"‘Investigative reporting is obviously alive and well’ and other observations from first-time Pulitzer jurors".

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".

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.