I want to do something different today. I want you to work with me. I want to answer to some of my questions and to have a dialogue, as much as we can. To do that, I want you to say if you like newspapers. Do you read a newspaper every day? In this category I include both versions of a newspaper, which are printed and online of course. Do you like to stare in front of your computer more than you do usually just to read an article? Or if you like online news, why do you read them?
I like more to read online news, when it comes to politics and economy, but when I read something to know about cosmetics, I prefer to see printed magazines in front of my eyes. The reason for doing this is that I want to be able all the time to locate that information, because on my computer the things are not quite arranged in a certain order. And I find something new that is worth reading every day. If I bookmark and bookmark continuouly, I will end up spending my whole day reading articles, which is not exactly my goal in life.
A magazine that is released monthly is a good occasion for me to find out what is new in terms of fashion, music and celebrities. Now, it’s your turn. What do you think of online magazines? Which is the magazine that you would recommend to others? Perhaps I or other people who read this blog never heard of, so help us be a little more aware of the world surrounding us.
There are in the press field some terms that have to be explained. I wanted to do this a long time ago, but the time was always against me. Now, I think it’s the proper time to do it. What is an article? It is a complete piece of writing in a newspaper or in a magazine. They can be online. About newspapers, I recalled a saying signed by Stephen Crane, who says that “A newspaper is a market where wisdom sells its freedom”. Do you agree?
A feature is a special article in a newspaper. The articles present many features, but don’t think at a feature within an article as a characteristic of a gadget, because is not. It is ike I said a very important article, that must be emphasized by the author. For example, in WordPress, the authors have the possibility of creating a category using a certain plugin in WordPress, related to categories, which allow them to add more and more categories. One of these categories can be named: Features or Featured. It’s your call.
An editorial is an article that gives the newspaper’s opinion on a specific story. This is not only the author’s opinion, but of the whole group of editors. They think that is not good to plant trees, or on the contrary, they think it’s good. They all have the same opinion and they express it using their newspaper as an object to do that. You can imagine that not all of the editors of a newspaper can agree with something. Fights can occur and people may be kicked out of a firm or a publishing house, if they don’t feel the same way as the team. It is a stressful job sometimes, but is worth it for those who have chosen this path in life.
A column is an article written by a particular writer that regularly appears in a newspaper, no matter the support of it. You can meet columnists in the online media and also in the printed one. The obituary is a formal report about somebody who died, usually with a presentation of his or her life. The appointements are positions or jobs as advertised in a newspaper. And the last term is analysis, which is a detailed examination of a subject, including the thoughts and judgements of that person who writes the article or the column.
Now I want to speak about the headlines. They are written in a different way than the rest of the article, using bigger fonts to increase the reader’s attention to that spot. The style of writing headlines makes use of syntactical conventions, such as: the use of nouns, strings of nouns, phrases, the use of infinitives to express future events or plans. When writing a headline, you have to be attentive to what you desire to express. You have to use simple tenses instead of progressive or perfect forms. The present simple expresses both present and past events, so the problem is solved.
Choosing the right words to be placed in the title is always a tough job. The words usually exaggerate the meaning. They are short, snappy and the words that rhyme are preferred compared to the words that don’t rhyme. The headlines can be sometimes puzzling and difficult to understand. They are like this in order to attract the readers, who might wonder: “I wonder what that man wanted to say by this…”
They might be sometimes difficult to understand, as I said, because of the use of the abbreviations and of the uncommon words. In other occasions, the use of the cultural allusions and the plays of words, where it is possible, can have the same effect. For example, a good headline is Dr Mendez To Stop Cancer. We don’t know who Dr Mendez is, but we will definitely read an article that says a certain doctor found the cure to cancer.
