CHAPTER II: ANALASIS OF THE STRUCTURAL FEATURES
2.1.3 Structure of news story’s body
The structure of an essay, a graduation paper usually has three parts: the beginning, the development and the conclusion. Thus, a news story in newspaper is reported in a brief way, its structure is quite different from these.
MacDougall stated, “Every news in newspaper needs escaping from partially and subjective ideas, and press should have equality and balance when giving news to the reader.”
For that, news story in newspaper, especially in English has only two parts: content summary and content development. In addition, every news story in English in general has an identical structure consisting of a headline, a topic sentence and a content development.
According to Nguyen Hoa, “the main tendency in English news story is the using the mixed sentences including compound and complex sentences”
E.g.2.1.3.a:
LONDON: The European Commission said Tuesday that legitimate European worries about human rights and Tibet should not be “walled off” from a trading relationship with China but that it did not support the idea of boy-coots.
(IHT. April 16, 2008)
This using would trouble the reader in understanding sentences and create long sentences. However, every event will be put in its correct relation due to mixed sentences rather than the simple ones.
Moreover, the length of a sentence also relates to the difficulty or the easiness of the story to read. It is a common advice to the journalists and the correspondents that “Press needs to easy for readers to understand and they can read fast. One of the ways to gain this target is to use shot sentences.”
According to Bush, “the reasonable length of a sentence is 20 words.”
The readers who have average educational level and rarely read newspaper could remember immediately 8 words; and 16, at maximum, to high-educational level readers. Another study shows that average educational level readers have capable of remembering 12 words. It is okay if there are 12 words in a sentence. But when reading a 17-word sentence, readers remember
only 12 words, which means that out of every two words, only one is remembered.
Similarly, if a sentence is 40-word long, the reader can remember only 12 words, of which 10 in the first half and 2 in the second one. Such a sentence can exist only when each half of it is an independent unit of information. Under that circumstance, the reader needs not to read this half to understand the other one. It means that the sentence can be divided into separate parts or sentences. In brief, each unit of information must not be more than 17-word long.
E.g.2.1.3.b:
Each required three million rivets, and shortage peaked during Titanic’s construction.
(IHT. April 16, 2008)
Thus, the sub-clause should not be abused. If not, each sentence consists of no more than 12 words. Imagining that we insert a clause or phrase that has more than 12 words between the subject and the object of a sentence, the reader might understand the whole sentence by reading the second time.
Therefore, each unit of information contains at most 17 words is an effective way to form.
Reading is a psychological process. The reader can normally remember and understand ideas one by one. If there is too much information packed into a sentence, it will cause difficulties to the reader. As a result of this, such sentences should be avoided.
E.g.2.1.3.c:
On Thursday night, the Obama campaign, in an effort to shift the spotlight to the Clintons, provide The New York Times with a picture of Wright and President Bill Clinton at the White House in 1998, at a breakfast meeting with religious leaders just hours before the report on
Monica Lewinsky scandal by the independent counsel Kenneth Starr was made public.
(IHT, March 22-23, 2008)
A 50-word long sentence with three information units is more readable than a 20-word long one with a single information unit. Moreover, another feature in the development part of the news story is passages. It is very different from other kinds of news, as the purpose the story in news story is to report the events or the news, not to develop the ideas. The majority of passages in news story are one sentence. Thus, if we regard the news story as a “big” paragraph, the passages are really supporting sentences.
According to some experts, “one of the reasons to make the paragraphs consisting one sentence is due to the work of ordering the lay-out of a newspaper. Otherwise, the one-sentence paragraphs are usually easier to read than the others”
E.g.2.1.3.d:
Lee, who first joined the Legislature in 1985, said he would step down as a lawmaker at the end of his current term in July but would remain a member of Democratic Party.
(IHT, March 29-30, 2008)
In conclusion, a little bit long sentence with proper structure and punctuation is acceptable. Therefore, the length of the sentences in the news story’s body is not as important as its structure. To write the most effective sentences, journalists should apply these strategies:
- A sentence should be divided into the information units, each of which is not more than 17-word long.
- Sub-clause should not be abused.
- Sub-clause should not consist of more than 12 words.
- The main information should always be ordered from the beginning of the sentence.