Repetitive strain

Carla Bruni has a talent for reinventing herself. Her latest incarnation, of course, is as first lady of France, loyal wife to President Nic and devoted mother to baby Giulia.
Newspapers and broadcasters on both sides of the Channel have thrilled to every episode of the soap opera that took her from the catwalk via the arms of Mick Jagger to the Elysee Palace. But there's a small snag: her name. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is a bit of a mouthful and takes up the best part of a  line of text,  even in 8pt.
So having got it out of the way at first mention, the temptation for the reporter or sub is to find other ways to refer to her. The sidebar to the presidential campaign page lead in the Telegraph today takes that to extremes. 
In the space of seven pars, Ms Bruni-Sarkozy is described as the first lady... the former model... the pop singer... and the heiress... and as seeking to portray herself as new mother, doting spouse.. and woman of the people. Wonderwoman's name is used only once.
There are times when broadsheet folk yearn to be transported to a redtop that would permit the use of Carla, but if that's not an option, we just have to accept that her name is her name and use it.
It is possible that the Telegraph correspondent was seeking to portray Ms Bruni-Sarkozy as a woman of many parts -  or even taking a gentle dig at her-  but it seems more likely that he was trying to avoid repetition.
The fear of repetition leads not only to daft linguistic contortions but also to confusion. In the case of Ms Bruni-Sarkozy to introduce successive paragraphs with a new description causes the reader to pause,  if only momentarily, to wonder whether a fresh character has been introduced.

Most people seem to have got the message that 'said' is a perfectly good word that doesn't need to be turned into interjected or opined or declaimed or any other such nonsense, but the dread of repeating other words remains widespread. So much so that it has given rise to a game in one newsroom where subs are challenged to identify the word being avoided by using so-called elegant variation. 
Examples (yes, they  are real) include the popular yellow fruit...(banana), the familiar red roadside furniture...(postbox) and the large grey beast...(elephant).
Tom Pride of The Times has an extensive collection and it would be fun to compile one on this site, so all contributions are welcome. Thanks to  Richard Dixon for starting the ball rolling with custodians between the uprights (goalkeepers). It's  absurd - but then, most of the usual rules do not apply to sport. You do hear people in the pub talking sportalese.

Just to be perverse, back at the Telegraph our Carla correspondent also demonstrates that  sometimes a single repetition can jar, even in separate stories.
 In the main copy he writes 
Stuck with the nickname of "President of the rich", Mr Sarkozy is recasting himself as the underdog...
In the Carla sidebar, he tells us 
Communication experts remain sceptical that recasting the heiress into a "woman of the people" will help her husband...
A little recasting of one of them would not have gone amiss. 
Some commentators are never satisfied.

God cop, bad cop:
Still with the Telegraph, congratulations to the business sub for this simple  
head
Shopper numbers tail off without the tinsel factor
OK, so shopper numbers is a bit staid, but what a lovely turn of phrase at the end. We know exactly what it means without any festive jargon. There was no tinsel factor in the copy, so it was creative subbing at its best.
More examples welcome, as it would be nice to have a hall of fame to celebrate thoughtful headline writing.

Less creative was this effort in the Times iPad edition
Man trapped in car near Arctic Circle survives for 60 days by eating snow
A man trapped in his car just south of the Arctic Circle apparently survived for 60 days by eating snow.
A fascinating story. A good head? A good intro? Probably one, but not both. This is the sort of repetition that we do need to avoid.



Thank you for sticking with it to the end. Please do share your thoughts below. And please take a look at the other posts. They are all media related.

Sold down the river the Beeb's flotilla and fireworks fiasco - and a feeble fightback. Why didn't the top man have his hand on the tiller?

Hello and goodbye to Wapping a personal diary of life inside the fortress in the days before the strike that changed newspapers forever

Out of print a love letter to newspapers in this digital age. Why they don't have to die if we have the will to let them live and thrive

Why local newspapers matter Why we should care about the revolution in the regional press

Missing: an opportunity How the hunt for Madeleine McCann could be turned into a force for good instead of just a festival of mawkish sentimentality

Riding for a fall Does buying a ticket for a jolly day out at the races mean you are fair game for the snobs who sneer and snipe?

Just a pretty face Illustrating the business pages isn't the easiest job in the world, but spare us the celebs who aren't even mentioned in the story

Food for thought a case study in why we should take health advice with a pinch of salt (and a glass of red wine and a helping of roast beef) 

The world's gone mad Don Draper returns and  the drooling thirtysomethings go into overdrive But does anybody watch the show? (But there is more Whipple in this post!)

Relatively speaking

Two people drown.  We know their relationship, but not their names, and details of their lives are scant.

The Telegraph coverage ran thus:

Grandmother and boy drown feeding ducks
A grandmother and her six-year-old grandson drowned in a village pond while feeding ducks, police said last night.

The report goes on to say that the woman was 71, that she was a widow, and that a neighbour thought she was fond of ballet.
Not a lot to go on, perhaps, but enough to allow the writer and sub to have done better.
First the heading: Was she a woman who happened to be a grandmother? Was the boy her grandson or someone unrelated? Funnily enough, Boy and grandmother drown... would have made it clear.  The published version doesn't.
Then the intro: This time the relationship is hammered home too much. An obvious, but dull, variation would have been A woman and her six-year-old grandson...
We know she's a widow, so maybe that would have been a better opener? But perhaps we care more about the death of a child than that of the woman looking after him, so should he come first? 

Even in simple stories, we need to be aware that the way we express relationships implies some level of judgment. We carelessly write about 'a plumber and his wife' as though the woman were no more than an appendage.
The same applies if we start a story, for example,  A mother of four ... Maybe we are just using the one piece of information that saves us from A woman..., in which case fair enough. But unless motherhood is the prime reason for the woman being in the news, we should try to avoid it. How often do we start stories A father of four...?

Back to the village pond: The Times approached it thus:

Widow drowns with grandson in village lake
A boy of six and his 71-year-old grandmother have been found dead in a village lake.

The headline was double column, so the configuration was more restricted than the Telegraph's banner. 
But after that, it gets interesting. There is no doubt, looking at the pictures, that it was a lake rather than a pond, but that doesn't have the same ring. Is it stretching journalistic licence too far to go with pond? 
We also know the purpose of their outing only from what the police have surmised,  so  The Times plays it cautiously, waiting until the second par to say they were 'thought to have stopped to feed ducks'. Again, is that being too prissy or simple accuracy?
Unlike the Telegraph, The Times names the pair. It turns out that the grandmother is a retired nursery school teacher. I think I'd have liked to have known before the third par that this woman had professional experience of looking after  young children. It may add to our feelings of sympathy -  or the reverse  - but it is definitely relevant. I'd have made it the intro, thus:

A retired nursery teacher and her six-year-old grandson drowned while feeding ducks in a village lake yesterday.
Then the boy could have taken precedence in the heading...but the permutations are endless.


Meanwhile, two and a half cheers for the Telegraph's coverage of Dr Finella Brita-Babapulle's brush with the law:

Doctor waged gay smear 'war' on ex-husband after divorce cash row
A respected consultant haematologist subjected her former husband to a series of homosexual smears because she felt she was cheated out of £430,000 in their bitter divorce.

Hurrah, no dreaded 'female' or 'woman'. The reporter (presumably a casual as no named byline) gets it spot on with her profession up front, letting the 'her former husband' do the gender bit. We might question the need to say it was a 'bitter' divorce - most that end up in a criminal court are - but that's a quibble. 
Similarly, do we really need those quotes round 'war'. She's been convicted of harassment and she has challenged him in every court in the land, so it wouldn't have been too naughty to leave them off. 
But both head and intro were compelling enough to encourage the reader to  learn more. 

*image by Bobbie Peachey, http://webclipart.about.com


Thank you for sticking with it to the end. Please do share your thoughts below. And please take a look at the other posts. They are all media related.

Sold down the river the Beeb's flotilla and fireworks fiasco - and a feeble fightback. Why didn't the top man have his hand on the tiller?

Hello and goodbye to Wapping a personal diary of life inside the fortress in the days before the strike that changed newspapers forever

Out of print a love letter to newspapers in this digital age. Why they don't have to die if we have the will to let them live and thrive

Why local newspapers matter Why we should care about the revolution in the regional press

Missing: an opportunity How the hunt for Madeleine McCann could be turned into a force for good instead of just a festival of mawkish sentimentality

Riding for a fall Does buying a ticket for a jolly day out at the races mean you are fair game for the snobs who sneer and snipe?

Just a pretty face Illustrating the business pages isn't the easiest job in the world, but spare us the celebs who aren't even mentioned in the story

Food for thought a case study in why we should take health advice with a pinch of salt (and a glass of red wine and a helping of roast beef) 

The world's gone mad Don Draper returns and  the drooling thirtysomethings go into overdrive But does anybody watch the show? (But there is more Whipple in this post!)

Information overload

David Cameron is the Prime Minister. Ilfracombe is in North Devon. The Bowleven oil company is based in Edinburgh.  The Oxford Bible Commentary was edited in 2001 by John Barton and John Muddiman. The taxpayer owns 83% of RBS.  

Readers may be interested in any or all of these facts - but not necessarily in an opening paragraph. Who cares about the geography or history of the subject of a story before discovering what he, she or it has done?

Take this intro from the front page of The Guardian:

Teachers at Gateway primary school, in Marylebone, central London, have noticed that anxiety about the introduction of a new housing benefit cap is beginning to unsettle some pupils.

So what is most important here? The teachers? The specific primary school? Its exact location? Or the children? Why all those commas and geography before we get to the point?

There are, of course, many ways of telling a story...but how about this:

Children as young as eight are fretting that they might lose their homes if housing benefit is capped, teachers say. 

(The age and precise concerns were detailed lower in the story).

The key is to focus on what counts and get that message across before the reader falls asleep or turns the page. That doesn't preclude delayed drops and other such invitations to read on, but the fewer commas (and parentheses) there are in an intro, the easier it is to read.

And yes, this is an egg-sucking lesson, but some of us need it. Did your grandma actually know how to suck eggs? Mine didn't. Sometimes we have to go back to basics..

If it's vital to the understanding of the story, put it up top. If it's a detail that can wait, let it come in naturally later on. 

And then there's the exception that proves the rule. Take this glorious effort from Martin Fletcher in The Times

Chris Tappin seems an improbable criminal. Silver-haired, bespectacled and slightly deaf, the retired businessman lives in an elegant house in Orpington, heads the Kent Golf Union, representing the county's 95 clubs, plays bridge and dotes on his grandson.

From another pen that would probably have been too, too much information. But it is just brilliant.