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| Preface | |
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| Acknowledgments | |
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| Why and How Good Writing Counts | |
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| The Deadline Dilemma | |
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| Getting the Subject from One Mind to Another | |
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| The Jargon Trap | |
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| The Blessings of a Well-Crafted Lede for the Reporter and Reader | |
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| The Time-Saving, On-Deadline Formula | |
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| The Style Trap | |
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| Some Basic Guidelines for Developing Writing Skills | |
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| A Word about the English Language | |
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| Bigger Does Not Always Mean Better | |
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| The Beauty - and the Bane - of a Big Vocabulary | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Is It Newsworthy? | |
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| The Lede, the Story, the Medium | |
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| Audience and Audiences | |
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| The Prime Criteria of Newsworthiness | |
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| Human Interest: The Grab-Bag Criterion | |
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| Newsworthiness for the Eye and Ear | |
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| Designer Newsworthiness: Creating "News" for Ratings and Profit | |
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| Taking the Electronic Hits | |
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| But Does It Matter? | |
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| Exercises: An Improbable News Day | |
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| Leading the Reader On | |
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| The Lede: The Critical Element | |
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| Avoiding Dull or Generic Ledes | |
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| Leading with a Question | |
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| Leading with a Direct Quote | |
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| Ensuring the Lede Makes Sense | |
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| The "Nut-Graf" Approach | |
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| Getting to the Point | |
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| Avoiding Lede Intimidation | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Building the Story | |
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| How Not to Conduct an Interview | |
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| Bringing the Story Together | |
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| One Reporter's Example | |
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| When to Stop Describing | |
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| Developing the Breaking Story | |
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| Developing an Issue by Using Specifics | |
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| The Feature: Writing about How and Why | |
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| Writing for Magazines: A Category in Search of a Definition | |
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| The Magazine Feature | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Craft | |
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| The Rewards of Murky Writing | |
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| Separating the Craft from the Profession | |
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| Avoiding Wordiness | |
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| Caution: Concise Writing Doesn't Always Enhance Clarity | |
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| Eliminating Redundancy | |
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| Compounding the Sentence with Complexity | |
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| Correctly Using "That" and "Which" (and "Who" and "Whom") | |
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| Writing with Precision | |
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| Using Parallel Structures; Making Your Numbers Agree | |
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| Sexist Language versus Good English | |
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| An American Dilemma? | |
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| Your Antecedents Are Showing: Dangling Participles and Misplaced Modifiers | |
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| Writing Directly, Without Apology; Avoiding Tiptoe (or Weasel Words) | |
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| Replenishing the Word Supply | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Active Voice, Action Verbs | |
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| The Relationship of Active Voice and Action Verbs | |
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| Active Voice and Honesty | |
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| Active Voice, Clarity and Crispness | |
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| Action Verbs and Imagery | |
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| Being (or Linking) Verbs | |
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| Creativity Killers? | |
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| Exercises | |
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| An Appearance of Honesty | |
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| Journalistic Ethics: An Oxymoron? | |
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| A Passion for Accuracy | |
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| Avoiding Generalizations, Assumptions, Pomposity and Overblown Statements | |
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| Euphemisms: When Tact and Truth Don't Agree | |
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| Fudge Marks: How Not to Embellish Your Prose | |
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| Of Opinion and Ethics: The Elusiveness of Truth | |
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| Don't Editorialize Unless You Are Writing a Column or Editorial | |
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| Respect the Reader | |
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| Make Sure the Reader Knows What You're Writing About | |
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| Quotations and Attributions: Taking the Onus off the Reporter | |
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| Is the Reporter Making this Up? | |
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| The Power of the Direct Quote | |
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| Keep the Reporter Out of the Story | |
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| Exercises | |
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| The Eternal Clich� | |
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| Word Exhaustion and the Death of Originality | |
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| Avoid the Empty and the Trite | |
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| The Making of a Clich� | |
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| Clich�s to Avoid | |
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| Apprentice Clich�s and Slang | |
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| Juggling Jargon: the Mark of a Lazy Writer | |
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| Business Jargon | |
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| Cop and Criminal Lawyer Lingo | |
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| Journalese | |
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| The Comic Value of Clich�s | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Red Flags and No-Nos | |
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| The Need to Exist Versus the Need for Surgical Removal | |
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| The Big Red Flag: "That" | |
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| Special Red Flags: "There is" and Similar Usages | |
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| Another Special Red Flag: "Feel" | |
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| Red Flag Tenses: Perfect Doesn't Always Mean Good | |
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| No-nos: Only Use Them in Direct Quotations | |
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| Special No-nos: "Currently" and "Presently" | |
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| Rules to Write By | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Broadcast Style | |
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| Medium versus Message | |
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| Comparing the Media | |
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| Writing for Broadcast: How to Cater to the Ear and Eye | |
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| Some Broadcast Style Pointers | |
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| The Anchor and the Reporter | |
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| Variations for the Visual Media | |
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| An Alphabetical Digest of Broadcast Writing Rules | |
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| Exercises | |
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| Various Points of Style | |
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| The Beautiful Mongrel | |
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| Learning the History of English: the Point | |
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| English Language; Celtic Expression | |
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| A Question of Pedigree, or Lack thereof | |
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| Geoffrey, Will and the Boys | |
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| Dr. Johnson and the Beginnings of Modern English | |
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| English, the Equal Opportunity Borrower | |
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| Bibliography | |
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| Index | |
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| About the Author | |