Hooking and Keeping Readers

A chapter summary

Intro

• the online age has made it difficult to get noticed among many
• online readers are fickle and have short attention spans

So what?

• the main question to ask when writing a lead
• web readers are quick to abandon any page they find boring
• the lead (first paragraph) amd the nut graph (the second paragraph) must be informative and INTERESTING
• to increase interest, include strange or unusual facts; what would interest the target audience?
• summary leads: who, what, when, where (often in that order) good place to start
• inverted pyramid: presenting facts in order of most to least important
• this is not a rule; there are instances where it is not very effective
• feature lead: unusual or interesting nature of event, then facts
• newsworthy: traditionally, timelines, proximity, prominence or impact made a story newsworthy; today, wierdness qualifies too
• there are entire websites devoted to offbeat stories

Headlines and Link Text

• battle for reader's attention on the internet
• magazines, newspapers must be paged through; hardly anyone flips through every news story on the site
• be aware of space limitations for link text
• techniques for emphasis: coloured headlines, pictures, video links, first paragraph in bold (ex. MSNBC)
• you won't have the final say in headline, that's the editor's job

A Square Lead in a Round Web

• a good lead is one that works online, takes format, aim and audience into consideration
• aquaint yourself with your publication's standards and formats
• write tightly: lots of information in little space
• online audience is reading the news to find out what's going on, not for literature
• goal is to grab readers and inform them long enough to make them want to keep reading

Getting Your Facts Organized

• after a good lead, good writing with flow must follow
• understand the aspects of the information you want to share
• convey in an engaging and logical manner
• inverted pyramid is a good starting point
• quotes can put faces on events: hows and whys
• less important information is traditionally put at end incase it must be cut to fit a news hole; not a problem online
• hard-news stories have facts first
• soft-news stories can begin with descriptions or anecdotes
• features generally use more quotes than hard-news
• placing contrasting emotions in the beginning is a good way to hook readers
• hard-news stories don't require strong endings, but features need wrap-up

Teaching Kids to Read and Write

For three years I was an International Baccalaureate, or IB, student. The students accepted in this program are typically very high achievers, and the program itself imposes very high standards. This year I decided to leave IB, and so have been able to observe the difference between a regular academic setting with that of an IB classroom. Last year in IB English, we studied world literature and focused mainly on analytical skills; it was assumed, and fairly accurately, that the previous two years of the program would have made us into decent readers and writers. This year in academic English, we have already had more lessons regarding common technical errors than we had in total in IB last year. Sadly enough, it appeared that these lessons were necessary.

But it is not only secondary education that is failing to teach basic reading and writing in an effective manner, in fact, this responsibility largely belongs to elementary schools. I babysat two girls this summer, a six year old and a nine year old, and part of my responsibility was to make them practice their writing, one handwritten page each per day. Through them, I witnessed not only extremely substandard writing levels, but also a dislike of writing. They argued with me every day for half an hour before I could get them to write anything. They were also much more interested in watching movies than having me read to them. This leads me to believe that elementary schools instil neither a love of language, nor proper reading and writing skill.

It appears that reading and writing are being taught poorly in public schools. Personally, I find this phenomenon disheartening, especially when we consider that written language is one of the early marks of more advanced civilizations. Are we going backwards?