Grammar Moses: Keep it simple, keep it tight and don't bury the lede

Newspaper editors are some of the busiest people I know.

I'm not saying that because I've been one for almost 30 years but because I supervise many of them and I see what they go through.

They worry about spelling, grammar, active voice, consistency, interesting ledes, word choice, libel, fairness, nut grafs, balance, nuance, length, missing elements, meaningful quotes, social media fields, links to related stories, captions and ... oh, the list goes on.

And that's just once they get a story to edit, which is only about half their jobs.

Sometimes we're so rushed in attending to all these elements of journalism that we sometimes fall down a bit on whether a story has the desired crispness, nice flow, lyricism.

Some days it's all about getting it right and getting it in rather than finessing it.

As I am wont to say, "Brevity is next to godliness." With that in mind, here are some real-life examples from Neil and Michelle Holdway, who run our night copy desk, of how a little massaging can make things better, shorter, more readable.

• A "physical altercation" is a "fight."

• A "verbal altercation" is an "argument."

• "The fast-flying Cooper's hawks are regularly seen in the area, smaller in size than the more commonly found red-tailed hawks." We'd eliminate "in size." What else would they be smaller in?

• "He called the plan conceptual in nature." Rarely if ever would we need "in nature" with whatever adjective it followed.

• "During the overnight hours" becomes "overnight."

• "Made the decision to" becomes "decided to."

• "Drove away at a high rate of speed" becomes "sped away."

• "Said in an announcement" becomes "announced" or "said."

• "Bacteriological samples collected to verify the quality of the water supply were declared free of coliform bacteria by a certified laboratory." Ugh. How about: "A certified laboratory determined water samples contained no coliform bacteria"?

• "Were in need of serious repair" becomes "needed serious repair." We see the "in need of" construction a lot.

• "Fled on foot" becomes "ran" or "ran away."

• "Conducted a search" becomes "searched."

• "Was far in excess of" becomes "far more than."

Many of these cases are a result of reporters conveying something to readers in the same way it was conveyed to them. The problem with that is most "official" or "expert" people we talk to have a language of their own. Attorneys, cops, firefighters, finance people, legislators, arborists, engineers ... every profession has its own language. You might have tripped up on my mentioning "nut grafs," "ledes" and "social media fields" in my list of what editors do.

For the sake of practicing what I preach, I should explain:

• A nut graf (short for nutshell paragraph) is a paragraph or passage that explains why - in a nutshell - you're reading this story. It provides the context, the hook, the timeliness factor, the implications of a story. We run it soon after the lede to help pull you through the story.

If you think the explanation is tough to swallow - even without a nut allergy - think of how hard it is to write a solid, succinct nut graf.

• "Lede" is how we spell "lead." Why? You need to know a little about hot-type printing and homographs to understand it. A "lead" (with a hard E) is the introductory sentence or passage of a story. "Lead" (with a soft E) was what we called the thin strip of metal that separated lines of text on a Linotype machine back in the hot-type days.

So that one didn't confuse "lead" with "lede," we changed the way one of them is spelled.

And you thought we did it just to be quirky!

• "Social media fields" are, you guessed it, the electronic attachments to our stories we fill out so that our stories make it to Twitter and Facebook with messaging appropriate to those platforms.

Write carefully, and never bury the lede!

• Jim Baumann is vice president/managing editor of the Daily Herald. Write him at jbaumann@dailyherald.com. Put "Grammar Moses" in the subject line. You also can friend or follow Jim at facebook.com/baumannjim.