Copyreading and Headline Writing

:
COPY READING
&
HEADLINE WRITING
ALLAN S. BAUTISTA
Education Program Specialist II – Human Resource Development
SOURCE/SLIDES CREDITS TO: TIHANE E. AVENIDO

School of the Future
Objectives:
• Familiarize copyreading symbols
• Know the structures in writing
headlines
• Use the symbols in copyreading
• Realize that wide reading is
necessary to good copyreading
Direction: Form a word out from the
rumbled letters:
• 1.Poyc
COPY
2. Dingrae
READING
• 3.Enildeah
HEADLINE
• 4.Tingriw
WRITING
GROUP ACTIVITY
Direction:
Identify the grammatical or structural error
in the sentence. Write the correct answer on a
piece of manila paper.
Group 1
reading writing , and arithmetic used
to be considered the essential subject
in school
Answer:
Reading ,writing , and arithmetic
used to be considered the essential
subjects in school.
Group 2
Do the boy wants to play the game.
• Answer:
Does the boy want to play the game?
Group 3
There’s no doubt that tuition and
other expenseses at colleges and
universitys are high.
Answer:
There’s no doubt that tuition and
other expenses at colleges and
universities are high.
Group 4
What is the oldest cities in the
phillipines.
Answer:
What is the oldest city in the
Philippines?
Group 5
Scouters was assigned at the
busy entersection of Manila.
Answer:
Scouters were assigned at the busy
intersection of Manila.
WRITING HEADLINES
• Headline- title of the news story. This
is much bigger and bolder than its
body which is the story itself.
• FUNCTIONS OF THE HEADLINE
• 1. To tell in capsule form what the
story is all about
• 2. To grade the news as to
importance
• 3. To make the page look attractive
STRUCTURES OF HEADLINES
1. Flush left- Both lines are flushed to
the left margin.
Family planning
seminar held
2. Dropline or Step form- The first
line is flushed left while the second is
indented.
Local boy scouts
bleed for a cause
• 3.Inverted pyramid- Each of the three
or four lines in this head is
successively shorter that the line
above it.
School launches
kalinisan
drive
• 4.Crossline or Barline- A one-line
headline that runs across the column.
Local students join Clean drive
• 5.Hanging Indention- The first line is
flushed left. This is followed by two
indented parallel lines.
Chief editor
bats for more
• development news
6.Boxed headline- For emphasis or art’s
sake, some headlines are boxed
Community involvement
science camp theme
7. Jump story headline- a story
continued on another page. This
may be a word, a phrase or a
group of words followed by a
series of dots.
Local students…
(From page 1)
DOs and Don’ts
in
Writing Headlines
DOs
• 1.Make your headline answer as many
W’s as possible.
• 2.The headline should summarize the
news story. It should contain nothing
that is not found in the story.
• 3. Positive heads are preferable to
negative ones.
• 4. Put a verb expressed or implied in
every deck.
• 5. Omit articles like a, an, and the and
all forms of the verb to be
(is,are,be),unless needed to make the
meaning clear.
– Reclaimed banks (are) cause of
recurrent flood (are before cause is
not necessary)
– Rodrigo Duterte is new RP President
(is is necessary to make the meaning
clear)
6. Use the strongest word in the first
line as much as possible.
• 7. The active verb is better than the
passive verb in headlines.
– Local Hi- Y aids flood victims
8. Use the present tense for past
stories and the infinitive form for
future stories
President Rodrigo Roa Duterte
bats for National reconciliation
Lantern parade to cap Christmas
affairs
• 9.Write numbers in figures or spell
them out.
• 10. Use any of the following headline
styles, but be consistent once you
have adopted one.
a. All caps
CHARACTER, NATIONALISM
VITAL COGS IN EDUCATION
b. Cap and lower case
Character, Nationalism
Vital Cogs in Education
c. Down style
Character, nationalism
vital cogs in education
Don’ts
1. Don’t tell the same thing even though
you use a different word.
2. Don’t comment directly or indirectly.
Avoid editorializing even in headlines.
3. Unless the subject is implied or has
been mentioned in the first deck, avoid
beginning a headline with a verb.
4. Don’t end a line with a preposition.
Neither should you separate a
preposition from its object.
•
• 5. Don’t break off abbreviations ,
names, and hyphenated words.
• 6.Avoid repeating principal words
regardless of the number of decks.
• 7. Avoid heads that carry a double
meaning.
• 8.Don’t coin abbreviations of your
own. Use only those that are common
to the readers like DepEd, PNP, PRC.
• 9. Don’t abbreviate days and
months unless figures follow;
Mon.,Jan.23
• PUNCTUATING HEADLINES
As a rule, headlines , just like titles of
editorials, features , and literary articles
should not end with a period.
Other simple rules:
1.Use a comma in place of the
conjunction and
Self-reliance, discipline up at Baguio
confab
2. Two related thoughts should be
separated with a semi-colon.
School joins Operasyon Linis;
P.E.- CAT boys drain estero
3. The dash may be used for smaller
decks, but not for headlines in large
types.
4. The single quotation marks , not
the double quotation marks , are used
in headlines.
– Cultural development:
‘Linggo ng Wika’ theme
5.Follow the rules in punctuation.
• HEADLINE VOCABULARY
Headline writing is an art or a
special skill . The copy editor who
usually writes the headlines should be
able to tell in capsule form- simply,
temptingly, yet understandably.
He must have a cartloads of special
words to use for the sake of simplicity,
brevity, and easy reading.
• In the following headlines, the
word or words in parentheses may
substitute for those that are in
italics:
• strengthened (beefed up)
• decreases (dips)
• examinations announced ( quiz;
bared)
• highlight (cap)
• speaks (defines)
• increase ( upsurge)
• disapproves ( bucks )
• wins ( bags)
• contest ( tilt)
• being discussed at ( up at)
• starts ( buck less down to)
• Necessity/help ( vital cog)
• holds contest in cooking ( pits
cooking talents)
• speaks (defines)
• urges (bats for , calls for)
• in group ( en masse)
• year (milestone) praises (lauds,
extol)
• confab ( conference)
• dominates ( rules, lord over)
• To be shown ( booked for)
• writers prepare for journalism
contest
• ( scribes hone up for press tilt)
• hits ( attacks)
• to nip ( stop)
• hike ( increase)
• prods (urges)
• probe (investigation)
• upholds ( approves)
COPY READING
• comes from the words copy and
reading
• A copy is the typewritten
material sent to the linotypist
(letterpress printing) or to the
computer typesetter to be
typeset.
• Reading is editing or correcting
errors done by the editor or
copyreader.
• A copyreader corrects error in
grammar, errors in fact, errors in
structure, and errors in style. He
eliminates libelous and derogatory
statements, opinions in news
stories, and those contrary to our
laws and good taste.
• Errors in grammar include errors in
spelling, punctuation, capitalization,
subject-verb agreement, tenses ,
among others.
• DUTIES OF A COPYREADER
1. Straighten out ungrammatical
constructions.
2. Shorten sentences and tighten
paragraphs.
3. See that the paper’s style
requirements are strictly followed.
4. Check names, addresses, titles,
designations, identifications,
figures and others.
5.Rewrite the story completely if it is
poorly written.
6.Rewrite the lead or the first few
paragraphs whenever necessary
but must never tamper with the
facts unless he is sure of his
corrections.
• 7. Delete all opinion, speculations,
and statements which are without
attribution or sources.
• 8.Watch out for slanting or any
attempt to present the story in a
subtly biased way.
• 9.Watch out for libelous
statements.
• 10.Recheck figures and totals.
• 11. Cross out adjectives which
tend to make a story sound
overwritten.
• 12. Cut a story to size or to required
length if needed.
• 13. Check attributions and see to it that
they are properly identified.
• 14. Challenges facts, claims, or reports
when they sound anomalous, illogical
and incredible.
• 15. Write headlines.
COPYREADING SYMBOLS
What have you learned?
• What are the structures in
headline writing?
• What are the copy reading
symbols?
• Why is wide reading necessary to
good copy reading?
Direction:
Copyread the news and
write headline for it.
• “Journalism, as concerns collecting
information, differs little if at all from
intelligence work. In my judgment, a
journalist’s job is very interesting”
Vladimir Putin
Thank you for
listening!
To GOD be the glory!

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SOURCE/SLIDES CREDITS TO: TIHANE E. AVENIDO

To GOD be the glory!

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