What We Say

Words are a journalist’s most important tool. For broadcast journalists, I would argue they are more important than the video we use to tell our stories. It’s how and what we say about the pictures and the people we interview that has the greatest impact on the viewer. It’s because that’s how we normally interact with each other. The choice of the wrong word can change the meaning of our story, and damage our credibility. Once we lose that, our most critical bond with the viewer is lost.

We should take pride in our use of the language. We should all be offended when we hear it being misused out of ignorance or sloppiness. It shows disrespect for the viewers. The way we speak changed over decades. In the digital age of texts and tweets, a new short hand is used to communicate more quickly, or get our message across in fewer than 140 characters. But that’s different from the spoken word. Some words have taken on new meaning as society changes, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

There are many examples that make me cringe. Here are a few:

Farther/Further-Just heard it wrong yesterday on a network newscast. Farther is used for distance. Further is used for advancement or degree.

My house is a mile farther down the road.
We will speak further when I have more information.

Few/Less-Use few when you can count specific numbers. Use less when referring to an undefined amount or degree.

I only have a few pennies.
This bottle holds less water.

Literally/Figuratively-People almost always use literally incorrectly. They seem to use it for emphasis. But literally means something actually happened. It’s a word that almost never should be used in conversation and never in reporting. Just tell me what happened. If you say, “I literally lost my mind” you should be in a mental health facility. I hear reporters misuse it all the time.

These are just some annoying examples. But the bigger picture is respect for language and ourselves as journalists. This is why journalists have to be readers. We should be reading everything, novels, history, memoirs, satire, great speeches, and even poetry. It broadens our literary horizons. It makes us better.

Author Joseph Devlin wrote this in “How to Speak and Write Correctly”:

Consider the contrast between the well-bred, polite man who knows how to choose and use his words correctly and the underbred, vulgar boor, whose language grates upon the ear and jars the sensitiveness of the finer feelings. The blunders of the latter, his infringement of all the canons of grammar, his absurdities and monstrosities of language, make his very presence a pain, and one is glad to escape from his company.”

If your viewers want to escape your company, you’re in big trouble. With so much live reporting, the pressure to be correct and coherent is even greater. Reporters who are concise and confident in their language make the audience comfortable and likely to pay closer attention. Television reporters get one shot to tell their story. Viewers can’t go back and re-read it. Viewers are often distracted while watching television. You have to grab their attention, and make it worth their while to watch and listen.

The competition for that attention is tougher than ever. The future of local and network newscasts is going to be challenging. The way we get our news is changing faster than ever before. For centuries people got their news from newspapers, than starting in the 1930s from radio, than in the 1950s from television. These forms of communication dominated for decades. Think about how far we’ve come in just the last two decades from the internet to smart phones. Technology will continue to develop even more quickly. But what we say and how well we say it should always be at the core of our communication.