Journalese

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title: "Journalese" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["newswriting", "jargon", "copy-editing"] description: "Linguistic register used in news media" topic_path: "general/newswriting" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalese" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Linguistic register used in news media ::

Journalese is the artificial or hyperbolic, and sometimes over-abbreviated, language regarded as characteristic of the news style used in popular media. Joe Grimm, formerly of the Detroit Free Press, likened journalese to a "stage voice": "We write journalese out of habit, sometimes from misguided training, and to sound urgent, authoritative and, well, journalistic. But it doesn't do any of that."

Examples

As early as the 1880s, people criticized the stilted, cliched language used in journalism as journalese. Journalists, who write many similar stories under time pressure, may fall back on cliched or familiar phrases. Journalese often takes the form of specific turns of phrase, such as "hammered out agreement" or "called for tighter restrictions". Terms with legal meanings, such as "mayhem", may be overused to the point that they become meaningless. Journalese can also take the form of specific word choice. This is most obvious with the use of rare or archaic words such as ink (as a verb), nab, slated, ailing, quizzed (in place of "asked" or "questioned"), funnyman, or synonyms of attack to mean criticise. In some cases, this is due to fossil words that are present in idiomatic journalese statements. Journalese can be a result of a desire to save on page space by using shorter words or phrases.

Brevity is particularly important in headlines, which have their own idiosyncratic style of writing called headlinese. Headlinese's focus on using the smallest possible words has influenced the vocabulary choice of news stories themselves. Anthropomorphization is another form of journalese, such as with the use of the verb saw (past tense of see) in the phrase "The 1990s saw an increase in crime", which is used to avoid using the past tense of "increase", as in "Crime increased in the 1990s". Other forms include use of onomatopoeia, genitives of place names ("New York's Central Park" rather than "Central Park, in New York"), and gap filler articles like bus plunge stories.

Some people regard journalese with amusement, due to its frequent colourful use of language, and some terms can make news reports easier to understand, such as replacing complex jargon with simple and concise phrases. However, political correspondent Robert Hutton says that "lazy writing goes with lazy thought", Newspaper subeditors (copy editors) are often trained to remove journalese, and The New York Times has a customised grammar checker that flags egregious journalese examples.

References

References

1. Grimm, Joe. "There is no ease in journalese". Detroit Free Press.
2. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. (2009). "An Introduction to Late Modern English". [[Edinburgh University Press]].
3. (2004). "The Editorial Eye". [[Bedford/St. Martin's]].
4. (March 17, 2015). "Fluent in Journalese".
5. Astle, David. (December 29, 2014). "Wordplay: Columnist probes journalistic cliches". [[The Sydney Morning Herald]].
6. (November 4, 2013). "Mother Tongue".
7. Bodle, Andy. (December 4, 2014). "Sub ire as hacks slash word length: getting the skinny on thinnernyms". [[The Guardian]].
8. (September 26, 2013). "Journalese is like a poker player's tell: it shows when a story is flimsy".
9. (November 4, 2013). "Mother Tongue".
10. and it is often a mark of a weak story with poor evidence or an attempt to dress up something as more significant or interesting: "Journalese is like a poker player's tell: it shows that the reporter knows the story is flimsy, and he or she is trying to make it appear more solid." Other critics fault the use of the [[passive voice]] and similar constructions in journalese as a form of [[weasel word. weasel wording]] where the writer chooses "to hide the culprit" of the action that the writer is describing.[https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/05/26/the-weasel-voice-in-journalism "The weasel voice in journalism"]. ''[[The Economist]]. '' May 26, 2018.

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