Indirection in Newspaper Stories

The New York Times recently ran a short profile of Eleanor Gould Packard, who for over 50 years has been a grammarian and proofreader at The New Yorker.

Her passion as an editor, the article said, was the pursuit of clarity.

New Yorker Senior Editor Deborah Garrison said, "Eleanor’s understanding of grammar goes deeper than stuff like making sure subjects and objects agree. It’s about the architecture of the sentence and the paragraph. And it’s about the architecture of the thought behind the sentence and the paragraph."

One of Packard’s pet issues is "indirection," defined in the article as "the practice of obliquely insinuating new information into a narrative as if the reader already knows it – a technique feature writers often use to jam facts into tight space and achieve a knowing tone."

Newspaper writing is full of "indirection," and may be one of the primary reasons readers struggle with or turn away from newspaper stories. An awareness of the damage indirection can do in a story should be part of every writer’s and editor’s set of language skills.

Some examples of indirection:

"The 36-unit apartment building burned in just two hours."

"Acme Real Estate, the Tristate’s third largest commercial real estate firm, will purchase Allied Real Estate."

"The hard-hitting third baseman, twice voted MVP of the Central Valley League, went hitless in the struggling ninth-place Cardinal’s weekend doubleheader."

To remove the indirection, each sentence could be broken up so the information is delivered in a simple, logical order, much closer to how people speak.

"The apartment building burned in just two hours. It had 36 units."

"Acme Real Estate will purchase Allied Real Estate. Acme is the Tristate’s third largest commercial real estate firm."

"The hard-hitting third baseman went hitless in the Cardinal’s weekend doubleheader. The struggling team is now in ninth place." (The "twice voted MVP of the Central Valley League" is not only indirect but irrelevant in this context.)

Unfortunately, jamming information into tight spaces is what newspaper reporters and editors do. Some do it in an effort to pack more stuff in limited space. Some do it to achieve that knowing tone. In either case, readability suffers and we have given readers one more excuse to stop reading.

Attention to indirection, particularly in the opening paragraphs of a story, can be a very valuable part of the revision and editing process.

The immediate benefit is improved clarity. Ideas are clearly stated. Sentence length tightens. Non-essential information is pruned. Comprehension and reader satisfaction can only go up.

Attention to indirection can also enhance the newspaper’s image with readers. One longtime New Yorker editor described the more direct style of writing as "a deliberate shucking of sophistication," a style in which "the reader would always feel as if someone were holding his hand firmly."

Readers come to newspapers looking for help, for information they can understand and use. Greeting them with a dense, potentially haughty voice drives them away. In a time when respect for the press suffers, when readers are suspicious or outright contemptuous of newspapers’ role in the community, speaking directly, with authority and clarity, is all the more essential.

There are times when indirection may serve a style purpose. But most of the time, in most of our stories, speaking directly is one more key to reaching and holding readers’ attention.