Wednesday, September 17, 2014

First Ledes: Flip The Lede


In most instances, we want to emphasize not that someone told us something, but what the person said. That is, we want to put substance ahead of attribution.

In this lede, we put attribution first, then the news:

A recent University of Florida study has shown that one-third of women who entered graduate school after marriage faced more marital disruption such as divorce or separation. 
   
And that's okay. But I would argue that it would be better to flip the order of news aqnd attribution, so that the news comes first and the attribution last, like this:

One-third of women who entered graduate school after marriage faced more marital disruption such as divorce or separation, a recent University of Florida study has shown.

Please note the only difference is that I flipped the sequence of news and attribution, and eliminated an extraneous "that." Outside of that, it's exactly what you wrote, but with the news being the first thing the reader gets to.

No comments:

Post a Comment