"Now, [was] 'So, about this message...'"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Oct 26, 2006, at 5:13 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 10/26/2006 05:52 PM, arnold wrote:
>> my "conversational" writing style (as on the Language Log) includes
>> sentence-initial "now", and "well" as well.  i've been writing like
>> this for many decades.
>
> Shame on you, Arnold! :-)  I bet you didn't have a mother who was a
> high school English teacher.

sure enough.

> Shouldn't one expect news reporters to be more formal?  And they're
> wasting air time.

broadcast journalists are doing more than just handing on facts to
their listeners/viewers.  they are also trying to be engaging, to
hold their audience's attention.  and they're selling themselves as
personalities and their stations and networks as places to be.
formality can work against these goals.  in any case, there's more
than one effective style of presentation, but everyone will do some
stuff that isn't just-the-facts-ma'am.

arnold

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