Television: Basic principles and techniques of TV writing; elements of TV scripting, language

and grammar; TV script formats; Writing a script for entertainment programme and news.

Television News Writing

Writing depends on two major things: first, type of medium and second, nature of the content. Here,
our medium is television and content is news. Television is an audio-visual medium which requires a
certain type of writing suitable to the nature of this medium.

Basic Principles

 KISS - keep it short and simple

 Try to avoid quotes in television scripts
 Avoid unfamiliar words
 Repeat important words
 Keep punctuation simple
 Simplify numbers
 Avoid abbreviations
 Show how to pronounce difficult words
 Simplify the script
 USE SIMPLE SUBJECT−verb−object sentence structures.:
 The writer of TV news must be able to make complicated stories
simple. In short, understanding must be immediate in the TV News
Bulletin. The golden rule to follow is "never underestimate the
viewers' intelligence or over-estimate their knowledge".Stick to short
sentences of 20 words or less. The announcer has to breathe. Long
sentences make it difficult for the person voicing the script to take a
breath.
 CLARITY: The first rule of TV news is that the story must be clear at
once. Unlike the reader, the viewer has no second chance to go over
the material. TV news is written on the wind.
 BREVITY: Clarity comes not only from writing simple sentences but
also from writing short ones. Long sentences cannot be read easily
by the newscaster, and a viewer has a hard time following them.
Every sentence that you write for broadcast should be short, simple
and easy to understand. The average acceptable number of words
per sentence in a TV copy is 13 to 14. TV news has been described
as a headlines service. It is intended to give the viewer only an
outline of the event. A good newspaper story ranges from hundreds
to thousands of words. The same story on television or radio may
have to fit into 30 seconds—perhaps no more than 100 words. If it is
an important story, it may be 90 seconds or two minutes. You have to
 condense a lot of information into the most important points for
broadcast writing.
 USE CORRECT GRAMMAR. A broadcast news script with
grammatical errors will embarrass the person reading it aloud if the
person stumbles OVER MISTAKES-
 PUT THE IMPORTANT INFORMATION FIRST.  Writing a broadcast
news story is similar to writing a news story for print in that you have
to include the important information first. The only difference is that
you have to condense the information presented.
 Write good leads. Begin the story with clear, precise information.
Because broadcast stories have to fit into 30, 60, or 90 seconds,
broadcast stories are sometimes little more than the equivalent of
newspaper headlines and the lead paragraph.

 WRITE THE WAY PEOPLE TALK. Sentence fragments—as long as

they make sense—are acceptable.

 USE CONTRACTIONS.  Use dont  instead of do not. But be careful

of contractions ending in -ve (e.g., would’ve, could’ve), because they
sound like “would of” and “could of.”

 USE PRESENT TENSE VERBS, except when past-tense verbs are

necessary. Present tense expresses the sense of immediacy .  The
present tense is the most engaging tense in the language. It indicates
that the action is still going on.  Use past tense when something
happened long ago. 

Writing for TV news is different from literary writing. In the case of literature, the writer has the liberty
to use words to beautify the subject and concept, but in news you should make your selection of words
as simple as possible. In the case of literature, the writer has the liberty to express his/her feelings and
narrate the story accordingly, but in journalistic writing one has to be objective. It is believed that the
target audience of TV news is the general people so a news writer, especially TV news writer, must not
use the complex and difficult words. If you see the nature of television as a medium, it is dynamic. The
story is flowing continuously. Unlike print, for a TV news viewer, it is quite difficult to stop or go back to
the previous content to understand that. The process of understanding should match the speed of
content flow. So, simple language is must. A simple principle is that no one should be in the need of a
dictionary while consuming the TV news. Always remember the golden rule of news writing i.e. K.I.S.S. -
Keep It Short and Simple. And you can keep your news writing short and simple by using the words used
in daily conversation amongst us. Always remember that the primary objective of news writing is to
communicate the desired information in simple words so that it can be understood easily. At the same
time, it should also be remembered that the news piece should answer the 5W & 1H (Who? What?
When? Where? Why? and How?) in the order of their importance. It is not necessary to explain all the
aspects of the news equally, but it is a normal practice to emphasise the ‘What’ aspect first and
foremost. After that, according to the nature of the information, you can decide which other aspects
(Who or Where or How, etc.) are needed to be explained.