Notice how it underlines my point, lends credibility to what I’m writing and gives you a welcome change of pace from my words – the perfect modern quote). Like their TV counterparts, sound bite-style quotes are brief: “One sentence is preferable,” according to John Campbell, “two is often okay, but three is usually one too many.” Their use quickly spread to radio which began using “actuality” snippets of speech and background sound to punctuate reporters’ accounts.įinally the sound bite spread to newspapers and magazines, replacing lengthy slabs of direct speech: the modern quote. Television directors responded with the sound bite, a snippet of video used to punctuate, emphasise or add credibility to a voice-over report. TV needs sights to see, sounds to hear, and things to happen. TV directors quickly found that voiceover reporting quickly becomes boring. But employing quotes like that, in the words of John Campbell, is “not using them well.” The modern quote is a different thing altogether. Reporters were – sometimes still are – taught to write like that: Using direct speech simply to give variety to reported speech. The quote is not used for any other purpose than to give an illusion of variety – to break long paragraphs of reported speech. In the second paragraph the writer has simply reproduced a slab of Smith’s speech using his exact words. “Despite the downturn, many Australian businesses cannot find the staff they need to compete against companies overseas that have lower labour costs and a better trained pool of talent to draw from,” he told senators. Like this: John Smith told the Senate it was high time the federal government spent more on education and training so that Australia could be more productive and competitive. Until television came along, quotes were mostly just that… slabs of direct speech used by reporters to lend variety to their reported speech. You were just drawn in by one from John Campbell. “Not all use them well.”Īs we battle the Internet, television and new media for the reader’s attention we don’t have many weapons in our armoury. “All journalists worthy of the name use quotes,” according to John Campbell, former editorial director of the giant Hearst magazine group in the US. The secret is to know how to use it well. One of the best weapons in a writer’s armoury is the quote.
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