Here are two of the latest. I hope to get a regular feed of these. I am sure they will be improving reading for us all.

From yesterday:

The start of the year is as good a time as any to focus on excellence in presentation.
To that end, another couple of style problems have raised their ugly heads.

Both, coincidentally, were evident on AM this morning, although radio current affairs is hardly their preserve.

One concerns the use of first names alone, after the initial use of full names. This familiarity has the effect of aligning the ABC with the subject matter and the talent. Almost inevitably, it happens when the people involved are in unfortunate situations and/or can be perceived as victims of something (in this case it was drought). There is an immediate audience perception that we are somehow more onside with the people involved than we might be with other story subjects.

It can also sound patronising, as well as empathetic.

Our stories will be stronger and better if we treat them all in an even-handed fashion (and, in any case, it’s not optional).

The second point might seem a lesser one, but it is annoyingly persistent.

It concerns the use of the word “the” in front of a title, in any example where it sounds unnatural not to do so. Today’s example was as simple as: “Minister for Superannuation, Nick Sherry, …”. In normal conversation, you would put “the” at the head of that sentence. There are worse examples, where a person’s title is longer than the one above. But if you always use “the”, there won’t be a problem.

As always, the bottom line is to write for ear – as naturally and conversationally as possible. The missing “the” syndrome has an unfortunate grip on many journos. Let’s kill it off.

And this from 2 January.

A couple more points on irritating but persistent style transgressions.
Please never say police or others are “trying to determine the cause of…”, or anything similar.

It is a line of officialise and jargon which isn’t heard in normal conversation, but somehow makes its way into our scripting on a daily basis – either from press releases or mindlessly repeated from the words of authorities (we can’t de-program the way many authorities speak, but we certainly shouldn’t be parroting them).

Simple language would have us saying “police don’t yet know what caused the accident/fire etc….”, or some such.

Another awkward usage relates to words like “the pair”, “the couple”
etc. In last night’s 7pm TV News, for example, we said: “The pair was praised by police for their survival skills…”. Apart from mixing up the singular and plural in the same breath, there’s no need to try to be grammatically correct if the usage doesn’t really sound right. The pair “was” is an odd usage, but is easily fixed by saying “the two were…”, or something else which is not only still correct, but sounds ok.

We had another example yesterday of someone being in a critical condition after suffering “serious” head injuries. As opposed to being critical with minor injuries? Can we stop doing this. The same story had the person “currently” being treated in hospital. For some reason, currently is a word that some journos seem to think is mandatory, when it is almost always unnecessary (you wouldn’t hear it in that context in normal conversation).

Similarly, many are still using the usually-extraneous phrase “…in the incident”.  Again, usually an unnatural and unnecessary appendage, tagged on to sentences for no good reason.

Other convoluted sentences have also been making a return. Consider this from last night’s 7pm TV News: “Called Freeview, 2009 will see the introduction (etc)…”. So the ABC has apparently decided to name 2009 “Freeview”. We simply wouldn’t talk like this, so why write this way?

There have even been some recent examples of that banned buzz-phrase “anytime soon”. Let’s drop it. It has shades of that much older cop-out phrase “only time will tell” – which we also trotted out again recently.

We should be the unassailable leaders in quality, conversational broadcast English.
Can we all try a little harder this year, please.