Comments on: Style point: Have you ever met a 'white' person or a 'black' person?

By: Jack Luu

Jack Luu — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 04:56:16 +0000

i don’t think there should be any distinguish between any kind of skin.
you me and the other man, there is no different

By: Mike Cloutier

Mike Cloutier — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:28:11 +0000

I never understood why ethnicity has to do with anything unless it is a story about ethnicity.

By: 198.96.2.93

198.96.2.93 — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:25:35 +0000

I have a question about this: how do you describe someone of mixed races? Or someone who has been living in America so long they are simply “American” (black or white) and have no connection to another country?

By: 79.79.36.49

79.79.36.49 — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 09:55:49 +0000

My personal bete noir;-)

By: Robert Niles

Robert Niles — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:07:37 +0000

Now, you knew that if we ran a story about news style, I would have to submit a comment about search engine optimization, right?

What are black and white? iPhone colors? The nicknames of New Zealand’s national sports teams?

Whenever you write online, the more precise your vocabulary, the better your chance of attracting the traffic (and robot-targetted ads) that you intended. The more consistently you avoid terms also used in other, irrelevant contexts, the more often you can avoid “drive by” traffic that depresses your metrics for time and pages spent on site, as well as ad click-through rates.

Professor Davis is urging you to use the most precise, relevant vocabulary possible in your news writing. While journalism instructors long have preached that sermon, in non-competitive publishing markets of a generation ago, professional reporters easily could fall into bad habits.

The online marketplace won’t tolerate such sloppiness. Sharpen your writing, not only to serve better your audience, but also to help ensure that your potential audience will be able to find your work within the onslaught of information available online.