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The Economist has a particular and well-known style guide that all writing for the publication must follow, be it for the online version (like this piece) or ot
by JimmyL 16y ago
The Economist has a particular and well-known style guide that all writing for the publication must follow, be it for the online version (like this piece) or otherwise - and as others have pointed out, one of their styles is using the third person and "this/your correspondent" as opposed to the first person. Similarly, they don't put author by-lines on their magazine pieces (and only initials on their online ones), although die-hard Economist fans can often recognize individual authors by their phrasing and subject matter.
If you're interested in more of their particular quirks of style - or want to see how well-specified the writing style is for a major magazine - most of their guide is available online at http://www.economist.com/research/styleguide/ http://www.economist.com/research/styleguide/.
- futuremint 16y agoWow, I was being a bit toungue-in-cheek about it as I don't read much Economist (when I do the author is rarely stating their opinion, I tend to prefer more factual/reporting pieces from them), but thats interesting. Learn something new every day it seems! I also have found some success in trying to avoid pronouns when writing. It can lead to weird phrasings where one's opinion is stated as a fact but a majority don't seem to care much about that (pedants are in a minority). See!
- nollidge 16y agoThey also have a language blog [1] which often expounds on some of the details and consequences of their and others' style guides. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson
- futuremint 16y agoThanks for pointing that out. I think that blog will get added to my regular reading, I like to geek out on language (programming languages mostly, but English too).