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In case you weren't aware, this is referred to as the inverted pyramid (and of course I totally agree -- this is how you start an article): http://en.wikipedia

by jmduke 12y ago

In case you weren't aware, this is referred to as the inverted pyramid (and of course I totally agree -- this is how you start an article): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid

jn 12y ago
Absolutely agree. I cringe every time I see a long blog post with a self-effacing "tl;dr" block, especially when it's placed at the end of the article. Just follow this "journalistic" style instead and you'll be doing the reader a big favour.
- hawleyal 12y ago
  tl;dr is the headline/title.
Brakenshire 12y ago
It's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used. I should say, though, that it does mean that the content of that summary, and of the headline, becomes extremely important. For instance, you could nominally cover a news story, but write a boring headline and summary, and very few people will trudge through that to find the really important details later on. You do sometimes find that occurring on the BBC site, especially when it's a story which might raise a lot of controversy within government.
- Mahn 12y ago
  > teletext is increasingly un-used. Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.
  - iuguy 12y ago
    Teletext was pretty big in the 90s before broadband took off. It was easily accessible to a lot of people, including older viewers. Television was the primary source of media for a lot of people (followed by radio and newspaper), and Teletext was pretty much the only way to get near real-time updates of what was happening at any point in time.
  - gvr 12y ago
    I used it pretty much daily in Sweden back in the 80s and 90s to check news, broadcasting schedule, weather, etc. There were a few hundred "pages" and each page had a 3 digit number that you'd punch in to retrieve it.

by jmduke 12y ago

jn 12y ago

Absolutely agree. I cringe every time I see a long blog post with a self-effacing "tl;dr" block, especially when it's placed at the end of the article. Just follow this "journalistic" style instead and you'll be doing the reader a big favour.

hawleyal 12y ago
tl;dr is the headline/title.

Brakenshire 12y ago

It's probably one of the reasons why the BBC News website is popular. All articles were originally written so that the first three or four paragraphs could be cut off, and presented as full articles on teletext (a tv text service), so the whole story had to be summarized within that space. They still write their articles in that way, even though teletext is increasingly un-used. I should say, though, that it does mean that the content of that summary, and of the headline, becomes extremely important. For instance, you could nominally cover a news story, but write a boring headline and summary, and very few people will trudge through that to find the really important details later on. You do sometimes find that occurring on the BBC site, especially when it's a story which might raise a lot of controversy within government.

Mahn 12y ago
> teletext is increasingly un-used. Was there a time when teletext was actually used? Honest question, I was under the impression that it just never managed to catch on.
- iuguy 12y ago
  Teletext was pretty big in the 90s before broadband took off. It was easily accessible to a lot of people, including older viewers. Television was the primary source of media for a lot of people (followed by radio and newspaper), and Teletext was pretty much the only way to get near real-time updates of what was happening at any point in time.
- gvr 12y ago
  I used it pretty much daily in Sweden back in the 80s and 90s to check news, broadcasting schedule, weather, etc. There were a few hundred "pages" and each page had a 3 digit number that you'd punch in to retrieve it.