Newspaper reporting has a style and a language of its own. Since newspapers usually report the news in brief, a journalist has to convey the most essential parts of the news in the most economical way possible, while attracting and keeping the reader’s attention. Let’s have a look at some of the features of this style of writing.



First, headlines in English language newspapers are usually short and they thus tend to leave out all the inessential words, such as articles and auxiliary verbs, and to be as generally economical as they can. Because of that, headlines use short words wherever possible, in preference to long ones. Certain words are very common in headlines, such as: deal, cost, ban, hit, get, clash. Then they usually use a compound-noun phrase instead of a longer clause: for example, “Japan Leadership Struggle” for “The Leadership Struggle in Japan”, “Bridge Cost” for “The Cost of the Bridge” and “Bank Girl Killer Clues” for “Clues to the Killer of the Girl who Worked in a Bank”.
Second, newspaper headlines generally use the simple tenses of verbs, and the present simple tense is very frequent: “Japan Leadership Struggle Hots up”, “Bridge Cost Soars”, “Miners Ban Overtime”, “Police Get Bank Girl Killer Clues” and “Action Man Sinatra Dies”. The infinitive form is often used to express the future: “Agricultural Policy to be Discussed”, “Two Presidents to Meet in September” and the passive form is employed where the action is more important than the agent is: “25 Charged after Clash”.