Words

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April, 1984 by Peter P. Jacobi

Words This is an article about words and the editor--not about language, which of course must haunt the editor every day of his life because it is his life--but about specific words, which should also come to haunt him.

These words have special meaning. They make writing better. They ease the transfer of information. They improve communication, a responsibility of prime importance to the magazine editor.

So, consider ...

anticipation

Radio and television newspeople rarely have the luxury of looking ahead. They offer the news of the moment for immediate consumption. Those who produce documentaries may have a longer-range purpose, but in day-to-day coverage, just getting covered and said what's in the record and in the works and on the docket is all consumers expect and usually get from these media journalists.

Newspaper people also, quite often, lack the cover-the-future opportunity. Space in news pages is saved for the events of today. Writers and editors of features and special sections may employ a mental telescope, but in covering today's events, staffers usually restrict their work to the present.

Magazine editors, however, are required to look ahead--and to pressure their writers to do so, too. Their reader expect more. If there's a future to be tied to the present, then that must be accomplished.

The exigencies of longer-scheduled publishing make anticipation a practical necessity. As editor, one must consider what aspects of a subject will be interesting or pertinent three or six or even 12 months from now. Because the danger of being dated always lurks, the ability to look forward is the successful editor's essential skill.

But more than that, readers expect magazines to be more lasting and more lastingly meaningful. Therefore, as an editor, anticipate the news and anticipate trends and anticipate significance. Work on your powers of anticipation; develop an aptitude for looking ahead, for realizing beforehand what's likely to be, for visualizing a future happening or situation.

Coherence

It has to do with structure, of which we'll write another time.

It means consistency and being connected or held together.

It means continuity--not only of facts, but of ideas and feeling.

The editor must make sure that an article is a systematic presentation of those incidents and/or events and/or ideas that constitute the whole action or subject.

A suitable point of view must shine through and be sustained. Is the writer an observer, a participant, a historian? Well, decide, and stick to it.

What tone or attitude or mood is to be engendered? Decide, and stick to that.

What atmosphere is appropriate? What and where is the setting? If such there is, it must be integrated.

All elements of a story or article should cleave together, agree. If they don't, readers are likely to be confused. And reader confusion is a condition no editor should allow.

Context

Weaving, that word suggests. A dictionary says: "The parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning ... the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs."

To the editor, context means environment. It's useful to build (if ever so briefly) the context or environment or surroundings that permit the reader to see the larger meaning behind the facts or new developments of a subject.

Context prepares a reader and thus provides him with deeper and more immediate understanding.

The editor of Smithsonian offered context in a preamble or prelude to a Walter Lord piece on Dunkirk. Lord's article began:

Every man had a special moment when he first knew that something was wrong. For Winston Churchill it was 7:30 a.m., May 15, 1940. At Admiralty House, the bedside phone rang: French Premier Paul Reynaud. "We have been defeated," Reynaud blurted.

Silence, as Churchill tried to collect himself.

"We are beaten," Reynaud went on. "We have lost the battle."

Effective alone, but in a puzzling way. The editor resolved to solve the puzzle. Here's how:

Like Waterloo and Gettysburg, the French coastal town of Dunkirk has given its name to history. A year and a half before the United States entered World War II, Dunkirk was the scene of a staggering defeat for the British and the French, an overwhelming victory for Hitler's armies. Yet to the Allies Dunkirk came to signify not defeat, but triumph.

In the spring of 1940, the Germans launched lightning attacks into Holland and Belgium and across northern France toward the English Channel, trapping French and Belgian units and nine divisions of the British Expeditionary Force that had been sent to help in the defense of France. As the Germans tightened their cordon, the British ran a gauntlet of artillery and screaming dive-bombers to the beaches of Dunkirk. There, along with large numbers of French soldiers, they were rescued, against all odds, by the Allied Navies and thousands of civilian sailors who came to get them in warships, lighters, scows, yachts--anything that could get across the Channel. The stubborn determination of the troops and the courage of the seamen filled the Allies with pride, and gave them confidence in the final outcome of the war.