Quotes
Unless the article you are writing is 150 words or less, almost all your articles will include quotes.
As well as letting the reader know what the main players think about something, including quotes also breaks up the article and makes it easier to read.
Opinion, Not Fact
With a quote, the whole reason for its existence is to give someone's opinion about something and it is important to remember this.
Make sure anything in quote marks is opinion about already-established facts. This sounds obvious but in too many articles you find quotes that introduce new facts.
For example, imagine a council chief executive tells you: "Local recycling rates are up 10 per cent since last year and this shows our campaign to spread the message about the importance of recycling has made a real difference."
In this case, you would not include the whole statement as a quote. You would include the information that recycling rates had gone up 10 per cent outside of the quote, because this is fact rather than comment.
Then you would go on to quote the chief executive as saying: "This shows our campaign to spead the message about the importance of recycling has made a real difference."
An example of how not to do it is this press release from the Department for International Development. Gareth Thomas' quote introduces the facts that
- There are 250,000 people in the Caribbean who are HIV-positive
- There were 19,000 related deaths and 27,000 new infections in 2006
- The Caribbean faces the second largest problem from AIDS in the world
- AIDS is the leading cause of deaths in adults under 44
All this should have been mentioned outside the quote. The role of the quote should have been to comment on these facts, rather than to introduce them.
The exception to this is that you should include facts in quotes when the facts have not been substantiated. An example of this is when you get information about a fire or a crime from an eyewitness and you do not know how reliable the person is.
Putting Words in People's Mouths
Make sure that when you quote people, it reflects what they have told you and that it sounds like them. But this does not mean you have to quote them word for word.
You may find you only have space for, say, 50 words of quotes from a person, but it may have taken them much longer than this to get their point across. In this case, quoting them verbatim is not an option. Instead, you should summarise what they have been saying and read it back to them, asking them if they agree this sums up their point.
Also, feel free to tidy up quotes. When you read transcripts of people speaking in conversation, you can see that often people do not talk in proper sentences and include words that do not add meaning such as "you know" and "the thing is".
Doing these two things will make the article easier for the reader to understand and the person you have been interviewing seem more articulate.
Keeping The Person's Personality
While you often need to tidy up people's quotes, there is a balance to be struck because it is still important the quote gets across a sense of the person.
As well as giving the reader an idea of what the person is like, most of the news story will be in the same factual and concise language and including linguistic flourishes in the quotes can be a welcome change of pace.
This means that if someone is upper class and uses the word "one" to describe people in general or if they use slang, then you should include it.
Quotes in Press Releases
Too often, you will be sent a press release or a statement that includes quotes that sound more like a corporate document than something someone would say.
These statements can be full of jargon or can include terms like "in partnership with" and "collaborative approach". If a press office sends bad quotes, do not accept it. You should tell the press officer you are not going to use the quote because it does not sound like a person talking and ask to speak to the person quoted yourself.
If you take the lazy option then it will just make you look bad. Besides, giving a press officer this kind of feedback will help them produce better quotes in the future and therefore help them get more coverage in the long run.
The only exception to this is if you are writing a critical article and are giving an organisation a right of reply. In this case, if they want to put out a statement filled with jargon then it is up to them.