Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A lead paragraph (sometimes shortened to lead; in the United States sometimes spelled lede) is the opening paragraph of an article, book chapter, or other written work that summarizes its main ideas. [1] Styles vary widely among the different types and genres of publications, from journalistic news-style leads to a more encyclopaedic variety.
News style, journalistic style, or news-writing style is the prose style used for news reporting in media, such as newspapers, radio, and television. News writing attempts to answer all the basic questions about any particular event—who, what, when, where, and why (the Five Ws ) and often how—at the opening of the article .
The old-fashioned lead of the five Ws and the H, crystallized largely by Pulitzer's "new journalism" and sanctified by the schools, is widely giving way to the much more supple and interesting feature lead, even on straight news stories.
An article's content should begin with an introductory lead section – a concise summary of the article – which is never divided into sections (see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section). The remainder of the article is typically divided into sections. Infoboxes, images, and related content in the lead section must be right-aligned.
Other styles are also used in news writing, including the "anecdotal lead", which begins the story with an eye-catching tale or anecdote rather than the central facts; and the Q&A, or question-and-answer format. The inverted pyramid may also include a "hook" as a kind of prologue, typically a provocative quote, question, or image, to entice the ...
Articles start with a lead section (WP:CREATELEAD) summarising the most important points of the topic.The lead section is the first part of the article; it comes above the first header, and may contain a lead image which is representative of the topic, and/or an infobox that provides a few key facts, often statistical, such as dates and measurements.
The lead's job is not to sum up the topic, as understood elsewhere, but to sum up the article, regardless of how incomplete the article might be. If the lead does not sum up the topic, then the article should be improved first so it does sum up the topic. Then the lead can be tweaked so it finally does sum up the topic.
Single-sentence paragraphs can inhibit the flow of the text; by the same token, long paragraphs become hard to read. Between paragraphs—as between sections—there should be only a single blank line. First lines are not indented. Bullet points should not be used in the lead of an article. They may be used in the body to break up a mass of ...