In print for twenty years, Watch Your Words is a brief and accessible handbook for mastering best practices of journalistic writing. This new, fifth edition includes tips from experts with experience across the journalistic spectrum on best practices that predate the digital age while resonating within it.
The fifth edition also includes new content on implicit bias and inclusive storytelling—prevalent themes in digital age journalism that reflect how journalists are increasingly aware of, and acting on, social impacts of framing and language that they use in their stories.
Watch Your Words continues to be distinguished from other journalism reference works by its brevity. It provides accessible baseline instruction in its core content of punctuation, grammar, usage and updated entries on Associated Press style through clear-cut examples, self-quizzes, and answer keys. It also presents sections on accuracy and fact-checking, brevity, clarity, and use of direct quotations, with exercises, as well as an editing guide. Where digital grammar-fix and spell-check programs are useful, Watch Your Words provides a succinct yet deeper dive to help journalists and other media professionals master basic yet essential wordsmithing tools of their trades.
Marda Dunsky, a print journalist and journalism scholar, is an assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. Dunsky has 15 years of service at Northwestern University in Evanston. As a member of the Medill School of Journalism faculty, she has taught print editing, basic reporting, global journalism, and a seminar of her design, "Reporting the Arab and Muslim Worlds." She has also served as an adviser to international students in the Medill MSJ program. She has held editing and reporting positions at newspapers including source and copy editor on the national-foreign news desk of the Chicago Tribune and Arab affairs reporter at The Jerusalem Post.
Introduction: On Disruption and Continuity
Best Practices for Journalistic Writing
Implicit Bias and Inclusive Storytelling
Punctuation
-Rules and Guidelines
-Conjunction Junction: Comma Rules for and, but and or
-Nonessential vs. Essential: That vs. Which
-Punctuation Self-Test
Grammar
-Basic Terms and Concepts
-Grammar Terms and Concepts Exercise
-Mapping Who vs. Whom
-Making the Right Choice
-Practice Sentences: Who vs. Whom
-Other Rules and Guidelines
-Grammar Self-Tests
Usage
-Rules and Guidelines
-Usage Self-Test
RECAP: Comprehensive Self-Test
AP Style
-Evolutionary Updates and Evergreen Mainstays
-AP Style Study Guides & Self-Tests
Supplementary Self-Tests
-Punctuation/AP Style Test
-Grammar/AP Style Test
-Usage/AP Style Test
-Final Language-Skills Test
-Quality-Control Guide to Writing and Editing
-Accuracy and Fact-Checking
-Fact-Checking Exercise
-Brevity and Tightening
-Tightening Exercise
-Clarity
-Clarity Exercise
-Quotations and Attribution
-Quotations and Attribution Exercise
-Basic Editing Principles
Spelling
-Homonyms and Sound-Alikes Exercise
-Spelltraps
Copy-Editing Symbols
-Copy-Editing Symbols Self-Test
-Basic Symbolism
Answer Keys
-Punctuation Self-Test
-Grammar Terms and Concepts Exercise
-Grammar Self-Test I
-Grammar Self-Test II
-Usage Self-Test
-RECAP: Comprehensive Self-Test
-AP Style Self-Test I
-AP Style Self-Test II
-AP Style Self-Test III
-Punctuation/AP Style Test
-Grammar/AP Style Test
-Usage/AP Style Test
-Final Language-Skills Test
-Fact-Checking Exercise
-Tightening Exercise
-Clarity Exercise
-Quotations and Attribution Exercise
-Homonyms and Sound-Alikes Exercise
-Copy-Editing Symbols Self-Test
The fifth edition’s new section on Implicit Bias and Inclusive Storytelling is brilliant and encourages editors and writers to face their personal biases at every level of writing. Explaining recent AP Style changes on gender-neutral pronouns adds clarity for editors and writers. — Nahed Eltantawy, professor and associate dean, High Point University
The fifth edition of Watch Your Words clearly articulates the best practices for inclusive storytelling across print, digital and broadcast platforms in this ever-evolving media environment. Over the course of 15 years, I can attest that this handbook has measurably and significantly improved my students’ writing and editing skills. — Michael A. Deas, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University
While the formats for delivering news are rapidly changing, the new edition of Watch Your Words helps journalists develop the core skills that matter most, regardless of platform: accuracy, clarity and technical precision. The self-tests provide useful feedback, and a new section on bias and inclusivity reflects vital industry conversations. — Amy Merrick, senior professional lecturer, journalism, DePaul University
