Comparing writing styles

[lluisteixido]

I chose two articles talking about a possible future spreading of the swine flu. One from the New york Times and the other from The Times.

NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/world ... =1&_r=1&hp

The Times article: (post in the next message of the chain because, apparently, ther is just one -censured- allowed by message)



What are the differences in style between the two articles?

First of all there is the length of both articles. NY Times article is with no doubt longer, and you might think the author digresses too much. But it is quite the contrary, actually. The article jumps from one fact to another with short and concise sentences. They even form part of just one paragraph as you can see with:

(“The eating of pork is absolutely not a problem,” Dr. Butler-Jones said.)

When they use this techniche my guess is they are continuing the arguments of the preceding paragraphs but trying to make something of a closure by introducing a slighty change of the argumentation. In the example, the article was talking about a herd of pigs infected by the flu in Canada and this might suggest some dangers in eating pork. The sentence tries to clear up any doubt about it and introduces the following paragraph where they try to explain the steps followed by some governments to avoid any worries at all.

The sentence is an example of another difference. Whilst in The NY Times you can read lots of statements of people interviewed or quoted, in The Times there is an effort of the writer(s) to accomplish the same with their own words. For example, The Times use the sentence

(There is concern that the virus may become resistant to drugs. )

And Ny Times puts an example of this quoting an infectious disease expert

(“What could indeed happen is that this virus could dampen here during the summer per usual, and go to the Southern Hemisphere and pick up steam there and come back to bite us in our winter season next January and February, and it might come back in a more virulent form,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a public health and infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University.)

There is differents analysis of the situation, too. We have seen that NY times talks about a possible mutation of the virus in the Souther Hemisphere. The Times also talks of a fact that we can't find in NY Times article: the comparison of the virus with the one of 1918, that caused millions of deaths:

(Scientists are encouraged by initial analyses of the DNA sequence of the virus, which has found it lacks the traits that led to the death of nearly 50m people in the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak.)

Another difference is that The Times puts faces on some numbers, talking about concrete cases in the UK, and humanizing the virus. Example:

(A six-year-old Oxfordshire girl who had holidayed in Mexico became the youngest victim, while the second victim was the husband of a woman who contracted the virus after the couple returned from Mexico. )

In general I found The Times article with less information in it, and more summarized.


Which article did you find easier to read? Why?

NY Times one. Although it is longest, there is more fluency for me linking one fact to another. There is, too, different ways to explain one just fact. For example, talinkg about Phase 6 of W.H.O, they explain with more accuracy the term than The Times, first telling when it's possible to move to that phase (“We have to expect that Phase 6 will be reached. We have to hope that it is not.”), then what does that phase mean (Phase 6, the highest level in the organization’s alert system, is a pandemic.), what does a Pandemic implies (There can be a pandemic of a mild disease), and finally what does it take to get to that Phase (To move up to Phase 6, community spread would have to occur in at least one other country in another region.)


What sort of person do you think reads the printed edition of each newspaper?

I don't think I'm able to get that information just by reading these two articles. Both are quite politically neutral in an information that could have been used as a critic to both governments. Maybe, if these articles are the standard for the newspaper, Ny Times sort of person is more a kind of person who wants to extract as much information as possible, and The Times kind of person is the one who wants a "quick" summary with the most crucial information in it.

I also chose these two newspapers actually, because they are both examples of two types of "spoken" english in two different countries, and I was hoping to notice these differences. But I have to say that I'm not be able to see that difference yet.

[lluisteixido]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_a ... 211547.ece