Part 1
Is there a place for creativity in quotes for the news media?
Yes, when creativity is not about fabrication. Creativity can help with accuracy, brevity and clarity—as well as memorability, likeability and quotability. Creativity goes past what’s obvious and clichéd. It suits the purpose, audience and occasion. It may look or sound casual, but it is not sloppy. If it includes repetition, it is not clumsy and inadvertent.
Imagine if Neil Armstrong’s first words as he stepped onto the lunar surface had been, “We are delighted to
announce this landing today. It positions America as the world’s leading provider of people-in-space solutions.” Such words would have faded out of memory and into space. Thankfully, Armstrong said something insightful, memorable and quotable: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Unfortunately, many quotes are uninformative, predictable and unusable as news copy. Quotes should be one of the most usable parts of any news release. A good quote is brief and significant and sounds right to the ear. Journalists look and listen for them and place them high in their stories.
Tip: after the quote is written, read it aloud, and as detective-fiction writer Elmore Leonard says, “If it sounds like writing, re-write it.” One way to make words sound more like they were spoken is to use a contraction here and there. Too often the use of contractions in business writing is random: one here and one there, and then amazingly, none at all in the quote.
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