The date of the story was August 18th 2004 in both the Guardian and The Sun.
The Sun uses a variation of presentational features, the headline is in white text with a black background, this makes it stand out, to add to this there is use of capital letters and emboldening in the title. Both of these draw our attention to the headline. The headline is “Heroes of the flood” underneath the words “the flood” there is a picture of the flood, this could be juxtaposition. The juxtaposition links the word flood with the image. The sub-heading, just below the headline, is a complete contrast to the headline as the sub-heading is black. At the bottom of the page there are photos of heroes and survivors this adds to the sense of sadness, also the headline and pictures have a torn frame to give a sense of a community split or broken. There is also a small map with a near town and a river; it is a very basic map to show the readers the relationship between Boscastle and water. There are also 2 pictures of Boscastle, a before and after. This could be similar to the headline and sub-heading with a complete contrast or change.
The Guardian has basic presentational features with a heading in bold print, the heading says “In 2 hours a seaside village was reduced to ruins” next to it there is a large picture of Boscastle ‘in ruins’ this could have been juxtaposition. Apart from these two factors there are no more presentational features.
The first paragraph of the Sun article is very big and maybe slightly exaggerated; they use language to make it sound like a miracle e.g. “a host of awe-inspiring acts of heroism prevented the Boscastle flood drama becoming a major disaster”. This is use of emotive language.
The sun focuses of the people involved in the story (heroes and survivors) rather than focusing on public opinion and facts.
Rather than connecting the paragraphs the writers have made unrelated comments in the paragraph e.g. “Including a baby who was pulled up in a rucksack. (Change of paragraph) Barman Ross Yates” This has no relevance to the previous paragraph and uses no connecting words such as furthermore.
In the Guardian the first paragraph is like the beginning of a novel “Two hours was all it took”
In the Guardian the main story is about how and what happened and it uses formal language “The ancient harbour was repaired by inhabitants after storms in 1984” whilst the Sun uses more colloquial language “A holiday maker who saved two dogs by holding one above the water in a flooded flat for 2½ hours.”
Unlike the Sun the Guardian has a definite structure where the linking of each paragraph is obviously meant to be like that whilst the Sun seems as if the information is randomly placed.
I liked the Sun more visually as it has better presentation techniques although I preferred the content in the Guardian as it was a lot more formal which I thought suited the story more.
