Read all About It - The Length of Words in Newspapers and Magazines

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Read all About It - The Length of Words in Newspapers and Magazines

Introduction

In general terms, newspapers and magazines fall into two main broad categories, Quality and popular publications.

It creates two kinds of influence: societal influence, which is not for sale, and commercial influence, which is for sale.

Magazines and the national press are separated into three markets; quality press, popular press and mid-market newspapers. The consumption of each market is in relation to Social Grade, which is a classification system that separates people according to their career and income; A (upper professional); B (lower professional); C1 (routine clerical); C2 (skilled manual); D (unskilled manual); E (economically inactive). Using this system the broadsheet titles (or quality press) have most of their readers in the A and B categories with hardly any of the others consuming their newspapers. C1, C2, D and E are more consumers of popular press, proving that readership of quality press belongs to upper and middle classes whereas the working class prefer popular press.

The consequence of this social division is that both Newspapers and Magazines categories operate very differently in order to maximise profit. The popular press are very much sales orientated and are not interested in who buys their newspapers. As a result, the structure, style, language and wordings are at the simplest format as possible to maximise consumption. The quality press and magazines, however, relies heavily on advertising as its main income and must target itself at the upper and middle classes in order to keep advertisers or potential advertisers interested, with the structure, style, language and wordings with technical terms, all of higher intelligence format which can be understood by their target audience.

Having these conflicts of interest between the two markets means that the content and length of words of the newspapers and magazines in these two categories are very different.

There are many different newspapers; they range from tabloid papers to the broadsheet papers. The tabloids are a lighter read to the more involving descriptive broadsheet papers. Different newspapers are written to suit these preferences.

As the popular press relies on sales, it must target itself at the largest group, ensuring that the content interests the masses. The wording used is less profound and therefore more easily understood and more "easier" read than a broadsheet paper.

The quality press, on the other hand, features politics and economics and is targeted at the upper and middle classes, more of a minority, but with more money to spend. Quality press, as a result, does not have to take such an interest in circulation and sales.
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Aim:

In this investigation I aim to investigate the length of words in newspapers and magazines - using the same story line that has been reported.

Objectives

.To collect data on the number of letters per word in four publications.

2.To present data in a meaningful way

3.To interpret and analyse results and diagrams

4.To draw conclusions on analysis, state whether the prediction is correct.

Method

To do it I have decided that the best way would be to get an identical story line that has been reported in the ...

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