English Language Article Comparison Essay

In this piece of work I will be comparing two articles from newspapers. Both the articles are about the same story and were printed on the same day (Tuesday October 13th 1998), however they are from two different newspapers. One of them is from The Sun and the other from The Telegraph, the main difference between these two papers is that The Sun is a tabloid and The Telegraph is a broadsheet. Throughout this piece of work I will try to examine the difference in their attitudes towards writing news due to this variation in category of newspaper. The article concerns dogs that were at a police dog training unit, the instructor allegedly forced a handler to kick and hang the dogs, one of the dogs involved died. The first and most distinctive thing you realise about these two stories is the difference in headlines. Firstly in The Telegraph the height of the letters involved is only approximately 1cm where as in The Sun it is 2. 6cm. This clearly shows that The Sun wants to make a larger impact and draw your attention to that particular story. Other points about the headlines that back this up are the style of writing. In The Telegraph the headline has been written in serif, this means that the editor has decided to use a font which includes small decorative lines at the ends of letters, however The Sun’s headline is in sans serif and so doesn’t have these lines. This makes the letters much more sharp, and ‘right-angled’ this gives a hard feel to the words and helps attract readers. Another way the editor has used the headline to attract the reader in The Sun is by using block capitals, this instantly makes the letters bigger, stand out and coupled with the words being in bold black and sans serif gives a real shock effect. A similarity between these two headlines though is that they both use quotes, this makes it sound and feel more real to a reader because it says exactly what actual people said and after having read the subheadline, probably what they said in court. However, I personally feel that the main difference is the actual words that have been used. The Sun’s headline is much more emotive, it uses words such as ‘cruel’, ‘kick’ and death. These words will instantly capture people and conjure up images that will stir their imagination and make them want to read on. Not only this but the headline also reads ‘kick his own dog to death’, this makes it seem even worse because it wasn’t a dog belonging to the police but his own family pet. It makes the whole thing seem even more cruel and will once again make people more interested in the story, especially for people who have pet dogs. However, The Telegraph is much more informative and factual, it makes a statement about what happened without going into detail about the emotions of it. It says; ‘Police ‘told to kick and punch dogs†, although it does uses words such as ‘kick’ and ‘punch’ it uses them in a way to inform what the police had been told to do and doesn’t go into detail about what the trainer was like. I also feel an interesting thing to also look at is the use of ‘made’ and ‘told’ in these two headlines. When The Sun says ‘†¦made cop kick his own god to death’ it uses ‘made’ to incriminate the trainers, it makes it sound like the policemen didn’t have a choice and that the whole incident was the trainers fault. Whereas The Telegraph uses ‘told’, this is much more informative and is simply saying what happened, there is no emotional influence in the way The Telegraph have written this headline. The subheadlines are also quite interesting, firstly their placing, The Telegraph has decided to place the subheadline before the main headline and in The Sun it has been placed after the headline. This may have been done for a number of reasons. In The Telegraph the subheadline reads; ‘German Shepard died after punishment, court told’ this subheadline has probably been used to give the reader a bit more information about the story before they read on like the type of dog involved and the fact that the dog died. In The Sun they have decided to put the information that the dog died in their headline and the fact it was a German Shepard isn’t mentioned in The Sun at all. On to The Sun’s subheadline and it simply reads ‘Jury told of punishment’ this has been put after the headline to inform the reader of where the quote of the headline came from. As well as this in The Sun not only does it have a subheadline after the headline, it also has other subheadlines throughout the story to introduce new parts of the article and to split it into three parts; the extra subheadlines are ‘Warned’ and ‘Shaking’. These words are actually used in the section of the article they introduce so that the reader will want to continue. You notice these words and they stand out because they are very expressive and they give you information about what is going to happen in the article even if you don’t read on. I also feel that The Sun has used these particular words to good use, if you didn’t have time to read the whole article and only read the headline and these subheadlines you would leave with a very strong feeling of hatred towards the trainers. Not only with words like ‘made’ which I have already explained, but when it is followed by a subheadline of ‘warned’ it makes you feel as though the police were threatened by the trainers and were warned by them to do nothing wrong. I personally feel that The Telegraph has a more hard-hitting headline for a particular reason. The Sun has made it’s main headline strike out of the page and really make you read on, this means they have put a simple subheadline so as not to overshadow the headline. Whereas The Telegraph has done it the other way around, their headline is not so hard-hitting so the editor has decided to include an emotive subheadline to aid the reader in being interested in the story and to red on. After having seen the headlines and been attracted to the story you begin to read the main text. Straight away in the hook paragraph you can see differences in the papers’ attitudes. Firstly, and most obviously the fact that in The Sun the first paragraph has been written in bold, and simply written normally in The Telegraph. Once again it seems that The Sun has been much more emotive in its approach. Words such as ‘forced’ and ‘kicked it’ are used, not only this but the word ‘DIED’ is written in block capitals, this is to emphasise the word and everything it means and the horror of what happened to the dogs. Words used in The Telegraph are very interesting. The first line explains that the dogs were ‘chastised’, it is interesting they should use this word because although it is hard hitting it probably doesn’t have the same effect on you as ‘kicking’ (which is in The Sun). However The Telegraph does say that dogs were ‘hung helplessly from a wall by their leads’ this is then followed by ‘a court was told yesterday’ it is as though The Telegraph wants to remain on the fence by simply stating what was said but at the same time drumming up emotion in the reader and making them read on, all in all The Sun is more opinionated and The Telegraph is trying as best it can to stay factual. A similarity between the two stories is the use of quotation. Both articles have many quotes from the police officers and trainers in question and almost all of the quotes were said in court. This could well be because on the day these two articles were published the case was still in court and they had little else to go on than this. Also the writer of the article in The Sun has done something slightly unusual in that he has decided to put some paragraphs into italics. This is almost certainly to draw the readers attention to that part of the story and make them read and think about it a different way. There are three paragraphs throughout the article that are in italics and out of these two of them focus on the cruelty to the animals, they go into detail about the way in which this happened and how the dogs reacted to it. The third paragraph describes how two of the handlers left in protest to what was going on before the dog died. Both these points are quite significant to the overall story and you can see why the writer may well have wanted the reader to be more aware of these facts that perhaps other points. Another point that I have found very interesting is sentence type used in both articles. It is normal for newspapers to use a lot of declarative sentences, these help the reporter to get across to the reader all the important information quickly and easily. An example from The Sun would be; ‘PC James English told the court his dog Tazz had been hanged for growling’ and The Telegraph; ‘Trainers at the police dog unit, based at Sandon, Chelmsford, Essex’. However, differences occur between the newspapers when you look at the use of complex sentences, these are more rarely used in papers as they are longer and are not so dramatic. However, as you would except it is The Telegraph that has used a couple but The Sun has used a lot fewer. As I have already described, The Telegraph is a more up-market paper and is aimed towards a sector of society who appreciate this sort of writing whereas The Sun is not. In fact a complex sentence has been used in The Telegraph to say the same as my last quotation of a declarative sentence from The Sun; †PC James English said his dog, Tazz was twice subjected to the hanging method after he had growled during training’.