【正文】 n the materials and pictures collected, the reporter should then apply his or her writing skills and start the script writing process. Being one of the major broadcasting media, TV news should naturally be geared to audio. In order to facilitate audience’s prehension, it is often endowed with features mon to spoken language and is always written in an informal and conversational style. The writing of TV news requires a special bination of the characteristics of news reporting with that of oral English. Besides, TV news should be geared to video. Different from other news media, TV presents sound bites and motion pictures, which help illustrate the story. Hence TV news writers always exert great efforts to match their story to the pictures shot by the cameraman. Some reporters like to run the first and last scenes of their reports a little longer so as to imprint the pictures on the viewer’s mind and leave an impression thereafter. For TV news reporters, to explain word for word what is obvious from the pictures would be wasteful as well as pointless. There are times when pictures should be left to speak for themselves. The reporter’s script should never repeat what the viewer can clearly see, but should clarify, contextualize and explain what is shown on the screen. News presentationInformation + Presentation = Communication (Boyd, A., 2022:174)Successful munication is largely a matter of presentation. Having acquired the pictures shot by the cameramen and the script written by the reporter, the news announcer is then on the way for news presentation. However, before the news is on the air, there are usually several procedures to go through for the news announcer. A readthrough of the scriptThe news script will usually be delivered to the announcer well before the presentation. The announcer should then spend as much time as possible on the script reading so as to be thoroughly familiar with the material and the intention of the news writer. While reading the script, announcers should first strive to obtain its overall meaning before concentrating too much on pronunciation or timing. As John Touhey, BBC World Service newsreader, put it, “The essence is to pletely understand what you’re reading before you open your mouth. Provided you understand it, the listeners will understand it.” (Boyd, A., 2022:175) Announcers’ confidence mainly stems from their familiarity with the news script. Hence a readthrough of the script serves to be a must. Interpretation of the scriptWith the general impression in mind, the announcer should then decide how to interpret the script, which is also a demanding job to fulfill. The usual practice for this is to resort to the specific purpose of the script. Just as it is pointless to begin a trip to some undetermined destination, an interpretation with no guidance from the intention of the news writer is languid and meaningless. Two identical sentences from various contexts may actually require quite different interpretations. Should the place in the report suffered from a drought, the sentence “…It has kept raining for 3 days…” would naturally be delivered with joy. However, it would be the other way round if people there had been enduring a flood already. The interpretation of the script not only involves the selection of an appropriate delivery means, but also a grasp of both the pronunciation and connotation of every word. Announcers should therefore cultivate the habit of looking up in an authoritative dictionary all the unfamiliar words so as to ensure a correct understanding. After enough preparation of the script reading and interpretation is done, the announcer will then dress up and appear in the studio for news presentation. Chapter 3: TV news writingSince TV is a bination of pictures and sound, the news must be written for both ear and eye. Due to its fleeting feature, TV news should be written in a way that highlights brevity and clarity. Besides, TV news scripts must match perfectly the pictures shot by the cameramen. Taking these factors into consideration, the author focuses on the structural as well as the lexical and grammatical features of English TV news in this chapter. The overall structureSince TV news is a subcategory of news, its script layout bears great resemblance to a newspaper story. It also needs a clear focus, lead, body and ending. While the basic structure is similar, TV news writing also has some distinctive structures of its own. Lead Every story needs its own lead. The lead refers to the first paragraph or the first several paragraphs of the story, which can summarize the story or bring out the essentials or hint the most important thing of the story so as to attract readers or audience to stay with it. In short, the lead reveals the most valuable information in the fewest words and shoulders the task of attracting readers or audience. So, to some extent, it is the choicest part of the story and the showwindow of reporters’ writing talent. Most reporters agree that a good lead must be:? ? Succinct. The lead is supposed to express the core or the most important part of the story in the fewest words, so it must be succinct as far as possible.? ? Informative. The lead must reveal the essence of the story. An empty lead is always the reporter’s taboo. ? ? Intriguing. The lead, as the term suggests, serves to lead readers or audience to follow the story. Sometimes it is called a grabber, which aims to grab people’s attention as much as possible. Reporters should therefore explore themselves deeply for writing an interesting and fresh lead. The lead of TV news is no exception to the aforementioned features. Besides, it bears some other features of its own. Here below are some mon lead style