ABSTRACT
The well-behaved Victorian child was supposed to be seen, not heard. Writing for
broadcast journalism is the opposite: what matters is not how the words will look but how the listener will hear them.
This can be wonderfully liberating. On the small scale, you can shrug aside such
technicalities as the difference between a semicolon and a comma. More importantly, all the preconceived turns of phrase you’ve absorbed from newspapers, magazines and books can and must be chucked away: in writing for broadcast journalism you’re returning to the primary language, language as it’s spoken, as it’s heard.
