(43) Thousands of Indians were reported homeless today as flood
waters continued to rise in the north and northeast, inundating
large areas of standing crops, the Press Trust of India said.
The Agency quoted officials as saying several thousand hectares
of jute and rice crops have also been destroyed ...
~ Thousands of Indians are reported homeless as flood waters
continue to rise in the north and north east.
Several thousand hectares of jute and rice crops have also been
destroyed.
Retaining attributions will slow down broadcast news presentation,
but it need not be repetitive. The copy editor has a wide choice of
lexical variants, and several syntactic options: foregrounding (PQ said
that X); backgrounding (X, said PQ); passivizing (PQ is said to be X);
relativising (PQ, who is said to be X); reduction to according to PQ. A
lead sentence can credit the agency, perhaps sometimes in headline
form: a report from Reuters.
(viii) Do mark direct quotations by syntactic devices or intonation (33, cf. 32).
As with attribution deletion, this is especially necessary in conflict
situations.
(ix) Don't delete hedges.
In pursuit of less ambiguity, editors are tempted to delete items like try
or attempt {29), or to describe incomplete actions as accomplished