Sometimes, the full sentence of a speaker is not worthy of mentioning in a report. Instead, some words or phrases may be included in the paraphrase. A UCLAN Journalism Blog lists the style rules and grammar of doing so.
Style 2 – the vivid phrase
The second style for reporting speech directly is used when the sentence as a whole is not worth recording word-for-word, but a phrase of it is particularly striking. For example, suppose in his final address to the jury a defence counsel said:
My learned friend Mr Brown has raised doubts about the defendant’s alibi, as he is entitled to, but I invite you to consider the defendant’s outstanding war record of courage and self-sacrifice.
A journalist might report it like this:
Miss Jane Smith, defending, said the prosecution had questioned Sykes’s alibi, but he had an “outstanding war record of courage and self-sacrifice”.
In this method of using a direct quote, the phrase quoted is put between quote marks in a slightly different way. There are three new rules here:
1. The final quote marks come before the full stop.
2. The quoted phrase is not introduced by a colon or any other form of
punctuation – apart from the quote marks.
3. It is not introduced by a capital letter.
2. The quoted phrase is not introduced by a colon or any other form of
punctuation – apart from the quote marks.
3. It is not introduced by a capital letter.
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