After this topic, sports journalism would go on to kill "would" in TV & print...

Never have used it in my career. Was taught by numerous journalism professors to write in the past tense not present tense. Would was considered present tense in all my classes, and if you used it, your grade suffered.

Now I just think the word sucks when I read it and the writer is lazy as shit.

 

Hate it. Fucking hate it. Our backup MLB writer used it in all his gamers.

I bet its roots, for many writers, can be traced to NFL Films and the dramatic narrations of John Facenda. Didn't he use "would" a lot in those films? But it was a device with purpose in that regard because he was using it to build drama as the football highlights unfolded.

Doesn't work in print. It's the sign of a writer trying to force drama into mundane writing. And you can't create drama by saying, "Johnny would go on to bat .237 for the season."

 

It's lazy-ass writing.

For those that like it: Use your fucking brain and come up with something worth a shit, or just quit and go work at Wal-mart where you probably belong anyway.

 

As I said before, competing guy's use of "would" has forced me to think about how much I use it, even though it wasn't nearly as much as that. But now whenever I find myself even thinking of hitting the W, O and U keys in succession, I stop and think about another way to say what I want to say.

Thankfully, I only catch myself doing it once every few days. I don't what I'd think if I found myself thinking about it 50 times a day. In that case, I think I'd end up at the front door of Walmart saying, "Would you like a cart?"

 

I don't use the "would" construction, and it's not good. But there are actual errors to correct in most copy. Worry about smoothing out the phrasing after those mistakes are gone.

 

I get your point, and I lived that mess. What bugged me about today's writers is that many of them don't examine their edited work in an effort to get better. Without that process, and the enforcement of style rules and philosophies by management, the quality of daily writing spirals downward, and the desk wastes time fixing the same mistakes over and over.

 

Young writers get no guidance unless the demand it. And even then, even if they ask a competent editor, most journalists are terrible teachers.

 

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