Names, not a rant about the Ashleighs of the world

Long time reader, first time poster. Struggling with writing a story about a family involved in short track racing. Any easy solutions for handling quotes and second refrence names when three people have the same last name in your story?

 

Mr./Ms. Rag -

Assuming this to be a feature or a profile, I'd suggest the following:

- If it were me, I'd be sure to lay out everybody's full name early on, then use first names thereafter. Unless that's a violation of your paper's style. But I would think there'd be some latitude in a case like this.

- If not, ask the family members how they refer to each other (nicknames? "JR" for "Junior", etc.), then try using those.

- Use qualifying characterizations like "the elder Johnson said," or "The youngest Johnson claims," when quoting.

- But you can sidestep the problem of excessive repetition almost entirely by building the story in such a way that you're not constantly citing short quotes. In other words, don't fall into the trap of quote/text/quote/text/quote/text sentences the way so many sports writers do.

Hope this helps. Welcome, and thanks for posting with us.