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84-464: Some teachers, including the author of The Elements of Style , warn against verbosity. Similarly Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway , among others, famously avoided it. Synonyms of "verbosity" include wordiness , verbiage , prolixity , grandiloquence , garrulousness , expatiation , logorrhea , sesquipedalianism , and overwriting . The word verbosity comes from Latin verbosus , "wordy". There are many other English words that also refer to

168-539: A prescriptivist nature, or that it has become a general anachronism in the face of modern English usage. In criticizing The Elements of Style , Geoffrey Pullum , professor of linguistics at the University of Edinburgh , and co-author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002), said that: The book's toxic mix of purism , atavism , and personal eccentricity is not underpinned by

252-530: A 1959 edition. White's expansion and modernization of Strunk and Tenney's 1935 revised edition yielded the writing style manual informally known as "Strunk & White', the first edition of which sold about two million copies in 1959. More than ten million copies of three editions were later sold. Mark Garvey relates the history of the book in Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style (2009). Maira Kalman , who provided

336-562: A balance must be struck between, on one hand removing excessive elements that do not aid communication, versus unduly terse style on the other hand, which fails to make its meaning clear. Law professor Neil Andrews suggests that in the writing of legal decisions, for example, "A balance must be struck between judgments which are inadequately reasoned and too terse, cryptic and formulaic, and decisions (especially when multiple judgments are given by an appellate court) which are too long and difficult to unravel." In such cases attention should be paid to

420-480: A circulation of 150,000 in March 1914, due to a reduction in price. The Times had a circulation of 248,338 in 1958, a circulation of 408,300 in 1968, and a circulation of 295,863 in 1978. At the time of Harold Evans' appointment as editor in 1981, The Times had an average daily sale of 282,000 copies in comparison to the 1.4 million daily sales of its traditional rival, The Daily Telegraph . By 1988, The Times had

504-427: A circulation of 443,462. By November 2005, The Times sold an average of 691,283 copies per day, the second-highest of any British " quality " newspaper (after The Daily Telegraph , which had a circulation of 903,405 copies in the period), and the highest in terms of full-rate sales. By March 2014, average daily circulation of The Times had fallen to 394,448 copies, compared to The Daily Telegraph' s 523,048, with

588-535: A circulation of 5,000. Thomas Barnes was appointed general editor in 1817. In the same year, the paper's printer, James Lawson, died and passed the business onto his son, John Joseph Lawson (1802–1852). Under the editorship of Barnes and his successor in 1841, John Thadeus Delane , the influence of The Times rose to great heights, especially in politics and amongst the City of London . Peter Fraser and Edward Sterling were two noted journalists, and gained for The Times

672-449: A court hearing in a Tower Hamlets fostering case. In April 2019, culture secretary Jeremy Wright said he was minded to allow a request by News UK to relax the legal undertakings given in 1981 to maintain separate journalism resources for The Times and The Sunday Times . In 2019, IPSO upheld complaints against The Times over their article "GPS data shows container visited trafficking hotspot", and for three articles as part of

756-411: A discrete essay about writing lucid prose. To write well, White advises writers to have the proper mindset, that they write to please themselves, and that they aim for "one moment of felicity," a phrase by Robert Louis Stevenson . Thus Strunk's 1918 recommendation: Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that

840-508: A drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell. Strunk Jr. no longer has a comma in his name in the 1979 and later editions, due to the modernized style recommendation about punctuating such names. The fourth edition of The Elements of Style (1999) omits Strunk's advice about masculine pronouns: "unless

924-633: A forgery, The Times retracted the editorial of the previous year. In 1922, John Jacob Astor , son of the 1st Viscount Astor , bought The Times from the Northcliffe estate . The paper gained a measure of notoriety in the 1930s with its advocacy of German appeasement ; editor Geoffrey Dawson was closely allied with government supporters of appeasement, most notably Neville Chamberlain . Candid news reports by Norman Ebbut from Berlin that warned of Nazi warmongering were rewritten in London to support

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1008-618: A glossary, and an index. Five years later, the fourth edition text was re-published as The Elements of Style Illustrated (2005), with illustrations by the designer Maira Kalman . The Elements of Style was listed as one of the 100 best and most influential non-fiction books written in English since 1923 by Time in its 2011 list. Upon its release, Charles Poor, writing for The New York Times , called it "a splendid trophy for all who are interested in reading and writing." In On Writing (2000, p. 11), Stephen King writes: "There

1092-450: A good writing style. An inquiry into the 2005 London bombings found that verbosity can be dangerous if used by emergency services. It can lead to delay that could cost lives. A 2005 study from the psychology department of Princeton University found that using long and obscure words does not make people seem more intelligent. Dr. Daniel M. Oppenheimer did research which showed that students rated short, concise texts as being written by

1176-589: A libel case they had brought against The Times newspaper. In June 2020, a report in The Times suggested that Cage and Begg were supporting a man who had been arrested in relation to a knife attack in Reading in which three men were murdered. The Times report also suggested that Cage and Begg were excusing the actions of the accused man by mentioning mistakes made by the police and others. In addition to paying damages, The Times printed an apology. Cage stated that

1260-403: A new business venture. At that time, Henry Johnson invented the logography, a new typography that was reputedly faster and more precise (although three years later, it was proved less efficient than advertised). Walter bought the logography's patent and, with it, opened a printing house to produce books. The first publication of The Daily Universal Register was on 1 January 1785. Walter changed

1344-572: A passage from The Times as an example of verbosity: The Emperor received yesterday and to-day General Baron von Beck.... It may therefore be assumed with some confidence that the terms of a feasible solution are maturing themselves in His Majesty's mind and may form the basis of further negotiations with Hungarian party leaders when the Monarch goes again to Budapest. Fowler objected to this passage because The Emperor , His Majesty , and

1428-421: A proper grounding in English grammar. It is often so misguided that the authors appear not to notice their own egregious flouting of its own rules ... It's sad. Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White , and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write however or than me or

1512-432: A reference to meter ( not words a foot long). The earliest recorded usage in English of sesquipedalian is in 1656, and of sesquipedalianism , 1863. Garrulous comes from Latin garrulus , "talkative", a form of the verb garrīre , "to chatter". The adjective may describe a person who is excessively talkative, especially about trivial matters, or a speech that is excessively wordy or diffuse The noun expatiation and

1596-473: A series on pollution in Britain's waterways: "No river safe for bathing," "Filthy Business," and "Behind the story." IPSO also upheld complaints in 2019 against articles headlined "Funding secret of scientists against hunt trophy ban," and "Britons lose out to rush of foreign medical students." In 2019, The Times published an article about Imam Abdullah Patel that wrongly claimed Patel had blamed Israel for

1680-497: A variety of supplements. Beginning on 5 July 2003 (issue 67807) and ending after 17 January 2009 (issue 69535), Saturday issues of The Times came with a weekly magazine called TheKnowledge containing listings for the upcoming week (from that Saturday to the next Friday) compiled by PA Arts & Leisure (part of Press Association Ltd ). Its taglines include "Your pocket guide to what's on in London", "The World's Greatest City, Cut Down To Size", and "Your critical guide to

1764-516: Is a style guide for formal grammar used in American English writing. The first publishing was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage," ten "elementary principles of composition," "a few matters of form," a list of 49 "words and expressions commonly misused," and a list of 57 "words often misspelled." Writer and editor E. B. White greatly enlarged and revised

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1848-508: Is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register , adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK , in turn wholly owned by News Corp . The Times and The Sunday Times , which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. In general,

1932-404: Is an excessive flow of words. It is often used pejoratively to describe prose that is hard to understand because it is needlessly complicated or uses excessive jargon. Sesquipedalianism is a linguistic style that involves the use of long words. Roman poet Horace coined the phrase sesquipedalia verba in his Ars Poetica . It is a compound of sesqui , "one and a half", and pes , " foot ",

2016-480: Is included in the newspaper on Mondays, and details all the weekend's football activity ( Premier League and Football League Championship , League One and League Two. ) The Scottish edition of The Game also includes results and analysis from Scottish Premier League games. During the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euros, there is a daily supplement of The Game. The Saturday edition of The Times contains

2100-565: Is little or no detectable bullshit in that book. (Of course, it's short; at eighty-five pages it's much shorter than this one.) I'll tell you right now that every aspiring writer should read The Elements of Style . Rule 17 in the chapter titled Principles of Composition is 'Omit needless words.' I will try to do that here." In 2011, University of Vienna professor in biochemistry Tim Skern argued in Writing Scientific English: A Workbook that The Elements of Style "remains

2184-477: Is more usually referred to as prolixity . Some people defend the use of additional words as idiomatic , a matter of artistic preference, or helpful in explaining complex ideas or messages. Warren G. Harding , the 29th president of the United States , was notably verbose even for his era. A Democratic leader, William Gibbs McAdoo , described Harding's speeches as "an army of pompous phrases moving across

2268-637: Is of national scope and distribution. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The Times had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, The Sunday Times had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. The two newspapers also had 304,000 digital-only paid subscribers as of June 2019. An American edition of The Times has been published since 6 June 2006. Due to its widespread availability in libraries and its comprehensive index, The Times has received considerable use from academics and researchers. A complete historical file of

2352-497: Is the second-rate writers, those intent rather on expressing themselves prettily than on conveying their meaning clearly, & still more those whose notions of style are based on a few misleading rules of thumb, that are chiefly open to the allurements of elegant variation," Fowler's term for the over-use of synonyms . Contrary to Fowler's criticism of several words being used to name the same thing in English prose , in many other languages, including French , it might be thought to be

2436-412: Is to shoot them now, while they're happy. Cornell University English professor William Strunk Jr. wrote The Elements of Style in 1918 and privately published it in 1919, for use at the university. Harcourt republished it in 52-page format in 1920. Strunk and editor Edward A. Tenney later revised it for publication as The Elements and Practice of Composition (1935). In 1957, the style guide reached

2520-591: Is unclear in its message or dry in style. "There's no vivid world where every character speaks in one-line, three-word sentences," he notes. There is a danger that the avoidance of prolixity can produce writing that feels unnatural or sterile. Physicist Richard Feynman has spoken out against verbosity in scientific writing. Wordiness is common in informal or playful conversation, lyrics, and comedy. People with Asperger syndrome and autism often present with verbose speech. The Elements of Style The Elements of Style (also called Strunk & White )

2604-596: The Encyclopædia Britannica using aggressive American marketing methods introduced by Horace Everett Hooper and his advertising executive, Henry Haxton. Due to legal fights between the Britannica's two owners, Hooper and Walter Montgomery Jackson , The Times severed its connection in 1908 and was bought by pioneering newspaper magnate , Alfred Harmsworth , later Lord Northcliffe. In editorials published on 29 and 31 July 1914, Wickham Steed ,

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2688-600: The Independent Press Standards Organisation and sued The Times for libel. In 2020, The Times issued an apology, amended its article, and agreed to pay Choudhury damages and legal costs. Choudhury's solicitor, Nishtar Saleem, said, "This is another example of irresponsible journalism. Publishing sensational excerpts on a 'free site' while concealing the full article behind a paywall is a dangerous game". In December 2020, Cage and Moazzam Begg received damages of £30,000 plus costs in

2772-492: The London 2012 Olympics and the issuing of a series of souvenir front covers, The Times added the suffix "of London" to its masthead. In March 2016, the paper dropped its rolling digital coverage for a series of 'editions' of the paper at 9am, midday, and 5pm on weekdays. The change also saw a redesign of the paper's app for smartphones and tablets. In April 2018, IPSO upheld a complaint against The Times for its report of

2856-626: The Times's Chief Editor, argued that the British Empire should enter World War I . On 8 May 1920, also under the editorship of Steed , The Times , in an editorial, endorsed the anti-Semitic fabrication The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a genuine document, and called Jews the world's greatest danger. In the leader entitled "The Jewish Peril, a Disturbing Pamphlet: Call for Inquiry", Steed wrote about The Protocols of

2940-413: The active voice , and employ parallelism appropriately. The 1959 edition features White's expansions of preliminary sections, the "Introduction" essay (derived from his magazine story about Strunk), and the concluding chapter, "An Approach to Style," a broader, prescriptive guide to writing in English. He also produced the second (1972) and third (1979) editions of The Elements of Style , by which time

3024-468: The epic style of poetry in favor of his own. Many style guides advise against excessive verbosity. While it may be rhetorically useful verbose parts in communications are sometimes referred to as "fluff" or "fuzz". For instance, William Strunk , an American professor of English advised in 1918 to "Use the active voice: Put statements in positive form; Omit needless words." In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) Henry Watson Fowler says, "It

3108-432: The 1954 Nobel laureate for literature, defended his concise style against a charge by William Faulkner that he "had never been known to use a word that might send the reader to the dictionary." Hemingway responded by saying, "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are

3192-490: The 2003 murder of a British police officer by a terror suspect in Manchester. The story also wrongly claimed that Patel ran a primary school that had been criticised by Ofsted for segregating parents at events, which Ofsted said was contrary to "British democratic principles." The Times settled Patel's defamation claim by issuing an apology and offering to pay damages and legal costs. Patel's solicitor, Zillur Rahman, said

3276-655: The Communists, leading Winston Churchill to condemn him and the article in a speech to the House of Commons. As a result of Carr's editorial, The Times became popularly known during that stage of World War II as "the threepenny Daily Worker " (the price of the Communist Party's Daily Worker being one penny). On 3 May 1966, it resumed printing news on the front page; previously, the front page had been given over to small advertisements, usually of interest to

3360-563: The Elders of Zion : What are these 'Protocols'? Are they authentic? If so, what malevolent assembly concocted these plans and gloated over their exposition? Are they forgery? If so, whence comes the uncanny note of prophecy, prophecy in part fulfilled, in part so far gone in the way of fulfillment?". The following year, when Philip Graves , the Constantinople (modern Istanbul ) correspondent of The Times , exposed The Protocols as

3444-520: The Monarch all refer to the same person: "the effect", he pointed out in Modern English Usage , "is to set readers wondering what the significance of the change is, only to conclude that there is none." Fowler would go on to call this phenomenon " Elegant variation " in his later style guides. The ancient Greek philosopher Callimachus is quoted as saying "Big book, big evil" (μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν, mega biblion, mega kakon ), rejecting

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3528-583: The Year in 2005 and Nadiya Hussain , winner of The Great British Bake Off . The Times and The Sunday Times have had an online presence since 1996, originally at the-times.co.uk and sunday-times.co.uk , and later at timesonline.co.uk . There are now two websites: thetimes.co.uk is aimed at daily readers, and the thesundaytimes.co.uk site provides weekly magazine-like content. There are also iPad and Android editions of both newspapers. Since July 2010, News UK has required readers who do not subscribe to

3612-533: The antecedent is or must be feminine". In its place, the book reads, "many writers find the use of the generic he or his to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive." The re-titled entry "They. He or She", in Chapter IV: Misused Words and Expressions, advises the writer to avoid an "unintentional emphasis on the masculine". Components new to the fourth edition include a foreword by essayist and E. B. White stepson Roger Angell ,

3696-613: The appeasement policy. Kim Philby , a double agent with primary allegiance to the Soviet Union , was a correspondent for the newspaper in Spain during the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Philby was admired for his courage in obtaining high-quality reporting from the front lines of the bloody conflict. He later joined British Military Intelligence ( MI6 ) during World War II , was promoted into senior positions after

3780-412: The argument underlying a conclusion, so that the language used strikes a balance between simplicity and precision. A number of writers advise against excessive verbosity in fiction. For example, Mark Twain (1835–1910) wrote "generally, the fewer the words that fully communicate or evoke the intended ideas and feelings, the more effective the communication." Similarly Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961),

3864-466: The attention of E.B. White at The New Yorker . White had studied writing under Strunk in 1919 but had since forgotten "the little book" that he described as a "forty-three-page summation of the case for cleanliness, accuracy, and brevity in the use of English." Weeks later, White wrote about Strunk's devotion to lucid English prose in his column. Strunk died in 1946. Macmillan and Company subsequently commissioned White to revise The Elements for

3948-663: The best book available on writing good English". In 2013, Nevile Gwynne reproduced The Elements of Style in his work Gwynne's Grammar . Britt Peterson of The Boston Globe wrote that his inclusion of the book was a "curious addition". In 2016, the Open Syllabus Project lists The Elements of Style as the most frequently assigned text in US academic syllabuses , based on an analysis of 933,635 texts appearing in over 1 million syllabuses. Criticism of Strunk & White has largely focused on claims that it has

4032-470: The book for publication by Macmillan in 1959. That was the first edition of the book, which Time recognized in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential non-fiction books written in English since 1923. American wit Dorothy Parker said, regarding the book: If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style . The first-greatest, of course,

4116-498: The book's length had extended to 85 pages. The third edition of The Elements of Style (1979) features 54 points: a list of common word-usage errors; 11 rules of punctuation and grammar; 11 principles of writing; 11 matters of form; and, in Chapter V, 21 reminders for better style. The final reminder, the 21st, "Prefer the standard to the offbeat," is thematically integral to the subject of The Elements of Style , yet it does stand as

4200-457: The case "highlights the shocking level of journalism to which the Muslim community are often subject". In 2019, The Times published an article titled "Female Circumcision is like clipping a nail, claimed speaker". The article featured a photo of Sultan Choudhury beside the headline, leading some readers to incorrectly infer that Choudhury had made the comment. Choudhury lodged a complaint with

4284-429: The conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. In contrast, though, some authors warn against pursuing concise writing for its own sake. Literary critic Sven Birkerts , for instance, notes that authors striving to reduce verbosity might produce prose that

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4368-545: The cultural week". These supplements were relaunched on 24 January 2009 as: Sport , Saturday Review (arts, books, TV listings, and ideas), Weekend (including travel and lifestyle features), Playlist (an entertainment listings guide), and The Times Magazine (columns on various topics). The Times Magazine features columns touching on various subjects such as celebrities, fashion and beauty, food and drink, homes and gardens, or simply writers' anecdotes. Notable contributors include Giles Coren , Food and Drink Writer of

4452-406: The damages amount would be used to "expose state-sponsored Islamophobia and those complicit with it in the press. ... The Murdoch press empire has actively supported xenophobic elements and undermined principles of open society and accountability. ... We will continue to shine a light on war criminals and torture apologists and press barons who fan the flames of hate". The Times features news for

4536-410: The digitised paper, up to 2019, is available online from Gale Cengage Learning. The Times was founded by publisher John Walter (1738–1812) on 1 January 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, with Walter in the role of editor. Walter had lost his job by the end of 1784 after the insurance company for which he worked went bankrupt due to losses from a Jamaican hurricane. Unemployed, Walter began

4620-405: The fields of politics, science, literature, and the arts to build its reputation. For much of its early life, the profits of The Times were very large and the competition minimal, so it could pay far better than its rivals for information or writers. Beginning in 1814, the paper was printed on the new steam-driven cylinder press developed by Friedrich Koenig (1774–1833). In 1815, The Times had

4704-487: The first half of the paper; the Opinion/Comment section begins after the first news section, with world news normally following this. The Register, which contains obituaries, a Court & Social section, and related material, follows the business pages on the centre spread. The sports section is at the end of the main paper. The Times ' main supplement, every day, is times2 , featuring various columns. It

4788-597: The illustrations for The Elements of Style Illustrated (2005, see below), asked Nico Muhly to compose a cantata based on the book. It was performed at the New York Public Library in October 2005. Audiobook versions of The Elements now feature changed wording, citing "gender issues" with the original. Strunk concentrated on the cultivation of good writing and composition; the original 1918 edition exhorted writers to "omit needless words," use

4872-539: The landscape in search of an idea." The Michigan Law Review published a 229-page parody of postmodern writing titled "Pomobabble: Postmodern Newspeak and Constitutional 'Meaning' for the Uninitiated". The article consists of complicated and context-sensitive self-referencing narratives. The text is peppered with a number of parenthetical citations and asides, which is supposed to mock the cluttered style of postmodern writing. In The King's English , Fowler gives

4956-457: The latest edition of The Elements of Style Illustrated (2005), with illustrations by Maira Kalman, as an "aging zombie of a book ... a hodgepodge, its now-antiquated pet peeves jostling for space with 1970s taboos and 1990s computer advice". Because Strunk's text is now in the public domain , publishers can and do reprint it. Several books were titled paying homage to Strunk's, for example: The Times Defunct The Times

5040-524: The management to shut down the paper for nearly a year, from 1 December 1978 to 12 November 1979. The Thomson Corporation management was struggling to run the business due to the 1979 energy crisis and union demands. Management sought a buyer who was in a position to guarantee the survival of both titles, had the resources, and was committed to funding the introduction of modern printing methods. Several suitors appeared, including Robert Maxwell , Tiny Rowland and Lord Rothermere ; however, only one buyer

5124-591: The moneyed classes in British society. Also in 1966, the Royal Arms , which had been a feature of the newspaper's masthead since its inception, was abandoned. In the same year, members of the Astor family sold the paper to Canadian publishing magnate Roy Thomson . His Thomson Corporation brought it under the same ownership as The Sunday Times to form Times Newspapers Limited . An industrial dispute prompted

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5208-571: The most intelligent authors. But those who used long words or complex font types were seen as less intelligent. In contrast to advice against verbosity, some editors and style experts suggest that maxims such as "omit needless words" are unhelpful. It may be unclear which words are unnecessary, or where advice against prolixity may harm writing. In some cases a degree of repetition and redundancy, or use of figurative language and long or complex sentences can have positive effects on style or communicative effect. In nonfiction writing, experts suggest that

5292-464: The news, Murdoch stated that the law and the independent board prevented him from exercising editorial control. In May 2008, printing of The Times switched from Wapping to new plants at Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, and Merseyside and Glasgow , enabling the paper to be produced with full colour on every page for the first time. On 26 July 2012, to coincide with the official start of

5376-495: The non-native writers of English the author studied fell into. An essay intentionally filled with "logorrhea" that mixed physics concepts with sociological concepts in a nonsensical way was published by physics professor Alan Sokal in a journal ( Social Text ) as a scholarly publishing sting . The episode became known as the Sokal Affair . The term is sometimes also applied to unnecessarily wordy speech in general; this

5460-503: The number of digital subscribers at around 400,000, and ranked The Times as having the sixth highest trust rating out of 13 different outlets polled. The Times Digital Archive is available by subscription. The Times has had the following eight owners since its foundation in 1785: The Times had a circulation of 70,405 on 5 September 1870, due to a reduction in price and the Franco-Prussian War . The Times had

5544-645: The ones I use." George Orwell mocked logorrhea in " Politics and the English Language " (1946) by taking verse (9:11) from the book of Ecclesiastes in the King James Version of the Bible : I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. and rewriting it as Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels

5628-407: The political position of The Times is considered to be centre-right . The Times was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world, such as The Times of India and The New York Times . In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as The London Times or The Times of London , although the newspaper

5712-440: The pompous/satirical nickname 'The Thunderer' (from "We thundered out the other day an article on social and political reform."). The increased circulation and influence of the paper were based in part to its early adoption of the steam-driven rotary printing press. Distribution via steam trains to rapidly growing concentrations of urban populations helped ensure the profitability of the paper and its growing influence. The Times

5796-475: The practice of printing correspondents' full postal addresses. Published letters were long regarded as one of the paper's key constituents. According to its leading article "From Our Own Correspondents," the reason for the removal of full postal addresses was to fit more letters onto the page. In a 2007 meeting with the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, which was investigating media ownership and

5880-451: The print edition to pay £2 per week to read The Times and The Sunday Times online. Visits to the websites have decreased by 87% since the paywall was introduced, from 21 million unique users per month to 2.7 million. In April 2009, the timesonline site had a readership of 750,000 readers per day. In October 2011, there were around 111,000 subscribers to The Times ' digital products. A Reuters Institute survey in 2021 put

5964-501: The shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 in July 1988. He wrote in detail about his reasons for resigning from the paper due to meddling with his stories, and the paper's pro-Israel stance. In June 1990, The Times ceased its policy of using courtesy titles ("Mr", "Mrs", or "Miss" prefixes) for living persons before full names on the first reference, but it continues to use them before surnames on subsequent references. In 1992, it accepted

6048-585: The title after 940 editions on 1 January 1788 to The Times . In 1803, Walter handed ownership and editorship to his son of the same name. Walter Sr's pioneering efforts to obtain Continental news, especially from France, helped build the paper's reputation among policy makers and financiers, in spite of a sixteen-month incarceration in Newgate Prison for libels printed in The Times . The Times used contributions from significant figures in

6132-670: The two retaining respectively the second-highest and highest circulations among British "quality" newspapers. In contrast, The Sun , the highest-selling "tabloid" daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, sold an average of 2,069,809 copies in March 2014, and the Daily Mail , the highest-selling "middle market" British daily newspaper, sold an average of 1,708,006 copies in the period. The Sunday Times has significantly higher circulation than The Times , and sometimes outsells The Sunday Telegraph . In January 2019, The Times had

6216-486: The two titles. The Royal Arms were reintroduced to the masthead at about this time, but whereas previously it had been that of the reigning monarch, it would now be that of the House of Hanover , who were on the throne when the newspaper was founded. After 14 years as editor, William Rees-Mogg resigned upon completion of the change of ownership. Murdoch began to make his mark on the paper by appointing Harold Evans as his replacement. One of his most important changes

6300-499: The use of "Ms" for unmarried women "if they express a preference." In November 2003, News International began producing the newspaper in both broadsheet and tabloid sizes. Over the next year, the broadsheet edition was withdrawn from Northern Ireland , Scotland , and the West Country . Since 1 November 2004, the paper has been printed solely in tabloid format. On 6 June 2005, The Times redesigned its Letters page, dropping

6384-542: The use of excessive words. Prolixity comes from Latin prolixus , "extended". Prolixity can also be used to refer to the length of a monologue or speech, especially a formal address such as a lawyer's oral argument . Grandiloquence is complex speech or writing judged to be pompous or bombastic diction . It is a combination of the Latin words grandis ("great") and loqui ("to speak"). Logorrhea or logorrhoea (from Greek λογόρροια, logorrhoia , " word - flux ")

6468-708: The verb expatiate come from Latin expatiātus , past participle from spatiārī , "to wander". They refer to enlarging a discourse, text, or description. Overwriting is a simple compound of the English prefix " over- " ("excessive") and "writing", and as the name suggests, means using extra words that add little value. One rhetoric professor described it as "a wordy writing style characterized by excessive detail, needless repetition, overwrought figures of speech, and/or convoluted sentence structures." Another writer cited "meaningless intensifiers", "adjectival & adverbial verbosity", "long conjunctions and subordinators", and "repetition and needless information" as common traps that

6552-588: The war ended, and defected to the Soviet Union when discovery was inevitable in 1963. Between 1941 and 1946, the left-wing British historian E. H. Carr was assistant editor. Carr was well known for the strongly pro-Soviet tone of his editorials. In December 1944, when fighting broke out in Athens between the Greek Communist ELAS and the British Army, Carr in a Times leader sided with

6636-638: Was or which , but can't tell you why. Pullum has argued, for example, that the authors misunderstood what constitutes the passive voice , and he criticized their proscription of established and unproblematic English usages, such as the split infinitive and the use of which in a restrictive relative clause . On Language Log , a blog about language written by linguists , he further criticized The Elements of Style for promoting linguistic prescriptivism and hypercorrection among Anglophones , and called it "the book that ate America's brain". Jan Freeman, reviewing for The Boston Globe in 2005 described

6720-475: Was discontinued in early March 2010, but reintroduced on 12 October 2010 after discontinuation was criticised. Its regular features include a puzzles section called Mind Games . Its previous incarnation began on 5 September 2005, before which it was called T2 and previously Times 2 . The supplement contains arts and lifestyle features, TV and radio listings, and theatre reviews. The newspaper employs Richard Morrison as its classical music critic. The Game

6804-521: Was in a position to meet the full Thomson remit, Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch . Robert Holmes à Court , another Australian magnate, had previously tried to buy The Times in 1980. In 1981, The Times and The Sunday Times were bought from Thomson by Rupert Murdoch's News International . The acquisition followed three weeks of intensive bargaining with the unions by company negotiators John Collier and Bill O'Neill . Murdoch gave legal undertakings to maintain separate journalism resources for

6888-529: Was one of the first newspapers to send war correspondents to cover particular conflicts. William Howard Russell , the paper's correspondent with the army in the Crimean War , was immensely influential with his dispatches back to England. The Times faced financial failure in 1890 under Arthur Fraser Walter , but it was rescued by an energetic editor, Charles Frederic Moberly Bell . During his tenure (1890–1911), The Times became associated with selling

6972-515: Was still not achieved, and this was to remain an interim measure until the Wapping dispute of 1986, when The Times moved from New Printing House Square in Gray's Inn Road (near Fleet Street ) to new offices in Wapping . Robert Fisk , seven times British International Journalist of the Year, resigned as foreign correspondent in 1988 over what he saw as "political censorship" of his article on

7056-522: Was the introduction of new technology and efficiency measures. Between March 1981 and May 1982, following agreement with print unions, the hot-metal Linotype printing process used to print The Times since the 19th century was phased out and replaced by computer input and photocomposition. The Times and the Sunday Times were able to reduce their print room staff by half as a result. However, direct input of text by journalists ("single-stroke" input)

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