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Comment by icebraining | Hacker News Reader

http://lists.ausnog.net/pipermail/ausnog/2016-January/034052...

News worthy! Jokes aside I just can't get over the writing style of The Register:

  "The post, made by a chap named Ross..."

  "The drive's a Seagate, for those of you..."

A picture of the $uptime command would have been great!

a) It's British, which might explain some of the language and humour (with a "u").

b) I keep forgetting about 'El Reg', but whenever I return there, I enjoy my visit. It has a strong, unique tone which I find a breath of fresh air amongst all the dull, neutral news reporting out there.

> b) I keep forgetting about 'El Reg', but whenever I return there, I enjoy my visit. It has a strong, unique tone which I find a breath of fresh air amongst all the dull, neutral news reporting out there.

They're basically the tabloid press of the tech news industry. But their writing style is fun, I'll grant them that.

We have various news feeds displayed on TV here at work, The Register is one of them. It's always fun to see some of their headlines/copy pop up, the style of writing is really great (especially when they bash the Government's IT projects with colourful language).

> It's British, which might explain some of the language and humour

It's better explained by simply describing the site as a tabloid. Tabloids aside, British news reporting isn't typically that informal.

> I keep forgetting about 'El Reg', but whenever I return there, I enjoy my visit. It has a strong, unique tone which I find a breath of fresh air amongst all the dull, neutral news reporting out there.

Personally I find the site appalling. It's up there with the The Daily Mail for rewriting other people's articles. Granted this is basically how 99% of reporting happens these days, but these kinds of tabloids often miss the entire crux of the original piece they're plagiarizing due to their editorialisation. For example, their articles on OpenSSL parallels the Daily Mail's absurd anti-immigration propaganda. And often, again like the Daily Mail, El Reg will completely miss-report a story just for the sake of having a clickbait headline.

Frankly, I'd rather have dull neutral news reporting over biased misinformation.

Its a parody of the British tabloids and their ridiculous headlines. As such I find it's headlines hilarious sometimes.

I'm not convinced it's a parody. That would suggest their writing style is done as a joke; referencing British tabloids while distancing themselves as a comedy version. More likely El Reg's informal writing style is a deliberate and serious decision driven by the requirement to gain more readers (read: eyeballs on their ads). ie the same reasons any tabloid is written they way they are.

El Reg since day one has always had a somewhat less than deferential style of writing. The original founder, Mike Magee[0], intended the reporting style to be tabloid-like right from the get-go.

You either love or hate The Register, personally I've enjoyed reading it since 1997 and get a good chuckle each morning from some of their amusing bylines.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Magee_(journalist)

>and get a good chuckle each morning from some of their amusing bylines.

+1 Their headlines are borderline genius on occasion

Look at it. Big red banner at the top - just like the British tabloids. Constant twisting of headlines to add as much innuendo as possible.

I guess if you are not from the UK it might not be so bleeding obvious, but for us it is. Would I be correct in guessing that you are not?

There is also the slogan, "biting the hand that feeds IT".

Never mind the ongoing BOFH column.

I am not from the UK and in fact I am not even a native English speaker and yet I had always assumed that the tone of El Reg was a parody. I think it is quite obvious.

The tone of El Reg is very similar to many other tabloids though. Most don't take themselves seriously. I gave a few examples of The Sunday Sport in another post, but here's one from a Scottish tabloid, reporting about when someone caught a failed suicide bomber trying to attack an airport:

https://thehosh.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/kickedterrorist....

And here's one from The Sun

http://www.lazerhorse.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/The-Sun...

I don't tend to read many tabloids, but the Red Tops (predictably named because of their design) I've read on occasions do follow the same tongue-in-cheek writing style.

I think it's fair to say they can't all be parodies as you then have to question when a parody is so commonplace that it's no longer a parody; that it instead just becomes that normal thing.

I think some folks are confusing "parody" and "tabloid style".

The definition of parody is:

"a work created to imitate, make fun of, or comment on an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of satiric or ironic imitation." [0]

Websites that would fall into the "parody" category would be The Onion, The Daily Mash, Landover Baptist Church, The Poke etc. Another word to describe these types of sites would be satire.

The Register is not really a "parody" website because it's reporting on actual things that have happened (direct from source or through recycling), but the reporting and writing style is in the same vein or riffs off of the "tabloid journalism" style.

Tabloid journalism can be characterised as sensationalist, ridiculing and hyperbolic, with headlines designed to appeal to your more base instincts.

What The Register does, or attempts to do is inject humour into its reporting by using the tabloid style, it tries not to take itself too seriously. There is as you rightly point out a lot of "tongue in cheek" phrasing in many articles. For example, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I enjoy their headlines and bylines, e.g.:

"Criminal records checks 'unlawful' and 'arbitrary' rules High Court - Disclosing minor silliness no longer required, say judges" [1]

"Rust 1.6 released, complete with a stabilised libcore - A world without buffer overflows is what our children shall inherit" [2]

"Boeing just about gives up on the 747 - Even the cargo market's dried up for the Jumbo Jet. Next stop, elephant's graveyard?" [3]

Anyway, I wouldn't get too bogged down, in over analysing El Reg, you either get their sense of humour or you don't.

There are also an offshoot by ex-Register founder Mike Magee which reports in a similar style:

http://www.theinquirer.net/

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody

[1]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/criminal_record_chec...

[2]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/rust_16/

[3]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/22/boeing_747_productio...

> Look at it. Big red banner at the top - just like the British tabloids. Constant twisting of headlines to add as much innuendo as possible.

The fact it follows the same design and editorial patterns as a tabloid doesn't mean it's a parody of a tabloid. A simpler conclusion would be that it looks and reads like a tabloid because it is a tabloid.

It's very common for products in any same category to be designed similarly. For example the packaging on washing detergents, breakfast cereals, and English ales often follow similar patterns because people expect their washing detergents to look like washing detergents, their cereals to look like breakfast cereals, and their beer to look like beer. Granted you do get some products that deliberately choose a non-conventional design in the hope to stand out. But generally items look similar because people expect that of them. And equally, The Register is designed like a "Red Top"[1] because people expect tabloids to look like that.

It's probably also worth noting that most "good" tabloids have a comical tone to them. In fact not taking themselves seriously is pretty much the prime directive for any Red Top. Though some take things to a more ridiculous level than others[2][3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism#Red_top

[2] http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/80/590x/secondar...

[3] http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/sunday-sport/bomb...

I think the crux of the argument should be "Are the stories real or made up for comical value?" Since El Reg is actually reporting real stories, I couldn't put it in the same camp as News Thump, The Onion, and the lesser known Suffolk Gazette (http://www.suffolkgazette.com/), which most definitely are parody sites.

> I guess if you are not from the UK it might not be so bleeding obvious, but for us it is. Would I be correct in guessing that you are not?

You'd be incorrect with that assumption. I wouldn't say I had a great degree of national pride, but I would say I'm very British. I drink tea, eat angus steak, drink real ales and single malt scotches, and constantly moan about queues. However I never carry an umbrella around with me. :)

Which articles are you referring to in particular? I've not noticed glaring inaccuracies in any of the stories on El Reg.

Not inaccurate specifically, but sometimes heavily steeped in editorial bias and dramatisations that an uninformed reader would easily draw inaccurate conclusions from the piece.

A lot of news networks operate this way. Since they all often publish the same stories from the same sources, they end up competing with each other to publish the most dramatised interpretation of the facts in an effort to win rating. The Register just stands out as being one of the worst offenders (or most successful - depending on your view point).

Andrew Orlowski's pro-copyright cheerleading was what turned me off it. He can be very nasty about people he disagrees with.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan either and find him somewhat objectionable. Orlowski's the only one that used to turn off commenting on his articles which is half the fun of the reg, though he seems to do this less now. But every publication, in print or online, is going to have a writer who you just never get on with intellectually.

There's plenty of other good contributors such as Duncan Campbell [0] and Alastair Daabs [1] that more than make up for the Orlowski deficit.

[0]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/3066

[1]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Author/2802

The stance is one that reasonable people can disagree on but he resorts to childish insults.

Also he's a climate science denier which is just so odd in the IT world since for me I always associate IT as close to science in that you must deal with reality even if you don't like it.

Fairly informal, occasionally jokey writing is a hallmark of the British press. For us, it’s a bit of a culture shock to read the mainstream US press which takes everything very seriously.

I've just spent five minutes thinking, "what's wrong with this writing style?" I still don't know. As a later poster pointed out, perhaps it is a peculiarly British style, which just doesn't register as abnormal to me.

There are also certain things which grate rather badly with me when reading US "style" too.

For example, "Recall our previous conversation...." Use of recall in this way feels so impolite and demanding. Normal use for me would be, "You may recall our previous conversation...."

Anyway, this is not a bashing session, I just genuinely didn't find anything odd about El Reg's writing style.

It's a very tabloid-y tone. Other commenters have used the word "informal", but that's not quite right. There's a certain over-the-topness that clearly distinguishes the tabloid press (British, American, German, etc) from a casual blog covering the same subject, for example.

And to think I am just a Guardian reader.....

When I hear "You may recall...", I don't think of it as asking for permission. I think of it as saying "You might be able to, or maybe not".

Just saying to recall the previous conversation is an indicator that previous context is required.

Indeed - the loss of precision over may, can, might & could is a pet peeve of mine. Often language evolves, but with these words meaning is being lost - and sometimes inverted. I recently disagreed with someone who said that "you may not do something" (because you were allowed to), but it turned out that she meant might.

She was a teacher, too. :(

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