Journalistic Style

Journalistic Afrikaans is a register of its own, sitting between the formality of academic prose and the looseness of everyday speech. It has to be neutral, compressed, and instantly accessible to a broad readership, and it achieves this with a small toolkit of recurring devices: a distinctive headline grammar that drops articles and verbs, the passive voice for objectivity, a set of attribution markers that flag where information comes from, and a steady stream of nominalisation. Master these and you can both read a newspaper like Die Burger or Beeld fluently and write in the same voice.

Headline grammar: drop the article, drop the verb

Afrikaans headlines compress aggressively. Two things go first: articles (die, 'n) and, very often, the finite verb — especially forms of wees (to be) and the perfect auxiliary het. What remains is a telegraphic core that a reader decodes in a fraction of a second.

Notice two patterns at once. First, the present tense stands in for the past: a minister who resigned this morning is reported as bedank (resigns), the "historic present" that makes news feel immediate. Second, where English would keep at least an auxiliary, Afrikaans deletes it: Drie gewond has no is at all. This is the very same ellipsis you see in proverbs and signs — Afrikaans tolerates a verbless clause far more readily than English does.

The passive: neutrality by hiding the agent

News writing leans on the passive because it lets the reporter foreground the event and background — or omit — the agent. Afrikaans builds the eventive passive with word + past participle (and is/was for states or completed actions). This is the workhorse of crime, court, and official reporting, where who-did-it is either unknown, sub judice, or simply less newsworthy than what happened.

The passive also serves objectivity in a softer way: it removes the reporter's hand from the sentence. Word bespreek (is being debated) sounds more neutral and institutional than an active sentence naming a particular subject. See the word-passive for the full mechanics.

Attribution: volgens, na bewering, glo, sê

Good journalism marks the source of every claim it cannot independently verify, and Afrikaans has a precise set of markers for this. Getting these right is the difference between writing that reads as reporting and writing that reads as gossip.

The placement matters. Volgens opens the sentence and is followed by the source, then a comma-less clause: Volgens die polisie was... — note the verb-second inversion, with was coming straight after the volgens-phrase. Glo and na bewering sit inside the clause, near the verb, marking that one specific claim as second-hand. A common error is to translate "allegedly" as a sentence-initial adverb the way English allows; in Afrikaans, glo belongs in the verbal field, not at the front.

Nominalisation and compression

Headlines and ledes pack information by turning verbs and clauses into nouns. Pryse het gestyg (prices rose) becomes the noun prysstygings (price increases); die ekonomie het gegroei becomes ekonomiese groei (economic growth). This nominalisation lets a single phrase carry what a full clause would otherwise need, which is exactly what a tight column inch demands.

Afrikaans compounds with enthusiasm, and journalism exploits this: brandstofprysverhoging (fuel-price increase), misdaadsyfer (crime rate), noodtoestand (state of emergency) are single written words doing the work of an English noun phrase. The register rewards the writer who can name a whole situation in one compound.

Neutral but accessible

A defining feature of good Afrikaans journalism is that it stays formal enough to be credible but plain enough to be read by everyone. It avoids the heavy subordinate-clause stacking of academic style and the slang of casual speech. Sentences are typically one or two clauses; vocabulary is everyday where possible and technical only where necessary, usually with a gloss. The goal is clarity at speed, not display.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Headlines drop articles and verbs and use the present tense for past events — draft the full sentence, then delete die/'n and is/het.
• The passive (word
  • participle, is/was
    • participle) backgrounds or omits the agent, serving neutrality — see the word-passive.
• Attribute every unverified claim: volgens (named source), na bewering/glo (unconfirmed). Glo and na bewering sit inside the clause, not at the front.
• Nominalise and compound to compress information into single phrases (prysstygings, brandstofprysverhoging).
• Aim for a register that is neutral and credible yet plain — fewer subordinate clauses than academic prose, no slang. See reported speech and elliptical sentences.