Following ORD12's lede*:

Born: Omaha, Nebraska USA (SAC brat)
Raised: Portland, Oregon USA
(Future) Current Residence: Chicago, Illinois or Charlottesville, Virginia USA
Native Tongue: English (American)
Foreign Language(s): German and a (very)little Czech.
Note: I have focused on learning German over the last two years. (I figure this means that I can converse well with most 2-year old Germans...

It's funny. After a week or so in a foreign-language land I start to dream in that language. I don't speak much German or Czech but I can kind of understand the gist of the conversation.

The only other language I speak is newspaper. To wit,

A headline is a hed or headline call.

A paragraph is a graf. The leading paragraph in a story is the lede* graf.

Ergo, a 1st lede writethru is an update to a story that has a new leading paragraph. Ditto with a 2nd lede writethru or 3rd lede writethru. (It's rare to see much beyond a 4th writethru. That would be a case where a story is developing very, very rapidly, such as the Oklahoma City bombing or Princess Diana's death for example.)

A graphic, meaning a chart, map or illustration, is a grafik.

A caption is called a cutline. I'm still not sure of the etemology of that.

Sports statistics and stocks data is referred to as agate. The term is derived from the time when type size was referred to by semi-precious stones rather than a numerical reference, e.g. 8-point, 36-point, etc. Agate is typically 6-point 20th Century Classified, which is smaller than Pearl and larger than Non-Pariel. (Or the other way around - I can't remember.) Agate is one of the few antiquated terms that survives in current newspaper lexicon. Therefore, when I mention on my resume that I was a sports agatizer, that tells my interviewer everything.

This should explain the shorthand that I sometimes lapse into here. I'll say things like thot or graf or whatever. I'm finding I use this phonetic (fonetik :~)) shorthand constantly. I just seems easier.

[This message has been edited by essxjay (edited 09-03-2000).]