A Comparison of Newspaper Articles

A Comparison of Newspaper Articles

Introduction

I have chosen the "Read All About It" option for my Maths Coursework.

This involves comparing articles from newspapers and comparing them. I

have chosen to use two newspapers for my investigation. I have chosen

to compare articles from a Tabloid and a Broadsheet newspapers. The

papers I have chosen are "The Mirror" and "The Guardian".

I am predicting that the articles in the broadsheet newspapers would

be more complex and often longer. I would also have thought that

broadsheets have a higher reading age. I view the broadsheets as a

newspaper for more intelligent readers and for people looking for in

depth reading, whereas I think that tabloid readers will be less

advanced readers and be people that want a lighter read. It will be

interesting to see how accurate my prediction is.

I will be looking at:

· Average Word Length

· Average Sentence Length

· Reading age

There are many different newspapers; they range from tabloid papers to

the broadsheet papers. The tabloids are a lighter read to the more

involving descriptive broadsheet papers. Different newspapers are

written to suit these preferences.

In the tabloid papers the wording used is less profound and therefore

more easily understood. However in broadsheet newspapers the writing

is more complicated and difficult to read.

Analysis 1

Investigation into the word lengths of two different samples of

writing from two different types of newspaper.

Hypothesis: My hypothesis is that a sample of two hundred words from a

broadsheet newspaper will consist of more longer words than a sample

of two hundred words from a tabloid newspaper. I also think that the

most popular word length will be 4 letters long in both papers.

Method: I will select two pieces of writing consisting of two hundred

words each from two different newspapers , of which one will be a

tabloid and the other will be a broadsheet. The topic of each of the

samples will be the same, e.