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5 Ws and an H
Journalists are trained to seek answers to six traditional questions:
Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? As you begin the process of writing
an essay, use these questions to discover and classify ideas and details
about your specific topic. Asking these six questions about a research
subject will not only help to generate material for an essay, but also
help to organize your research.
One method of using the 5 Ws and an H is to put each of the terms
as a heading at the top of a page. As you discover facts and information
in the course of your research, or as you brainstorm for ideas,
record the details under the appropriate headings. This is a tidier
way of organizing your thoughts and points than the more random
Listing method. Depending on
your topic, not all of the 5 Ws and an H questions will produce
workable material. But asking these questions about a particular
event or individual will help you identify relevant information
about the subject and discover relationships among the different
parts of your topic.
The 5 Ws and an H formula is also helpful when formulating the
big questions in a given academic discipline or when managing human
or material resources. Answering questions of this kind will help
you to generate ideas and solutions. Depending on your subject,
you might ask questions such as
- Who will be responsible for implementing the policy?
- What is the premise of the main argument?
- When was the intelligence report made known?
- Where would a given skill set be of most use in a
field of operation?
- Why is one training method preferred over another?
- How will the new technology benefit tactical operations?
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Example
Good writing presents specific, concrete details about its subject,
whether it is describing a process, reporting on an event, or defending
a position. Attending to the 5 Ws and an H will assist
you in generating details in the body of a paragraph that narrates
or describes an action or activity. Here, for example, is an excerpt
from a book on the 1990 Gulf War by the late editor of the Washington
Post, Michael Kelly, that illustrates how this principle influences
the writing of news copy—or any
kind of writing that is concerned with accurately presenting the
details of an event or incident. Kelly, a seasoned journalist, instinctively
addresses all 5 Ws and the H in the first part of a paragraph reporting
on the American assault on retreating Iraqis:
The bombing continued through the morning
of February 26, despite an announcement by Saddam Hussein that he
was withdrawing his forces from Kuwait. On the afternoon of the
26, and on the 27th [when],
American ground forces [who]
moved to cut the road to Basra in four places [what],
blocking what was left of the Iraqi retreat [why].
The principal cut was made by the Army's tiger Brigade [who],
which occupied a high ground called Mutlaa
Ridge [where]. The
Tiger Brigade traversed the Basra road with forty-five M1A1 tanks
and met little serious resistance [how].
As you can see, following the 5Ws and an H formula ensures that
the reader is supplied with relevant facts and details. Apart from
lead paragraphs in newspaper stories and in other journalistic writing,
it is not necessary to hit the target on all five Ws and the H in
a single paragraph. But providing answers to these basic questions
in the course of your research and writing not only will help to
generate material to write about, but also will satisfy the reader's
desire to get all the available information on your subject. |
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