Assignment #1: Noun and Verb Styles

I'm still having a tough time distinguishing the two styles in news writing, but I'll get the hang of it soon enough.

The following excerpt is from the New York Times online:

The closing of schools was one of the most contentious issues in the spring, as many parents criticized the city for keeping schools open even when large numbers of students were absent.

In New York and around the country, health officials have said they will be even more reluctant to shutter schools this fall because doing so caused disruptions to families and work schedules and did little to stop the spread of the virus.

But the mayor, who is running for re-election in November, took care to explain what steps the city would take in education settings. The city will provide free vaccinations, through nasal spray or shots, beginning in October at every public and private elementary school. The vaccinations will go to students whose parent gives permission, most likely in two vaccination sessions about four weeks apart.

I believe the above excerpt to be mostly verb-oriented in that writer is using verbs to highlight the actions involved in the paragraph instead of using nouns for rhythmic purposes. This may be a shot in the dark, but based on Lanham's verb style qualifications, it would seem that a sentence that expresses a complete thought without the use of prepositional phrases is more verbal. I get the feeling that a lot of newsy writing is on the verbal side because, as he points out, verb-style translations of a paragraph tend to cut the size in half, and news writing often strives for brevity.

It looks as though the first sentence of the second paragraph actually uses the noun-style, with its use of a preposition, and it's audibly drawn-out rhythmic qualities, and yet it kind of shifts back to verbal when it reads, "doing so caused disruptions to families and work schedules and did little to stop the spread of the virus." (Is it possible for individual paragraphs to read and feel as though they contain both styles? I'm not entirely sure.)

The final paragraph appears to be verbal, concisely stating what the city will do sequentially: it provides vaccinations, through a certain method, at this particular time, and the vaccinations will to go these people, at about this time. In examining the excerpt, its difficult to identify any particular tone or voice within, if only because this kind of neutral news is serving up facts. It is fairly concerned with rhythmic qualities, but not enough to concern itself with extra prepositions and lengthier sentences that might appear in a noun-style passage.

Second excerpt from the LA Times online:

In July, the House approved legislation that would give the Food and Drug Administration broad new powers and place new responsibilities on food producers. The bill would speed up the ability of health officials to track down the source of an outbreak and give the government the power to mandate a recall, rather than rely on food producers to voluntarily pull tainted products from the shelves.

The Senate is expected to take up its version in the fall, and the issue has become a high priority for the White House.

It is impossible to say whether new laws and tougher enforcement would have prevented the contamination of the Nestle cookie dough, which the company voluntarily pulled from stores hours after the government linked it to the outbreak.

The instant appearance of a preposition in the first paragraph later followed by "that would give" seems more reminiscent of noun style writing. The reoccurrence of "would" and "which" seem to lengthen the sentences, making it seem somewhat lengthier, especially when it takes on a "rather than" situation. The final paragraph flows nicely, and is marked by "contamination of" which, as Lanham suggests, makes the action disappear into the nouns. The prevention of contamination, being placed before the Nestle cookie dough, sounds like it's of lesser importance within that sentence alone.