Glossary
Journalist Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential journalist terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key journalist vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in journalist training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- AP Style
- Associated Press writing rules.
- Attribution
- Saying where information came from.
- Beat
- A topic a reporter covers.
- Byline
- The writer’s name.
- Correction
- Fixing an error publicly.
- Deadline
- When a story is due.
- Embargo
- A delay on publishing.
- Fact-checking
- Verifying information.
- FOIA
- Freedom of Information Act.
- Inverted pyramid
- Most important information first.
- Lede
- The opening of a story.
- Nut graf
- A paragraph explaining why a story matters.
- Off the record
- Information not for publication.
- On the record
- Information that can be published with a name.
- Source
- A person or document providing information.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Journalist practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Journalist training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.