The Bloomberg Way, no buts about it

From a Vanity Fair piece on Bloomberg News, a brief mention of The Bloomberg Way, the style guide used by writers at the financial news and services company (emphasis mine):

Bloomberg News stories, it declared, “have a structure that is as immutable as the rules that govern sonnets and symphonies.” Every story needed to include “the Five Fs”: first, fastest, factual, final, and future. Leads were to be exactly four paragraphs long, comprising the stating of a theme, a quotation in “plain English from someone who backs up that theme,” numbers-based details that further support it, and an explanation of what’s at stake. The use of “but” was banned — it forced readers “to deal with conflicting ideas in the same sentence.” Words such as “despite” and “however” were to be avoided for the same reason.

Are there any copies of The Bloomberg Way online? I’d love to check it out. (via surowiecki)

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