News and headline writers want to sell a story. Advertisers want to sell a product.

They both have one thing in common -- wanting to grab the audience and make them sit up and take notice, think or laugh. They do that with the use of words and the creative use of English the most descriptive and adaptable language in the world.

When I was at Essex FM and reading breakfast news, I was keen to make the bulletins bright and lively by using creative writing. I started to compile a list, on paper first of all but then transferred to a palmtop, of various phrases that could be used in headlines, teasers, payoffs or in the body of stories. These were lines collected from newspapers, magazines, adverts and other broadcasters.

This volume is now available to buy.

Some lines have been buried in the middle of otherwise staid articles, others have been headlines that have grabbed my attention. Some are, or have been adapted from, slogans and catch phrases. I have kept my ear open for new and clever lines heard everywhere from the radio station to the railway station. And I've consulted more than one thesaurus and dictionary.

  This is your own tool box of lines to open up when inspiration runs dry and you

  feel yourself tempted to use another well worn cliché. With this book at your side you'll be able to find a line that best suits your need, or at the very least one which will kick start your creativity in another direction.

  It's a word-bank of fresh and original lines for news scripts, headline writers,

  advertising copywriters, competition entrants, joke tellers and speech writers. Contained in the pages are around ten thousand cool phrases, rhymes, puns, alliterations to grab attention.

  It's the book which'll assign well-worn words and phased-out phrases to the cliché crusher!

  It's the base-camp from where you can kick-start your creativity.

  It's an ingenuous one-of-a-kind compendium.

Find-A-Line 2007 Edition OUT NOW!

There are nearly 10,000 phrases in around 2,000 categories.

Some of the are puns, many of them rather clever ones: about footwear: 'a womans right to shoes', about summer shirts: 'the right to bare arms'

Others are rhymes: 'noise annoys', 'a sex swap op'.

Some are alliterative, such as this entry under cancer, 'moles, melanomas and malignancies', or 'the great, the good and the gruesome'.

While some more are just cool phrases, such as the line 'roll up, roll up' to preface a story on wallpaper, or the suggested phrase about murder squad detectives who 'stay at the scene until they find something or are convinced theres nothing to be found'. Or the description of The Archers radio programme as 'the village people'.

Others are handy opposites: 'city slickers or city slackers', 'needy or greedy', or 'the best in the world - or out of this world?'

 

And there's a further collection of phrases simply linked with certain subjects, 'doctor's bedside manner' under health, or 'red carpet treatment' under the entry for fame, or describing a hotel as 'like something out of Fawlty Towers'.

"Find-A-Line is brilliant in its simplicity."

Dan O'Day

U.S Radio Consultant

There are lines for 70 different kinds of animals, 25 categories for parts of the body, 75 lines for Christmas and nearly 300 describing the weather -- and these aren't just stock phrases such as 'wet', 'sunny', 'cloudy' but ones such as 'get set to get wet', 'scorcher torture', 'a shroud of cloud'.

There are other major categories for travel and transport, sport, names, countries, shops, money, parts of the body, music...

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