5 Common Types Of Leads with Examples.

The beginning sentences of a story called leads. Its reflect on what the story is trying to accomplish. The lead of the story convey essential information, set the tone and entice people to continue reading. There are 5 common types of leads such as summary lead, punch lead, contrast lead, anecdotal lead and descriptive lead.

Summary Lead

Summary lead is the most common and widely used lead especially for reporting breaking news or developing a story. It brief but comprehensive manner of inform readers about the main idea of the story or conveys its news value. The summary lead state the facts and include the who, what, when, where, why and sometimes how of the event. Below is a summary lead about a foreign worker dies and two in hospital.

The lead has answered most of the 5W1H questions by providing: Worker (Who), Died / Semi-conscious state (What), Inhaling dangerous fumes from a manhole (Why), In front of a petrol station along the Ipoh-Lumut Road (Where).

Punch Lead

Punch lead uses strong verbs and short sentences which will attract reader’s attention. This type of lead consists of a statement that creates an impact and gives a jolt to the readers so that they will take notice.

The phrase “US ban on Huawei a ‘cynically timed’ blow in escalating trade war” gave punch explains that US ban on Huawei is the way that is concerned only with one's own interests and disregards accepted as it causes a rapid increase in economic conflict. This will influence readers to sit up and take notice of the story.

Contrast Lead

Contrast lead uses two contrasting thoughts or two sentences that are exactly opposite to each other in the opening paragraph to make a strong statement. This lead is used for all kind of stories such as news, feature and reviews but not often for breaking news. For example, tragedy against happiness, new against old and other methods to do it. 

The lead “The brutal killing of a young, homeless woman has renewed discussion in Australia about violence against women” shows that the news is about the murder of a homeless young woman. On the other hand, the rise of discussion about violence against women in Australia. This shows two contrast thoughts of murder against discussion that are exactly opposite to each other in the opening paragraph.

Anecdotal Lead

The anecdote lead needs to have a purpose and needs to enhance the story. This lead is known as a slice of the feelings, results and specifics of the bigger story you are writing. Anecdotal lead is rarely used for breaking news but works well for soft stories and news-based features.

As we look into the example above, the lead shows Indian election authorities have cancelled voting in a constituency in the southern state of Tamil Nadu due to attempted vote-buying. The lead has created interest among the readers to continue reading on the 'vote buying' as a return for cash, electronic gadgets and even goats.

Descriptive Lead

This lead create visual impact to describe the scene or person that makes up the subject of the story. Descriptive lead will give more impact to the story by graphically portraying the scene. It will create an image in reader’s mind with the expressive terms and vocabularies.

Instead of using a normal summary lead, this lead has informed how does the disaster was destroyed people’s houses and soul. As the writer stated that rescue workers used heavy equipment, it shows the impact of disaster attack. This lead makes the readers imagine the scene while reading “killing at least 20 people, collapsing houses and cutting power to millions of homes”.