Back in the 1990s, Pulitzer Prize winning journo Steve Twomey circulated a memorandum at the San Jose Mercury News from the fictional "Lede Desk". In it: Thirteen rules for curbing the cliché in lede writing.

You can check out the full, and hilariously-written, list on the Scientific American website, which has reprinted the memo with Twomey's permission, but here are a couple of samples:

Back in the 1990s, Pulitzer Prize winning journo Steve Twomey circulated a memorandum at the San Jose Mercury News from the fictional "Lede Desk". In it: Thirteen rules for curbing the cliché in lede writing.

You can check out the full, and hilariously-written, list on the Scientific American website, which has reprinted the memo with Twomey's permission, but here are a couple of samples:

Rule one: "First, the good news: On one occasion, many years ago, this kind of lede worked. Now the bad news: It doesn’t anymore."

And, also:

Rule four: "Joe Reporter leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his chair and admitted that describing how someone was sitting was a pretty stupid way to begin a story."

Read the rest, and let us know which rules you're guilty of breaking.