This weekend I finished the second of my two assignments for the wedding mag. It publishes once a year, so while it pays better than the student newspaper and I can use more of 'my style'... it's - once a year. But anyway.

Already I can tell that writing for the student newspaper has improved the way I write. I think my propensity to simply slap big, long quotes down with no commentary other than a "he said/she said" must be some holdover from high school. If I don't have to summarize or put any of my own thoughts in there, I take up space, I avoid the scary part that earns me a grade.

Well... not smart, at least in newspaper writing. As the girl who reviewed my last student news article said, people tend to see, read and remember the first and last parts of a paragraph, an very little in the middle. And when you're reading a news publication, you're on a different timeframe then you are sitting down with a magazine. You're skimming headlines, scanning the article for things that jump out at you. Big, fat paragraphs - dense, undistinguished - will merely push your reader farther away.

Not to mention, quotes are powerful weaponry, but they lose their power if you scatter them TOO liberally.

And naturally I can be a little more personal in a wedding mag. Maybe throw a personal pronoun in there or make silly jokes.

So there's differences, and working at the stu. newspaper has definitely opened my eyes on ways to improve.

But as I told my mom yesterday, I still don't know what I'm doing. I really do not have a larger picture of how newspaper and magazine writing is different. I generally follow my instincts, but basically I am a babe in the woods.

Any thoughts?