Codes and Conventions of The Times and The Sun.

Semiotics is the study of signs.

There are two main types of newspapers, tabloids, broadsheets and compacts. The Sun is a tabloid and The Times is a broadsheet. Each of these types of newspapers have different conventions. 

Tabloids are known for having very bold and big headlines, mainly sans serif, which are normally comedic or contain some type of pun. Also, tabloids contain a lot more pictures on the front page compared to the text and a lot of the photos are there to catch people’s attention as they could be very revealing photos. Because there are more pictures there is going to be more text which allows it to be a lot easier to read. On this copy of The Sun you can easily see that the paper contains a lot more photos than text and the text on the front page is very limited.                                       

Within a tabloid newspaper there are different codes and conventions which are:

Splash- The splash is the main story on the front of the newspaper.

Masthead- The masthead is the title and the logo of the newspaper.

Pug- The pug is normally at the top left and right hand corners of the page which normally display promotions and special offers. They can change from week to week, but you may also see some occur again. They will be tailored to the audience, hence why The Times does not have a pug.

Strapline- The strapline is the extra introductory headline to the headline.

Photograph- the choice of photo is very important as it can influence how the story us portrayed to the audience.

Compared to tabloids, broadsheets have different codes and conventions. Broadsheets are more serious and contain more information. Also, the headlines are more straight to the point and doesn’t normally contain any puns with booth of the titles because a broadsheets purpose isn’t to entertain its more to inform people of issues going on around the world. On the front page of a broadsheet there is a lot more text than tabloids and not as many pictures. 

The Times is a broadsheet newspaper. As you can see from the image the front page has a lot of text and only one picture which is related to the article.

 Within a broadsheet newspaper there are different codes and conventions, these are:

Byline- byline is where the name of the reporter is on the beginning of the article.

Cross-head- crosshead is the subheadings which appear in the text of the article.

Caption- the caption is typed text under the photo which is explaining the image.