Five Ws

Not to be confused with5 whys.

For other uses, see5WandW5.

American government poster created during the WWII featuringinterrogatives

The Five Wsis a checklist used injournalismto ensure that the "lead" or "lede" contains all the essential points of a story. As far back as 1913, reporters were taught that the lead/lede should answer these questions:

• Who?- Asking about a person or animal
• What?- Asking about an object or action
• When?- Asking about a time
• Where?- Asking about a place
• Why?- Asking about a reason or cause
• How?- Asking about the way something is done

In modern times, journalism students are still taught that these are the fundamental six questions of newswriting.Reporters also use the "5 Ws" to guide research and interviews and to raise important ethical questions, such as "How do you know that?".

Nomenclature

There are many other names for this checklist. Some common ones are:The Five Ws and H,The 5 Ws of Journalism,Six Honest-Serving Men.

Usage outside of journalism

In the United Kingdom (excluding Scotland), the Five Ws are used inKey Stage 2andKey Stage 3lessons (ages 7–14).In data analytics, the Five Ws are used in the first stage of theBADIRto identify the business problem and its context in an analytics request.

Origins in Antiquity

According to Inoslav Bešker, Professor of Philology at the University of Split in Croatia, the5 Wsare rooted in the seven questions used in ancient Greece to communicate stories clearly:

Although long attributed toHermagoras of Temnos,in 2010, it was established thatAristotle'sNicomachean Ethicsis in fact the source of the elements of circumstance orSeptem Circumstantiae.Thomas Aquinashad much earlier acknowledged Aristotle as the originator of the elements of circumstances, providing a detailed commentary on Aristotle's system in his "Treatise on human acts" and specifically in part one of two Q7 "Of the Circumstances of Human Acts". Aquinas examines the concept of Aristotle's voluntary and involuntary action in hisSumma Theologiaeas well as a further set of questions about the elements of circumstance.Primarily, he asks "Whether a circumstance is an accident of a human act" (Article 1), "Whether Theologians should take note of the circumstances of human acts?" (Article 2), "Whether the circumstances are properly set forth (in Aristotle's) third book of Ethics" (Article 3) and "Whether the most important circumstances are 'Why' and 'In What the act consists'?" (Article 4).

For in acts we must take note ofwhodid it, by what aids or instruments he did it (with),whathe did,wherehe did it,whyhe did it,howandwhenhe did it.

For Aristotle, the elements are used to distinguish voluntary or involuntary action, a crucial distinction for him.These elements of circumstances are used by Aristotle as a framework to describe and evaluate moral action in terms of What was or should be done, Who did it, How it was done, Where it happened, and most importantly for what reason (Why), and so on for all the other elements:

Therefore it is not a pointless endeavor to divide these circumstances by kind and number; (1) theWho,(2) theWhat,(3) around what place (Where) or (4) in which time something happens (When), and sometimes (5) with what, such as an instrument (With), (6) for the sake of what (Why), such as saving a life, and (7) the (How), such as gently or violently…And it seems that the most important circumstances are those just listed, including theWhy.

For Aristotle, ignorance of any of these elements can imply involuntary action:

Thus, with ignorance as a possibility concerning all these things, that is,the circumstances of the act,the one who acts in ignorance of any of them seems to act involuntarily, and especially regarding the most important ones. And it seems that the most important circumstances are those just listed, including theWhy

In thePolitics,Aristotle illustrates why the elements are important in terms of human (moral) action:

I mean, for instance (a particular circumstance or movement or action), How could we advise the Athenians whether they should go to war or not, if we did not know their strength (How much), whether it was naval or military or both (What kind), and how great it is (How many), what their revenues amount to (With), Who their friends and enemies are (Who), what wars, too they have waged (What), and with what success; and so on.

Essentially, these elements of circumstances provide a theoretical framework that can be used to particularize, explain or predictanygiven set of circumstances of action. Hermagoras went so far as to claim thatallhypothesesare derived from these seven circumstances:

In other words, no hypothetical question, or question involving particular persons and actions, can arise without reference to these circumstances, and no demonstration of such a question can be made without using them.

In any particular act or situation, one needs to interrogate these questions in order to determine the actual circumstances of the action.

It is necessary for students of virtue to differentiate between the Voluntary and Involuntary; such a distinction should even prove useful to the lawmaker for assigning honors and punishments.

This aspect is encapsulated by Aristotle inRhetoricasforensic speechand is used to determine"The characters and circumstances which lead men to commit wrong, or make them the victims of wrong"to accuse or defend. It is this application of the elements of circumstances that was emphasised by latter rhetoricians.

Usage in Rhetoric

Even though the classical origin of these questions as situated in ethics had long been lost, they have been a standard way of formulating or analyzingrhetorical questionssince antiquity.The rhetor Hermagoras of Temnos, as quoted inpseudo-Augustine'sDe Rhetorica,applied Aristotle's "elements of circumstances" (μόρια περιστάσεως)as thelociof an issue:

Quis, quid, quando, ubi, cur, quem ad modum, quibus adminiculis.

(Who, what, when, where, why, in what way, by what means)

Aquinasalso refers to the elements as used byCiceroinDe Inventione(Chap. 24 DD1, 104) as:

Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando.

Similarly,Quintiliandiscussedloci argumentorum,but did not put them in the form of questions.

Victorinusexplained Cicero's application of the elements of circumstances by putting them into correspondence with Hermagoras's questions 5W's and an H:

quis=persona; quid=factum; cur=causa; ubi=locus; quando=tempus; quemadmodum = modus; quib/adminiculis=facultas

Julius Victoralso lists circumstances as questions.

Boethius"made the seven circumstances fundamental to the arts of prosecution and defense":

Quis, quid, cur, quomodo, ubi, quando, quibus auxiliis.

(Who, what, why, how, where, when, with what)

The question form was taken up again in the 12th century byThierry of ChartresandJohn of Salisbury.

To administer suitablepenancetosinners,the 21st canon of theFourth Lateran Council(1215) enjoined confessors to investigate both sins and the circumstances of the sins. The question form was popular for guiding confessors, and it appeared in several different forms:

Quis, quid, ubi, per quos, quoties, cur, quomodo, quando.

Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando.

Quis, quid, ubi, cum quo, quotiens, cur, quomodo, quando.

Quid, quis, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando.

Quid, ubi, quare, quantum, conditio, quomodo, quando: adiuncto quoties.

The method of questions was also used for the systematicexegesisof a text.

In the 16th century,Thomas Wilsonwrote in English verse:

Who, what, and where, by what helpe, and by whose:
Why, how, and when, doe many things disclose.

In the United States in the 19th century,William Cleaver Wilkinsonpopularized the "Three Ws" – What? Why? What of it? – as a method of Bible study in the 1880s, although he did not claim originality. This eventually became the "Five Ws", but the application was rather different from that in journalism:

"What? Why? What of it?" is a plan of study of alliterative methods for the teacher emphasized by Professor W.C. Wilkinson not as original with himself but as of venerable authority. "It is, in fact," he says, "an almost immemorial orator's analysis. First the facts, next the proof of the facts, then the consequences of the facts. This analysis has often been expanded into one known as" The Five Ws ":" When? Where? Who? What? Why? "Hereby attention is called, in the study of any lesson: to the date of its incidents; to their place or locality; to the person speaking or spoken to, or to the persons introduced, in the narrative; to the incidents or statements of the text; and, finally, to the applications and uses of the lesson teachings.

The "Five Ws" (and one H) were memorialized byRudyard Kiplingin hisJust So Stories(1902), in which a poem, accompanying the tale ofThe Elephant's Child,opens with:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

By 1917, the "Five Ws" were being taught in high-school journalism classes,and by 1940, the tendency of journalists to address all of the "Five Ws" within thelead paragraphof an article was being characterized as old-fashioned and fallacious:

The old-fashioned lead of the five Ws and the H, crystallized largely by Pulitzer's "new journalism"and sanctified by the schools, is widely giving way to the much more supple and interesting feature lead, even on straight news stories.

All of you know about – and I hope all of you admit the fallacy of – the doctrine of the five Ws in the first sentence of the newspaper story.

Starting in the 2000s, the Five Ws were sometimes misattributed to Rudyard Kipling (referred to as "The Kipling Method" ), especially in the management and quality literature,and contrasted with thefive whys.

Etymology

See also:Indo-European vocabulary § Pronouns and particles

In English, most of theinterrogative wordsbegin with the same letters,wh-;inLatin,most also begin with the same letters,qu-.This is not a coincidence, as they arecognatesderived from theProto-Indo-Europeaninterrogative pronoun rootk^wo-,reflected inProto-Germanicasχ^wa-orkh^wa-and in Latin asqu-.

See also

• Bury the lede– Prose style used for news reportingPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Five whys– Iterative interrogative technique
• Inverted pyramid (journalism)– Communication of major details before minor details
• Lasswell's model of communication– Early influential model of communication
• Lead (journalism)– Opening paragraph of an article, chapter, or other written workPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Means, motive, and opportunity– Process that attempts to determine the facts of a crime and circumstancesPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Cluedo– Game about establishing the basic facts of a crime