thumb|American government poster created during [[World War 2|WWII featuring interrogatives]]

The Five Ws is a checklist used in journalism to ensure that the lead contains all the essential points of a story. As far back as 1913, reporters were taught that the lead should answer these questions about the situation being reported:

  • Who?
  • What?
  • Where?
  • Why?
  • When?

Journalism students are taught that these are the fundamental five 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?".

Use outside of journalism

In England and Wales, the Five Ws are used in Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 lessons (ages 7–14). In data analytics, the Five Ws are used in the first stage of the BADIR to identify the business problem and its context in an analytics request.

Militaries use the five Ws to convey the details of tactical tasks within a broader mission as part of the five paragraph order.

Origins in antiquity

The Five Ws are rooted in the seven questions used in ancient Greece to communicate stories clearly:

Although long attributed to Hermagoras of Temnos, in 2010, it was established that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is in fact the source of the elements of circumstance or Septem Circumstantiae. Thomas Aquinas had 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 his ' as 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).

<blockquote>For in acts we must take note of who did it, by what aids or instruments he did it (with), what he did, where he did it, why he did it, how and when he did it. 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:

<blockquote>Therefore it is not a pointless endeavor to divide these circumstances by kind and number; (1) the Who, (2) the What, (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 the Why.</blockquote>

Essentially, these elements of circumstances provide a theoretical framework that can be used to particularize, explain or predict any given set of circumstances of action. Hermagoras went so far as to claim that all hypotheses are derived from these seven circumstances:

<blockquote>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. 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 analyzing rhetorical questions since antiquity. The rhetor Hermagoras of Temnos, as quoted in pseudo-Augustine's ', applied Aristotle's "elements of circumstances" () as the loci of an issue:

:.

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

Aquinas

:.

:.

:.

:.

:.

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

In the 16th century, Thomas Wilson wrote in English verse:

In the United States in the 19th century, William Cleaver Wilkinson popularized 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 W's", but the application was rather different from that in journalism:

<blockquote>

"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 W's": "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.

</blockquote>

The "Five W's" (and one H) were memorialized by Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories (1902), in which a poem, accompanying the tale of The Elephant's Child, opens with:

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 the lead paragraph of an article was being characterized as old-fashioned and fallacious:

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 the five whys.

Etymology

In English, most of the interrogative words begin with the same letters, wh-; in Latin, most also begin with the same letters, -. This is not coincidental as they are cognates derived from the Proto-Indo-European interrogative pronoun root , reflected in Proto-Germanic as or and in Latin as -.

See also

  • Cluedo – Game about establishing the basic facts of a crime

References

de:Fragetechnik#Offene W-Fragen in der Praxis