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Writing Style Library

Press Release

A formal external announcement in news style: dateline, headline, a strong lead, a quote, and boilerplate.

Press Release

Section titled “Press Release”

The press release is a standardized broadcast format built to travel - from source to journalist to audience without editorial rewriting. Its discipline is the inverted pyramid: every piece of information is ranked by newsworthiness, with the most significant facts in the opening sentence. A reader who stops after the lead knows who, what, when, where, and why. A reader who finishes has the full story, an attributable quote, and the institutional context to file or publish without a follow-up call.

The format’s constraints are not arbitrary. The dateline fixes the announcement in time and geography. The headline frames the news angle in active voice. The mandatory quote provides a spokesperson voice without requiring the recipient to interview anyone. The boilerplate “About” paragraph belongs at the end precisely because it matters least to the story. The three-hash closing marker (###) signals to an editor that nothing follows - a convention that dates to wire-service teletype and survives because it is still useful.

Releases travel through layers of reception - PR wire, editorial inbox, news desk - and each layer applies additional compression. The format’s formality is a signal that the content has been legally cleared, approved, and is safe to quote as issued. That institutional signal is as important as the content itself. A release that reads like ad copy tells editors that the sender does not understand the convention and cannot supply accurate, quotable text.

Canonical template

Section titled “Canonical template”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[OR: EMBARGOED UNTIL [DATE/TIME]]


[HEADLINE: News-style subject-verb-object; present tense; 10 words or fewer]


[SUBHEAD: One-line amplifier of the headline - optional]


CITY, Month DD, YYYY - [Lead paragraph: the full story in 2-3 sentences. Who did what,
when, where, and why it matters. News first - no setup.]


[Body paragraph 2: Most important supporting detail.]


[Body paragraph 3: Secondary context, additional element, or background.]


"[Attributable quote in spokesperson voice - adds interpretation or enthusiasm that
straight news prose cannot carry.]" said [Full Name], [Title], [Organization].


[Optional second quote from a partner, customer, or analyst.]


[Closing paragraph: Forward-looking statement, availability, call to action, or next milestone.]


About [Organization]
[Boilerplate: 2-4 sentences describing the organization for readers encountering it
for the first time.]


###


Media Contact:
[Name]
[Title]
[Email]
[Phone]

When to use

Section titled “When to use”

Announcing a product launch, company milestone, partnership, or significant hire to external media. Distributing news via a wire service or media list for republication. Creating a citable, on-the-record artifact that journalists or analysts can quote directly. Anchoring a coordinated media campaign with a single authoritative source document. Building a historical archive of public announcements in a company newsroom or press room.

When not to use

Section titled “When not to use”

Internal communications, team updates, or all-hands announcements that have no external news angle. Thought leadership, opinion, or educational content better served by a blog post or whitepaper. Crisis communications requiring a conversational, empathetic tone rather than a formal news format.

Pairs well with

Section titled “Pairs well with”

journalist, executive, confident, matter-of-fact

Often confused with

Section titled “Often confused with”

blog-post-long-form: A blog post develops a perspective, argument, or narrative over multiple sections and invites the reader into a sustained piece of thinking. A press release reports a time-bound event and expects the reader to stop at any paragraph without losing the story; it is not an essay and does not develop ideas across sections.

whitepaper: A whitepaper makes a sustained argument backed by data, research, or technical detail, typically to educate or persuade a sophisticated audience over many pages. A press release announces a single event to media for republication; it does not develop an argument or ask the reader to work through evidence.

Tells

Section titled “Tells”
  • FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (or EMBARGOED UNTIL) header at the top of the document
  • Dateline in ALL-CAPS CITY format followed by the date and a dash preceding the lead paragraph
  • Lead paragraph answers who, what, when, where, and why in the first 2-3 sentences with no setup
  • At least one attributed quote from a named executive or spokesperson
  • Boilerplate “About [Organization]” section positioned at the close before contact information
  • Three-hash closing marker (###) signaling the end of copy
  • Media contact block with name, title, email, and phone for press inquiries

Anti-patterns

Section titled “Anti-patterns”
  • Burying the news by opening with company background, mission, or product history before stating what happened - The lead exists to deliver the news immediately; editors who cannot find the news angle in the first paragraph discard the release without reading further.
  • Loading the copy with superlatives and promotional language such as “innovative,” “revolutionary,” or “best-in-class” - Journalists strip or rewrite promotional copy; a release full of adjective-heavy claims signals that the sender does not understand news conventions and cannot produce quotable material.
  • Including a quote that was written entirely by the communications team with no meaningful input from the attributed executive - The quote is the only place in the format where a subjective voice is expected; generic or fabricated quotes are editorially useless, create legal risk, and editors may call to verify.
  • Using the format for a product deep-dive, opinion piece, or internal update that has no external, time-bound news angle - That collapses the distinction between this format and the confusable blog-post-long-form or whitepaper; a press release without a hard news hook is a misapplication of the broadcast format.

Failure modes

Section titled “Failure modes”
  • Over-formalizes - the release becomes so stiff and institutional that human voice disappears; every sentence is passive, the quote reads like committee output, and no reader would believe a real person said it - The press release is formal but it is still news, not a legal filing. The lead should be active voice. Read the lead and the quote aloud; if they fail the “would a radio anchor read this?” test, rewrite for directness.
  • Over-announces - treats every clause as equally important, loads every paragraph with claims, and loses the inverted pyramid discipline so the editor cannot tell what the story is - Rank every paragraph by the question “what happens if this is cut?” If nothing important is lost, cut it or move it to boilerplate. The first paragraph must stand alone as the complete story.

Instruction

Section titled “Instruction”
Write as a press release in standard news format. Structure the document as follows: open with
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, then a dateline (CITY, Month DD, YYYY), then a headline in active voice
that states the news in 10 words or fewer. Write a lead paragraph that answers who, what, when,
where, and why in 2-3 sentences with no setup - news first. Follow with body paragraphs in
inverted pyramid order, most newsworthy first. Include at least one attributed quote from a
named spokesperson that adds interpretation or enthusiasm in a human voice; the quote should not
simply restate what the body already says. Close with a boilerplate "About [Organization]"
paragraph, a three-hash marker (###), and a media contact block. Use active voice throughout.
Do not use superlatives, promotional adjectives, or language that a journalist would have to
strip before publication.

Template

Section titled “Template”

See the Press Release template.

Section titled “Related”

Pairs well with

Section titled “Pairs well with”

Journalist, Executive, Confident, Matter of Fact

Avoid with

Section titled “Avoid with”

Confessional, Playful, Devotional Reflection, Pastoral

Often confused with

Section titled “Often confused with”

Blog Post (Long Form), Whitepaper

Examples

Section titled “Examples”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fernbridge Software Retires Daily Standup for Global Engineering Team

Section titled “Fernbridge Software Retires Daily Standup for Global Engineering Team”

A 30-day pilot cut blocker response time to 18 minutes and ended a nightly 9:30pm call for engineers in India

SEATTLE, June 23, 2026 - Fernbridge Software has made asynchronous, written standups the permanent replacement for its daily 9am Pacific engineering meeting, following a 30-day pilot across its eleven-person engineering team spanning four time zones. The meeting had fallen at 9:30pm for engineers in India and produced roughly four minutes of decision-relevant content inside every fourteen-minute call. Engineers now post a structured written update to a shared channel by 10am their own local time instead of joining a live call.

Results held for the full pilot. On-time posting climbed from 78 percent in the first week to 85.5 percent in the second and stayed near that level through day 30. The median time between a flagged blocker and a substantive reply fell to 18 minutes, replacing a pattern where morning blockers often went unanswered until afternoon. Engineers based in India, whose attendance under the old system had averaged 3.2 of 5 sessions a week against 4.6 for US-based engineers, posted an update every weekday of the pilot for the first time in the team’s history.

Under the new format, engineers write three fields - what shipped, what is in progress, and what is blocked or at risk - and tag whoever can resolve a blocker directly. An on-call engineer checks the shared channel each morning and responds to flagged blockers within 30 minutes during business hours. The daily meeting is replaced by a single 60-minute working session held weekly and reserved for discussion that genuinely needs everyone live; two concerns raised mid-pilot, including on-call triage load, were resolved by tightening the update format rather than by changing the rotation.

“We were not trying to make a statement about remote work. We were trying to stop asking a third of the team to sit through a status meeting after 9pm,” said Jordan Ellis, Engineering Manager, Fernbridge Software. “The async format gives us back the information the meeting was supposed to produce, without the time zone tax on the people least able to push back on it.”

Fernbridge Software says the format is now standard practice for the engineering organization, is included in onboarding for every new engineering hire, and has no further trial review scheduled. The company will revisit the format only if a future retrospective surfaces a problem it cannot handle.

About Fernbridge Software Fernbridge Software’s engineering organization is distributed across four time zones, with engineers based in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. The company designs its internal processes for a distributed team by default and documents changes so new hires can run them without extra onboarding. Fernbridge Software is hiring engineers in all four of its current time zones.

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Media Contact: Jordan Ellis Engineering Manager, Fernbridge Software jordan.ellis@example.com (555) 555-0142