Writing Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm curious to know if this style of writing (pattern) has a name. They can sometimes take up almost a full paragraph giving background about a specific person or subject when introducing them into an article.
"At the Saturday briefing, Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, co-author of the critically claimed book "XYZ", told us that..."
In news writing, it might be called an attribution or background clause or sentence. Reporters attribute a fact or description to a source; that is, they identify a person, publication, document as the source of the information. Those sentences often include background or identifying information, as in the question. I don't believe most reporters have a formal name for that -- a string of non-restrictive clauses with biographical information after referring to a person or source.
