Five Ws

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In journalism, the Five Ws, also known as the Five Ws (and one H) or simply the Six Ws, is a concept in news style, research, and in police investigations that most people consider to be fundamental. It is a formula for getting the "full" story on something. The maxim of the Five Ws (and one H) is that in order for a report to be considered complete it must answer a checklist of six questions, each of which comprises an interrogative word:

who?
what?
where?
when?
why?
how?

The principle underlying the maxim is that each question should elicit a factual answer — facts that it is necessary to include for a report to be considered complete. Importantly, none of these questions can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no". In the context of the "news style" for newspaper reporting, the Five W's are types of facts that should be contained in the "lead" (sometimes spelled lede to avoid confusion with the typographical term "leading" or similarly spelled words), or first two or three paragraphs of the story, after which more expository writing is allowed.

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The Elephant's Child

The "Five Ws" (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 the lines

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.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five.
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men:
But different folk have different views:
I know a person small —
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes —
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!