These words all refer to a history or statement of actual or purported events. A report is an official or formal statement, often made after an investigation and usually by a subordinate to his superior: a policeman’s report of a burglary. Whereas an account is a factual statement of events or conditions, usually given by an eyewitness, a report is an authoritative finding, often one based interpretation and deliberation of evidence. Thus a farmer may given an account of a plane crash he observed; later a report of the crash might be drawn up by the Department of Civil Aviation.

Version and story purport to be statements of fact. A version is one-sided, although not always deliberately so; it merely represents one person’s or one party’s point of view, and always implies an alternative to several other contrasting accounts of the same event. Although some degree of scepticism is commonly associated with version , story is regarded with even greater doubt. Story may even be used to suggest a conscious distortion of the truth.

• An investigation of the crime brought to light several versions of what took place; Good detectives can usually spot a story concocted to throw off suspicion.

Story may, however, simply mean a person’s version of an incident, and need not imply the motive of conscious deception: His story is that somebody planted the stolen money in his flat. In the world of newspaper and magazine journalism, story is widely used to designate any report or article: a fire that made a page-one story ; running a story on oil exploration.