Journalists learns the Five W’s: who, what, when, where, why, to which how is frequently annexed. A competent news article should identify all those elements to be complete. The Romans had a similar mnemonic device, this hexameter line listing the elements of analysis:

QUIS, QUID, UBI, QUIBUS AUXILIIS, CUR, QUOMODO, QUANDO

That is: Who, what, where, by what means, why, how, when?

And to those, for investigative purposes, one might add the traditional question Cui bono? Who benefits?

This comes from a delightful book by Nicholas Ostler, Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, which many of you will want to run out and lay hands on. It reminds us that we (literate people, heirs of Western civilization) were not born yesterday and that a great deal of what we know, or think we know, or ought to know, was known long before us.