| Show TEACHERS AND EDITORS the new york evening bost haj the following question submitted by a collego will not writing for a newspaper ruin onos st ilc the reply makes good reading much to be appreciated precia ted by both sides brought into the discussion school teachers and newspapermen pa we sympathize thoroughly with the amateurs dread of that day when writing under picture for sordid dellaia shall vitiate his taste shall make him so careless in choice of words and structure of that he can no longer bank with stevenson Steven soa and pater we admire his lofty ideals and we regret hat he can not dwell forever in such a paradise of preciosity as college journalism was when we still had a style to be spoiled yet there are certain fallacies into which undergraduates are sometimes led they are alks ly to be deceived by the traditional exchange of courtesies between their professor of aad the busy editor the tale begins gentlemen let me caution you once more against too much reading of newspapers to fritter away your valuable time over the trivialities of the daily pi ess will not only sap our intellectual vigor but will hopelessly spoil our style the editor who is so often accused of being less than human is naturally provoked into rendering railing for railing there Is not ho saya in his haste a teacher of composition who can write au interesting by a malign fate the dullest writer in a college faculty is always chosen pio fessor of rhetoric he la pedantic and frigid incapable of anything but quibbling and hairsplitting hair splitting I 1 thank heaven I 1 have forgotten all he tried to teach me both the professor and the editor we regret to observe have been be into extreme utterances to the doubting senior who will trust his pretty style to our rude mercies continues the kind but firm editor we extend a hearty welcome when he lias written a subject to the dregs sprawled over inordinate space and buried points under a heap it dry detail he will be vastly by the swiftness and precision with which the skilled copyreader copy reader picks from the sau stuff the vital features plays them up and throws away the rest the senior himself will soon learn to display his salient facts in the opening sentences to arrange paragraphs so that in a squeeze on the makeup make up the less important may be quickly dropped out and to cut a tiresome story of two thousand words into one of five hundred that from beginning to end is alive he will discover that there are many things never dreamt of in the philosophy of the theorists who at college corrected his themes in red ink and if learning these lessons spoils ones style his worst fears may be realized |
