Professor Pays Tribute to Newspaper English

1915

High Standard of Writing

"I well remember the pleasure with which, as a young man, I heard my venerable and practiced professor of rhetoric say that he supposed there was no work known to man more difficult than writing," said Prof. George H. Palmer, formerly of Harvard University. "Up to that time I had supposed its severities peculiar to myself." He goes on to recount the advantages which children of today enjoy over those of his own generation, and hopes that some of them will find the language he has used about the difficulty of writing extravagant. Then he says:

"Let me say, too, that since frequency has more to do with ease of writing than anything else, I count the newspaper men lucky because they are writing all the time, and I do not think so meanly of their product as the present popular disparagement would seem to require. It is hasty work, undoubtedly, and bears the marks of haste. But in my judgment in no period of the English language has there been so high an average of sensible, vivacious and informing sentences written as appears in our daily press.

"With both good and evil results, the distinction between book literature and speech literature is breaking down. Everybody is writing, apparently in verse and prose; and if the higher graces of style do not often appear, neither on the other hand do the ruder awkwardness and obscurities. A certain straightforward English is becoming established. A whole nation is learning the use of its mother tongue. Under such circumstances it is doubly necessary that anyone who is conscious of feebleness in his command of English should promptly and earnestly begin the cultivation of it."


Man and His Age

After a man reaches the age of fifty he begins to see insults in the newspapers to the effect that he is an old man. — Topeka Capital.

The Perils of War Correspondents

1878

A war correspondent of the London Times writes from Giurgevo on the Danube: When I descended I found I was not the only Englishman in the train. Col. Wellesley, our military representative at the emperor's headquarters, had also come down from Bucharest after a couple of days' stay there. He was bound for Poradim, whither I was also going, and, like me, he had to find a carriage for himself and luggage.

We placed the luggage outside in front of the station under the portico, and the colonel left his servant, Jagor, who is a Russian, in charge, with instructions to get himself something to eat in the meantime at the buffet. We had hardly quitted the station five minutes when we heard the sound of a shell tearing its way through the air above our heads. The people about the street, which was the main one, ran right and left, and we heard the dull explosion of the iron missile somewhere near the railway station.

We did not know at that moment what terrible havoc that piece of iron had done, and what a terrible fate we had only just escaped. We went on, thinking but lightly of this single shot, until we entered a chemist's shop. A minute afterward a person who entered the shop told us that three soldiers had been killed at the station.

Although we were quite near, we both jumped into an open fiacre standing in the street, and were driven up to the station. We thought that the colonel's servant, Jagor, had possibly been hit. As we drove up, the first thing which met our view outside the station under the portico, on the very spot where we had left our luggage, was a large mass of something partly covered with a gray overcoat. Could this be Jagor? We got out of the carriage and came near. It was not Jagor; it was a soldier, or all that was left of the poor fellow. One side had been torn completely away, and there he lay in a pool of his own blood. The ground was torn up all around him, and the wall of the building was splashed with blood. Windows were smashed, the portico had been broken through, and the stone pavement was thickly strewn with human remains.

Col. Wellesley looked around for Jagor. Hearing the carriage drive up, the faithful servant immediately came out of the station, and, much to our relief, was quite unhurt. But he had the narrowest escape imaginable.

He showed us our luggage which he had dragged into the ticket office directly after the fatal shot. It was covered with blood, Another soldier, also, lay inside smashed to death. Both poor fellows were standing by our luggage outside the station, having been asked by Jagor to keep an eye upon the things while he went into the buffet to get a little refreshment. Jagor had scarcely sat down in the room, through the window of which he could himself see the things, when the shell struck the portico and burst with a report that almost stunned him. One of the soldiers fell across the iron stove of the colonel's, and completely washed it with blood.

A Japanese Composing Room — Newspapers, Typesetting

1878

A Japanese Composing Room.

A Tokio (Japan) correspondent of the New York Evening Post, has written up the Nichi Nichi Shinbun or Daily News, the leading journal of the empire. The description of the composing room, as given below, will be found interesting reading:

Next to the editorial room is located the space set aside for the composing force. First we come to the proofreaders, two intelligent persons who have a high reputation for scholarship. The necessity for such attainments becomes apparent when we learn that a full font of type comprises fifty thousand characters, while no less than three thousand are in constant use and two thousand more in frequent employment. And not only must the proof-reader be careful to amend all grammatical slips and typographical errors, but he should have a quick eye for inelegances in the manuscript and for imperfections in the characters themselves.

Separated from the proof-readers by a low latticed railing is the office of the foreman, the magistrate of the cases, and beyond him again we reach the printers. The type is disposed about the room on long racks like those in a public reading room, and the aisles furnish a promenade wherein the compositor can labor in his vocation and take exercise simultaneously.

The matter when set is placed on galleys, and a proof taken. Then the foreman manipulates it into the shape in which the public see it. Four forms are used, each eleven by sixteen inches. The first — that is, the last — page is occupied by a display head, the information concerning number of issue, place and date of publication, price and days of appearance, which commonly follow the title, and government notifications. After these come editorial leading articles and paragraphs. The last — that is, the first — page is devoted to market reports, scientific information and advertisements, and with the official editorial matter makes up the outside forms, which are sent down to press at midnight.

On the "inside" we find the day's discoveries of the reporters and such editorial articles, communications, etc., as found no corner in the outside forms. Such is the routine "make up," but it is elastic enough, of course, to suit the journalistic requirements of the day. During the war, when Mr. Fukuchi was for a time at the front as a special correspondent, much space and attention was given to telegraphic news, but the lack of an associated press makes such matter rather costly, and only a limited amount appears. Each correspondent, however, is furnished with a private telegraphic code, and is empowered to send the journal by this means information that seems to justify the outlay.