NEWSPAPER COMPOSITION--THE ART OF WRITING IN SIMPLE YET ENTERTAINING
FASHION
The young man just starting in journalism is asked to write in the
simplest words and the shortest sentences at his command. He is told
that the reader wants facts rather than elegances of expression and
that the plainest language is the best newspaper style.
By plain language is not meant the language of the child’s primer,
but rather the use of good Saxon concrete nouns and active verbs in
sentences not embellished with verbose phrases. Nevertheless, when
editors tell the young reporter to use the plainest language they mean
usually that they will be satisfied with it in his routine reporting.
But they encourage the study of “how to produce rich effects by the use
of familiar words,” how to write not only with steadiness and strength,
but also with those little embellishments of incidental word and phrase
that lift the work above the commonplace. And they unceasingly urge the
necessity of good writing--for not anywhere is good writing appreciated
more than in a newspaper office.
To write the simple language requires much study and practice--more,
indeed, than to write the other kind. It is natural for people,
children especially, to use simple words, but the schools and
colleges have taught, until within a few years, the writing of
rather high-sounding prose. Textbooks have reflected Dr. Johnson’s
ornate paragraphs, Macaulay’s massive profundities, Washington
Irving’s beautifully rounded florid sentences, and Sir Walter Scott’s
superlatives. For years and years they were commended to students
of literature for imitation. The effect of this teaching remains.
We find it difficult to write in the same simplicity with which we
talk. It does not come natural to us. The editor gave fine advice to
the cartoonist from whom he wanted an article. Said the cartoonist:
“He just offered me one suggestion--inasmuch as I was not a regular
writer--that I refrain from trying to write and simply tell in my own
words as though I were telling it to my wife.” That’s it: refrain from
trying to write if you wish to write in simple language and simple
style.
It is well enough to write as you talk if you are a good talker.
Hundreds of articles of advice in the last fifty years have urged
young men to write as they talk. But almost all talk is without
study, is commonplace, is not the expression of consecutive thought,
is disjointed construction. It is recognized that dictated articles
have less finish than those penned. Nevertheless, the direct way, the
simplest way is undoubtedly the best way of writing. Emerson says: “The
speech of the street is incomparably more forceful than the speech of
the academy.” Lafcadio Hearn says of Kipling: “No one has managed to
produce great effects with so few words.”
But why speak of it as “newspaper style,” when there isn’t any such
thing? Almost every kind of writing is used by newspapers. All kinds
of literature are printed in them--the scholarly essay, the article of
argument, the expository editorial paragraph, the story of fiction,
the language of verse, the consideration of art, music, the play,
all sorts of description of all kinds of happenings in every part
of our old earth--and all are written without uniformity of diction
or construction. There is no style that the newspaper rejects. The
experienced editor seeks diversity of writing and of topic in every
column. He studies to that end.
Some style of writing is so plain that you do not notice it. It is
like the well dressed man whose clothing is so simple and appropriate
that it is not attracting attention wherever he goes. Merimee said of
Stendhal that he despised mere style and insisted that a writer had
attained perfection when we remember his ideas without recalling his
phrases. Of George Saintsbury, the English critic, it was said: “He
always thought it of more importance to utter the thought than to care
about the form of utterance.... If he had given more attention to style
we should have been deprived of some of the benefits of his knowledge.”
Indeed, some great newspaper narratives are of such absorbing interest
in themselves--great disasters like the sinking of the _Lusitania_ or
the _Titanic_--that the reader’s attention is entirely concentrated
on the facts and he does not notice the diction or the construction.
No matter how disjointed or horribly written the narrative may be he
finishes it with the impression that he has read a great article.
Nevertheless, every article is the better for good telling. And
probably no greater newspaper accomplishment exists than the ability
to write well. It is of increasing value as the young man goes on to
higher grade work.
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in a lecture to the Cambridge students urges
them to study writing and to practice writing, to write and rewrite
with intent to gain facility in diction and in the fashioning of
sentences, and especially to seek to make their prose “accurate,
perspicuous, persuasive, and appropriate.” He would insure greater
accuracy by the study and practice of the use of words. Thought and
speech being inseparable, it follows that we cannot use the humblest
processes of thought--cannot resolve to take our bath hot or cold, or
decide what to order for breakfast--without forecasting it in some form
of words. Words, in fine, he urges, are the only currency in which we
can exchange thought even with ourselves. Does it not follow, then,
that the more accurately we use words the closer definition we shall
give to our thoughts? “And by drilling ourselves to write perspicuously
we train our minds to clarify our thought, since language is the
expression of thought. The first aim of speech is to be understood
and the more clearly we write the more easily and surely we will be
understood. Not to be understood is to be a sloven in speech.”
Lafcadio Hearn urged the students of the University of Tokyo to study
the construction of sentences--to write them over and over again until
they were nearly perfect, saying:
A thing once written is not literature.... No man can produce
real literature at one writing.... To produce even a single
sentence of good literature requires that the text be written at
least three times.... For literature more than for any other art
the all-necessary thing is patience.
He advised the students to write a practice piece and put it away for
a week. Then to revise it and put it away again, and to continue the
process of revision until they could improve it no more.
Tolstoy rewrote his important work three or four times. Rossetti
revised “The Blessed Damosel” in many editions until the last was quite
unlike the first. Tennyson changed his productions over and again. Gray
was fourteen years in perfecting the “Elegy.” It is notorious that Sir
Walter Scott’s later novels, written at great speed, are much inferior
to his earlier more leisurely work. Samuel Butler’s masterpiece “The
Way of All Flesh” was under construction for twelve years.
All literary history furnishes examples of great authors who toiled
long over their manuscripts. Macaulay devoted more time to revising
his essays than to writing them. Their superiority over his history,
as literary products, is revealed by study of them. The history was
written more hurriedly. The essays are the product of nearly one
hundred years ago, but they serve to illustrate the possibilities
of our language and the beauties of thoughtful writing and intense
thinking. We look elsewhere in vain for such adroit phrasing and such
thunder-claps of climax. Study them, young man!
Some present-day writers criticize Macaulay for his long-drawn
sentences, his reiteration and his wanderings from the narrative into a
confusion of details. Yet Macaulay was imitated by essayists for fifty
years. His style was the vogue. And Macaulay in turn had both praised
and criticized in no feeble fashion his great predecessor, Dr. Samuel
Johnson, who had been the vogue for nearly a hundred years.
The men of greatest reputation as critics, Sainte-Beuve, Edmund Gosse,
Macaulay, Saintsbury and others, put intensive study into what they
wrote. If they were to review a book they made a study of the subject
of the book and of the life and mentality of the author: and sometimes
their production was of more use to the world than the book itself.
Their works are not so much read in this money-making age, but they are
among the great contributions to thoughtful literature and the student
of journalism will read them with great profit to himself. For your own
work is to be thoughtful work--work intended to persuade and influence
readers to your own way of thinking.
Writing for newspapers differs from other literary work in this: the
newspaper writer has little opportunity for revision. Almost all
articles for daily sheets are written at a single sitting. The writers
of editorial articles have several hours in which to compose and
usually they get a proof sheet for revision. The writers of short news
articles may read and correct their manuscript. But in the big offices
as soon as the reporter who is writing an article of any considerable
length has finished two or three pages they are grabbed by an office
boy, hurried to a copy reader who revises them as best he may and
rushes them to the composing room to be typed. The writer does not see
his pages again, does not read them over, even, after writing them. All
big reports--stories of great disasters, of football matches, of public
meetings or demonstrations are prepared with this haste.
The play house and opera critics compose under these same trying
conditions with no opportunity for leisurely thought or revision. It is
difficult, indeed, to write of a great performance in a whirlwind of
hurry, with less than two hours for deliberate and consecutive thought.
The French critic’s way of presenting a news paragraph in the edition
following the performance and reserving a carefully prepared review for
a later-date publication commends itself; but the American newspapers
continue to print exhaustive comments on first-night performances two
or three hours after the fall of the curtain. The opera critic has the
advantage of attending rehearsals of new operas and he may prepare
parts of his article in advance, but rehearsals are spiritless, for
performers have not the inspiration and response of the audience.
Intensity of thought and concentration must engross the newspaper
writer. He must prepare himself by study and practice to throw every
atom of his mental vitality into the work, to write immediately and
without expectation of revision exactly what should appear in the
newspaper. Mind discipline is a powerful factor. The man must school
himself to work under conditions of mental anguish, physical distress,
heart sorrow or unhappiness of any sort. He cannot surrender to moods,
whims, or to physical sensations. He must continue hour after hour, day
after day, with the same hurry-up speed. As in crowded Broadway, if you
cannot keep up with the procession you must be trodden on or take to a
side street, so must the active newspaper man everlastingly keep going.
It is largely a matter of mind discipline, of study and of practice, of
intense mental concentration and of swiftness of thought.
Please do not undervalue the priceless benefits of practice--of
practice that will give skill in saying exactly what you want to say
the first time you say it. In leisurely writing you may rewrite and
change and make perfect, but in newspaper writing you have one dash
only at it without much opportunity for change or revision. Your
reputation as a newspaper writer hangs on that one attempt. You can
cultivate the gift of ready speech in writing just as many a finished
orator has cultivated it in speaking.
It is said of President Woodrow Wilson that early in his youth he
appreciated the advantages of ready speech and set about to improve
himself in its use. He practiced speaking long and constantly. In
the seclusion of his room he conducted imaginary debates, talking to
himself on first one side and then the other of some public question.
On his walks, while a student, he addressed the crags and peaks, the
winding rivers, the peaceful meadows--all for practice in the quick
use of language, the shading of sentences and the putting of emphasis
on climaxes of thought and conclusion. And he became one of the most
interesting and convincing and scholarly public speakers this country,
or any other country for that matter, has ever known.
The young writer should seek to rise above the commonplace. It was said
of Machiavelli that “having adopted some of the maxims then generally
received he arranged them more luminously and expressed them more
forcibly than any other writer.” The young writer should cultivate the
art of making his words and sentences exude the very spirit of the
occasion--the art of describing joyous events with joyous words and of
shadowing melancholy happenings in the language of gloom. He should
seek the faculty of “making obscure truth pleasing, of making repulsive
truth attractive.” Let him follow the counsel of a distinguished critic
who says:
Choose concrete nouns rather than vague, abstract woolly ones.
Use straightforward speech rather than circumlocution.
Remember that the first virtue, the touchstone of masculine style
is the use of the active verb and concrete noun. When you write
in the active voice, “They gave him a silver teapot” you write
as a man. When you write, “He was made the recipient of a silver
teapot” you write jargon.
Avoid overworked words is common advice to young journalists. An
article in the _Writer_ has much to say of ways by which the constant
use of the word “said” may be prevented. “Said” sometimes becomes
monotonous, especially in the dialogue of fiction; but almost always
another verb may be found to express the author’s meaning. The _Writer_
printed a list of three hundred and eighty-two verbs, found in about
fifty magazine stories, which had been used instead of “said.”
Frequently the use of a verb helps to make more concise as well as
to avoid the word “said.” “‘It hurts,’ said John, in a complaining
tone,” is not so good as “‘It hurts,’ John complained.” Again, “‘Please
help me,’ said the beggar in pitiful beseeching appeal,” is better
expressed by “‘Please help me,’ the beggar pleaded.” The language is
rich in verbs.
Another greatly overworked word, and a slow word as well, is the word
“show.” It does seem as though the average newspaper writer cannot
think of any other word when he writes that “this action”--or “this
event”--or “this conclusion”--or “this computation shows that”--etc.,
when he might say, attests, evinces, betokens, bespeaks, implies,
indicates, proves--or any other suitable verb of the twenty-five or
more he may find in a thesaurus.
Constant looseness of speech is found in the use of explanatory phrases
that might be expressed by a single verb. The verb is the heart of
language life, the soul of expression. Why, for instance, do we write,
“He reflected on the situation” when “he cogitated” would express all?
Let us illustrate a bit more:
He spoke reprovingly to the boy. He chided the boy.
He spoke in a mocking, deriding manner. He jeered.
His breath came convulsively and brokenly. He gasped.
They exchanged idle words and gossip. They babbled.
He gave utterance again to the thought. He echoed the thought.
He was filled with wonder. He marveled.
He busied himself with the affairs of his neighbors. He meddled.
He thought over the situation. He meditated.
He uttered a suppressed groan. He moaned.
She spoke in low indistinct words. She mumbled.
His was an exhibition of empty talk. He palavered.
I am aware that these things are elementary--exceedingly elementary,
but they are of utmost import to young newspaper writers. Slovenly,
disjointed, confused diction must retard your progress.
It was constant study that made Dana and Greeley the great journalists
that they were. Neither of them wasted a minute. If at the close of
the day’s work Dana’s final proof sheet was promised to him in seven
minutes he withdrew from the little revolving book-rack on his desk a
copy of the Greek Testament and utilized the seven minutes by reading
it. Never was a question of fact raised but he joined in the search
for the truth of it in the most enthusiastic manner. His zeal and his
interest were a source of inspiration to the staff. With him study was
the key to every problem.
When in 1880 he asked me to be the managing editor of the _Sun_, the
answer was:
“Mr. Dana, I do not know enough to be your managing editor.”
“What do you mean by that?” was his question.
“I mean that the managing editor of your newspaper should have wide,
extensive, general information. I know very little about politics, or
finance, or art, for instance. A managing editor should have expert
knowledge of them.”
“What is the objection to your devoting a little time each day to the
study of these things in which you feel yourself deficient,” was Mr.
Dana’s calm reply. “I did not know so much about them myself, when I
first came to the city as I do to-day.”
I now appreciate that whatever progress I afterward made in the
business came largely from this suggestion; and I feel like passing it
along to the young man who aspires to newspaper honors. How true it is
that to achieve you must study to the limit of your resources; you must
think to the limit of your intelligence; you must strive to the limit
of your endurance--then you have done your best and that marks the
measure of your success.
Study--persistent, laborious, intelligent study--is the key to
success in writing. Occasionally a genius startles the public with a
spontaneous facility for the use of words and sentences, but the other
nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine of us newspaper plodders
must achieve our purposes by the hardest kind of hard work. We must
study the derivation of words, the varied uses of words. And if we are
to keep up with these snappy times we must hunt for strong masculine
nouns, and rapid-fire verbs, and staccato adjectives, and sudden
adverbs. Almost always we can find a better word than the one that
first suggests itself, if we hunt for it. Almost always we may shorten
and simplify a sentence if we study it.
The word spoken may be forgotten. The word written stands for all
time. The orator may move his hearers by eloquence, by gesture, by
facial expression, by the tricks of public speaking, even though his
actual words be feeble or not well chosen, or his conclusions be
not convincing. His words may be forgotten--certainly will not be
remembered unless preserved--but they have been reinforced by his arts
of eloquence, maybe by his audacity of speech, by his personality, and
the net result is favorable. The orator’s bluff may at times serve him
well, but the words of the writer must stand on their own merit for
all time. Type inspires little emotion. There are few typographical
tricks that cause heart-flutter or mental spasm. Just plain words
alone--words, words, words, nearly every one of which is already
familiar to the reader, must make the writer’s success or failure. How
important that every word be studied.
The young journalist cannot be urged too strongly to study the use of
words. Every word in the language has its correct use; a vast number
are used incorrectly. You will find it a most interesting study. If
you doubt its interest, be so good as to open your dictionary to any
haphazard page and read intently for fifteen minutes. You will find
words the existence of which you had not known, the meanings of which
you had not understood. Observe the derivation and the primary meaning
of the word and you cannot miss the proper use. You cannot put time to
better purpose, if you seek for excellence in English composition, than
by studying the English dictionary a few minutes every day.
When a writer is sure of his information, is sincere in his attitude,
and is eager and enthusiastic for its presentation, the words and the
sentences usually come to him with ease. It is when he is shaky over
his facts, or insincere, or dishonest, that his words become feeble,
and lack convincing quality, do not ring true. It is curious how often
dishonest journalism convicts itself through timidity of diction.
The English language is reaching afar. Those there are who predict that
eventually it will be spoken everywhere. Already it is the language
of more than two hundred million persons. It will carry the tourist
all over the globe by the established routes of travel,--through the
streets of Japan, and the bazars of India, and the South Sea islands of
the Pacific. Tennyson said to Sir Edwin Arnold: “It is bad for us that
English will always be a spoken speech, since that means that it will
always be changing and so the time will come when you and I will be as
hard to read as Chaucer is to-day.”
Indeed, the English language is changing constantly. We are eliding
letters, lopping off terminations, cutting out phrases and abolishing
circumlocution. It is not so old a language as a score of others and
every opportunity for improvement exists. It is, indeed, “an improvable
language.”
Compare, if you please, any modern narrative with the beginning of
Chaucer’s “The Tale of Melibeus”:
A young man called Melibeus, mighty and riche, begat upon his
wif, that called was Prudens, a doughter which that called was
Sophie. Upon a day byfel, that for his disport he is went into
the fields him to play. His wif and his doughter eek hath he laft
in-with his hous, of which the dores were fast shut. Thre of
his olde foos have it espyed, and setten laddres to the walles
of his hous, and by the wyndowes be entred, and beetyn his wyf,
and woundid his doughter with fyve mortal woundes in fyve sondry
places, that is to sayn, in her feet, in her hondes, in her
eeres, in her nose, and in her mouth; and lafte her for deed, and
went away.
Or imagine if you can to what small space a modern newspaper copy
reader would reduce the following bit of Washington Irving prose that
was printed in school readers sixty years ago as an example of graceful
writing and felicity of expression:
In one of those somber and rather melancholy days in the latter
part of autumn when the shadows of morning and evening almost
mingle together and throw a gloom over the decline of the year I
passed several hours rambling around Westminster Abbey. There was
something congenial to the season in the mournful magnificence
of the old pile; and, as I passed its threshhold, it seemed like
stepping back into the regions of antiquity and losing myself
among the shades of former ages.
Usage is amplifying the service of many words whose primary meaning
is obvious from their Latin derivation. _Dexter_ is the Latin word
meaning the right hand, and strictly speaking “dextrous movements”
should mean right hand movements. But usage has brought dexterity to
mean readiness, skill, adroitness, aptitude, both physical or mental.
Macaulay uses it constantly in all of these meanings. “Manufacture” is
easily traced to the Latin origin _manus_, the hand, and _facio_, to
make--to make by hand. But we have come to use “manufacture” for the
making of anything, by machinery, or chemical processes, or in any way
other than with the hand. And who shall say that these usages, these
enlargements of the meaning of dexterity and manufacture, have not
improved the English language?
More than ever before is there present-day need for the use of
plain, understandable English. We live in a money-making age--an
age of industrial development, in which machines are doing the work
that brains used to do, in which vocational and technical education
are demanded of our schools and colleges, and in which the cry for
technical literature is insistent. Experts only understand the
technical words and the language of their specialty, hence the cry for
writers who can translate technical language into plain English that
any reader may understand. Dean West, of Princeton, has deplored the
inability of many professors to teach orally or in writing in any other
language than the dialect of their specialties. Lacking in literary
training they are unable clearly to say what they think.
Some one asked William T. Stead, the English journalist, whether he
would have an astronomer or a newspaper writer prepare an article on
sun spots, and Stead’s instant reply was that the astronomer would
write it for astronomers in language that no one else would understand,
but the reporter would tap the brain of the specialist and so serve out
his knowledge that the ordinary reader would understand.
All the tendency of present-day writing is to translate technical
language, scientific terms, professional formula, and medical terms
into plain common sense English. Let the good work go on!
And let not the young man contemplating a journalistic career be
persuaded that newspaper English is not good English. The men who
wrote for the newspapers of the Spanish-American War, of the great
political movements of Europe of later years, of our great industrial
developments, and of the World War in particular, are the very men
who have rewritten these things into history for magazines and for
book publishers. When they wrote this information for the newspapers,
distinguished college professors and learned critics called it
“journalese”; when it appears in the reviews and in books they speak of
it as “literature.”
In praise of newspaper writing as good training for writers, Anatole
France has this to say:
It is an inveterate prejudice to believe that one spoils his pen
in writing for the newspapers. On the contrary one gains in that
way suppleness as also ease and that readiness without which the
phrase does not move gracefully and never smiles. It is a good
school say what one will.
Some of the modern English seems very practical and easy to understand.
The use of the words “scrapped” and “junked” as verbs seems to have
been put permanently into the language by the Washington Disarmament
Conference. A well known journal says, “The newspapers were kidding
him,” and very likely we will have to accept “kid” as a verb. The
entire Navy now says of a man who goes from one place to another that
he “shoves off.” It is proper to say of a dissatisfied man that he
is “peeved,” according to the dictionaries, but its use is new. Food
is now known as “eats” and the pleasures of the pipe or cigar are
called “smokes.” A recent head-line said, “Flivvers furnish booze
to soldiers.” Another newspaper transforms “hokus” into a verb:
“Complained that she hokused him,” while the scholarly _New Republic_
says of some occupation of youngsters that “it gives them no time to go
on the loose.”
A new invention brings out a new crop of words. We have “automobile,”
“garage,” “speedometer,” “limousine,” “taxi,” “taximeter,” “motorboat,”
“motorcycle,” “chauffeur,” all useful and necessary additions to our
elastic language. The airplane has brought as many more. Our slang goes
on apace.
Make your sheet easy to read, as well as easy to understand. The other
day a morning paper in a London cable said, “Wheat sold at 60 shillings
a quarter in the corn market to-day.” That sentence gave the mind of
the reader a jolt and a pause, in the attempt to translate shillings
and quarters into cents and bushels. Few American readers are familiar
with foreign languages, hence all words, as well as quotations, in the
French, German, or other tongues, should be made into English. Pounds,
marks, and francs should be computed into dollars and cents, kilometers
into miles. And who knows where in New York State the Thirty-fifth
Congress District is? Why not call it the Syracuse district? Or who can
tell where in New York City the Sixteenth Precinct police station may
be? Why not identify it as the Mercer Street station?
On the first Sunday of President Wilson’s stay in Paris he went to
church and the Associated Press report said the clergyman preached from
Isaiah ix. 9. Naturally the words of the text were not transmitted at
full cable rates; and naturally, too, a certain curiosity was felt as
to what they were. Yet of six New York daily newspapers examined, one
only had taken the pains to dig out the text and print it. That sheet
certainly served its readers better than did the others.
A little discreet exuberance of expression may be tolerated in
newspaper writing. Sensational newspapers do no harm as long as they
stick to the truth. You may print your editions in red ink, with job
type, with headlines a foot high if you like, without other offenses
than to exaggerate the importance of your announcement. Typographical
eccentricity merely attracts attention. It serves the same purpose
as does the orator’s violent gesture or the messenger’s breathless
announcement. It excites curiosity, arouses interest.
Now, there is such a thing as harmless exaggeration. It enters largely
into our private life. Our dreams of wealth, of success, of happiness
are usually far beyond the fulfillment. We exaggerate our prospects,
ambitions and promises to ourselves. But this form of exaggeration is
most beneficial for it is a spur to ambition and a prod to effort.
The editor is tempted to exaggeration because a little exaggeration
makes it a little more interesting. He sees that the exaggerated novel
sells while the novel true to life is unnoticed; that the actor who
gesticulates and shouts has the loudest applause; that the painter
who outdoes nature outsells the artist who is true to fact. Indeed,
some philosopher has said that an easy road to success lies through
exaggeration. The man who exaggerates his own importance attracts
more attention than the modest man. The merchant who exaggerates his
wares sells more than the man who does not. Sensational clergymen fill
churches while prosy ones preach to empty benches. It was Sidney Smith
who remarked: “It is not the first man who says a thing who deserves
credit for it, but he who says it so long and so loud that at last
he persuades the world that it is true.” Macaulay remarked: “The best
portraits are perhaps those in which there is a slight mixture of
caricature, and we are not certain that the best histories are not
those in which a little of exaggeration, of fictitious narrative, is
judiciously employed.”
But the editor must use exaggeration with great discretion, must not
pervert the truth. Gross exaggeration becomes downright lying.
Man’s language cunningly adapts itself to man’s thoughts. Sixty years
ago writers were under the influence of what may be described as a
literary age--that so-called golden age of the intellect that marked
the early years of Victoria’s reign. It was a period of intellectual
uplift. People were thinking of literature and talking of literature.
Men hurried through their suppers to read to the family circle the
stories of Dickens and Hawthorne and Walter Scott. The literary lecture
was popular and people went to church for the literary pleasure the
sermon afforded. The newspaper editors were writing literature and were
urging their staffs to renewed literary effort. The magazines were
conspicuous for literary excellence. The theaters were instructive. The
writers of poetry and prose sought a nicety of literary expression, a
daintiness of diction, a legato of language. Courses of study favored
instruction in literature and literary topics, in language and history,
in science and philosophy.
And now, if you please, mark the contrast. We are living in a business
age. War has blunted our sensibilities, has made us callous, has
coarsened civilization. We care little for so-called polite literature.
We want the rugged kind. The family circle does not meet for literary
exercises. We are thinking of commercialism, of money making, of
gigantic locomotives, of immense bridges and tunnels, of aqueducts
a hundred and thirty miles long, of skyscraping buildings, flying
machines, telephones, typewriting machines, typesetting machines,
electric devices. We are thinking of them until we are thinking of
little else.
It is the age of the machine. Mechanical processes are doing the work
that formerly demanded mental skill. The village blacksmith no longer
commands admiration by his picturesque and intelligent forging of
the nail and shoe--he buys them ready made by machinery. The learned
shoemaker no longer artfully fashions my lady’s dainty slipper--the
shoe machine punches it out. We bawl letters and dinner invitations
through that mechanical device, the telephone, instead of writing them
in the old fashioned courtly way. Time was when men put brains into
what they did with their hands; but to-day, machines rather than brains
are doing the work of the world.
Our language and our literature cannot escape the influence. Instead
of the sweetly gliding words and sentences of the men who translated
the Bible, the deliberation of Thackeray, the ornate embellishments of
Washington Irving--instead of the soft speaking poetry of 1850 and the
flossy velvet prose of 1860 our present-day writers are using whirlwind
sentences and words in staccato that bite and scratch and explode. We
are changing our diction from the niceties of literary expression to a
blunter and a coarser form of expression.
There can be no harm in it, however. The net result is to improve
the language. It is taking on the additional strength and agility
and brevity that come of our industrial activity. The very magnitude
of our undertakings, the very dimensions of our ambitions inspire to
greatness of thought and forcefulness of speech. The red blood of war
is nourishing the vitals of our language.