Perhaps it
was only a handbook on forgery.
How to Write for the Press disappointed me. It is concerned not
with the literary journalist (as I believe he is called) but with
the reporter (as he is never called, the proper title being
"special representative"). It gives in tabular form a list of the
facts you should ascertain at the different functions you attend;
with this book in your pocket there would be no excuse if you
neglected to find out at a wedding the names of the bride and
bridegroom. It also gives--and I think this is very friendly of
it--a list of useful synonyms for the principal subjects, animate
and inanimate, of description. The danger of calling the
protagonists at the court of Hymen (this one is not from the
book; I thought of it myself just now)--the danger of calling
them "the happy pair" more than once in a column is that your
readers begin to suspect that you are a person of extremely
limited mind, and when once they get this idea into their heads
they are not in a proper state to appreciate the rest of your
article. But if in your second paragraph you speak of "the joyful
couple," and in your third of "the ecstatic brace," you give an
impression of careless mystery of the language which can never be
shed away.
Among the many interesting chapters is one dealing with contested
elections. One of the questions to which the special
representative was advised to find an answer was this: "What
outside bodies are taking active part in the contest?" In the bad
old days--now happily gone for ever--the outside bodies of dead
cats used to take an active and important part in the contest,
and as the same body would often be used twice the reporter in
search of statistics was placed in a position of great
responsibility.
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