Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... young men, is that they forget that journalism is a profession requiring years of training, trial, and failure before it is learned. They expect to have their first manuscript accepted, though they never would expect a merchant to accept and put on sale the first gown or shirt-waist they ever made, or the first hat they trimmed. Patient and long-continued practise in private or upon a small paper is the only reliable passport to success in the larger field of metropolitan journalism. XII A CHAPTER ON ERRORS Nearly all the errors that the newspaper man is liable to make may be classified under the following comprehensive heads: Incorrect spelling, punctuation, or grammar; illegible or carelessly prepared copy; mixed metaphors and loose arrangement of phrases; wrong or redundant words; misstatement of fact, and wrong treatment of subject. It requires a liberal education and years of practise to avoid the myriad possibilities of error thus indicated, and even the most careful purist will sometimes be caught napping. Almost every writer has a choice selection of pet mistakes that he perpetrates habitually and unconsciously. This is one reason why the matter in a newspaper office is almost always improved in accuracy and elegance by passing through a copy reader's hands, even though the desk man be no better educated than the author of the manuscript. English spelling is arbitrary and complicated, but the writer who has failed to learn to spell with reasonable correctness starts in with a tremendous handicap. Certain public schools in which spelling is now slurred over in pursuance of the so-called "word method" of reading are doing an irreparable wrong, to their pupils. An ill-spelled manuscript, when submitted to an editor for publication, ...
