re was a fire. Therefore there is no
particular feature. No one was killed; no one was injured; the loss was
not extraordinary for a New York fire--nothing in the story is of
greater interest than the mere fact that there was a fire. Hence the
story begins with the word "Fire." Notice that it does not begin "A
fire" or "The fire"--for the simple reason that the word _fire_ does not
need an article before it. The editor will also tell you that it is not
considered good to begin a story with an article, for the beginning is
the most important part of a story and it is foolish to waste that
advantageous place on unimportant words.

The first word tells the reader that there has been a fire. He
immediately asks where?--what burned?--when?--how much was lost? And the
reporter proceeds to answer his questions in their order of importance.
The reporter who wrote this story apparently thought that the time was
of greatest importance and slipped it in at once--"today." He might just
as well have left the time until the end of the sentence because it is
not of very great interest. He considers the question "_Where_" of next
importance, and answers with "the top of the six-story warehouse at 393
to 395 Washington Street." The question "what?" he answers with a
clause, "used by the United States army as a medical supply store-room
for the Department of the East." He does not try to answer the question
"_why_?" because, as the rest of the story tells us, no one knew exactly
what caused the fire. And as for the "_How_?" there is nothing
extraordinary in the way that it burned beyond the fact that it burned.
Thus, in one sentence, he has answered all four questions about the
fire, except a little query concerning the amount of the loss. That he
considers worth a separate sentence of details.

This is not a perfect lead. Many editors would consider it faulty, but
it illustrates one way of writing the lead of a featureless fire story.
Obviously there are faults; for instance, the time is given an undue
amount of emphasis and the cause is omitted.

Suppose that we construct another lead from the same story--a lead which
would be more in accordance with the logic of newspaper writing. We
shall begin with the word "fire," but after it we shall slip in a little
mention of the cause since to the reader not directly acquainted with
the property that point is always of the greatest importance. Then we
shall tell where the fire was and after