ck of a head a quotation without
quotation marks, writing the name of the person quoted in full-face caps
immediately below the deck. One need seldom resort to this expedient.

Be careful of the present tense in writing of historical events. The
head on a story about the legality of Christ's trial should not read,

JESUS CHRIST IS
ILLEGALLY SLAIN

nor should it read

JESUS CHRIST WAS
ILLEGALLY SLAIN

but it should read

SAYS CHRIST WAS
ILLEGALLY SLAIN

Remember always in writing heads that although a newspaper man seldom
reads more than the first deck, deciding by that whether to read the
story, many readers of the paper read no more than the head, and for
them it should summarize the story, embodying all its salient features.

GRAMMAR

The most common errors in grammar to be found in copy are in:

The agreement of a verb with its subject.

The relation of pronouns to their antecedents.

The position of participles in relation to the words they modify.

The use of co-ordinate conjunctions to connect elements of the same
kind.

The position of correlative conjunctions with relation to the elements
they connect.

To gain grace in writing one must either be born with a natural aptitude
in the use of words--and such men: Stevenson, Poe, Walter Pater and
others, are geniuses--or one must study the writings of these masters of
prose and attempt to discover the secret of their success. It is not
necessary that a good writer should know rules of grammar, but he must
know enough to observe them. A writer may be unable to tell why a
dangling participle is faulty English by testing it with a rule, but he
may nevertheless avoid such a construction because his ear tells him it
is not the best style.

Copies of the best grammars may be found in the office library and
should be consulted when reporters and copy readers are in doubt.

SIMPLICITY

In character, in manners, in style and in all things the supreme
excellence is simplicity.--Longfellow.

NOTES

DICTION

The newspaper writer must beware of two pitfalls in writing: Fine
writing and dialect. Stilted English, pompous and high-sounding, is in
just as bad taste as garish clothing or pungent perfume. Reporters often
give to their stories a wordy and turgid flavor by their refusal to
repeat a word, preferring a synonym. One often sees such sentences as
this: "The policeman took his pistol away as he wa