A careful analysis of current practice in the writing of special feature
stories and popular magazine articles is the basis of the methods
presented. In this analysis an effort has been made to show the
application of the principles of composition to the writing of articles.
Examples taken from representative newspapers and magazines are freely
used to illustrate the methods discussed. To encourage students to
analyze typical articles, the second part of the book is devoted to a
collection of newspaper and magazine articles of various types, with an
outline for the analysis of them.

Particular emphasis is placed on methods of popularizing such knowledge
as is not available to the general reader. This has been done in the
belief that it is important for the average person to know of the
progress that is being made in every field of human endeavor, in order
that he may, if possible, apply the results to his own affairs. The
problem, therefore, is to show aspiring writers how to present
discoveries, inventions, new methods, and every significant advance in
knowledge, in an accurate and attractive form.

To train students to write articles for newspapers and popular magazines
may, perhaps, be regarded by some college instructors in composition as
an undertaking scarcely worth their while. They would doubtless prefer
to encourage their students to write what is commonly called
"literature." The fact remains, nevertheless, that the average
undergraduate cannot write anything that approximates literature,
whereas experience has shown that many students can write acceptable
popular articles. Moreover, since the overwhelming majority of Americans
read only newspapers and magazines, it is by no means an unimportant
task for our universities to train writers to supply the steady demand
for well-written articles. The late Walter Hines Page, founder of the
_World's Work_ and former editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_, presented
the whole situation effectively in an article on "The Writer and the
University," when he wrote:

The journeymen writers write almost all that almost all Americans
read. This is a fact that we love to fool ourselves about. We talk
about "literature" and we talk about "hack writers," implying that
the reading that we do is of literature. The truth all the while is,
we read little else than the writing of the hacks--living hacks,
that is, men and women who write for pay. We may hug the