most difficult
acquirements in reporting is the ability to find day after day a new way
to tell of some obscure person dying of pneumonia or heart disease. Only
reporters who have fought and overcome the arctic drowsiness of trite
phraseology know the difficulty of fighting on day after day, seeking a
new, a different way to tell the same old story of suicide or marriage
or theft or drowning. Yet one is no longer permitted to say that the
bridegroom wore the conventional black, or the bride was elegantly
gowned, or the bride's mother presided at the punch bowl, or the
assembled guests tripped the light fantastic. The reporter must find new
words for everything and must tell all with the same zest and the same
sparkling freshness of expression with which he wrote on his first day
in the news office.

=175. Figures of Speech.=--In his search for freshness, variety of
expression, the reporter often may avail himself of figures of speech.
These add suggestiveness to writing and increase its meaning by
interpretation in a figurative rather than a literal sense. To say,
"Oldfield flew round the bowl like a ruined soul on the rim of Hades,"
is more effective than "Oldfield ran his car round the course at a
110-mile rate of speed." But the writer must be careful not to mix his
figures, or he may easily make himself ridiculous. An apt illustration
of such mixing of figures is the following:

|It seemed as if the governor were hurling his glove |
|into the teeth of the advancing wave that was |
|sounding the clarion call of equal suffrage. |

In particular, one must not personify names of ships, cities, states,
and countries. Note, for example, the incongruity in the following:

|Especially does the man of discriminating taste |
|appreciate her when he compares her with the |
|ordinary tubs sailing the Great Lakes. |

=176. Elegance.=--Force also requires that one heed what may sometimes
seem trivialities of good usage. For instance, a minister may not be
referred to as _Rev. Anderson_, but as _the Rev. Mr. Anderson_. Coinage
of titles, too, is not permitted: as _Railway Inspector Brown_ for _John
Brown, a railway inspector_. And the overused "editorial we" has now
passed entirely from the news article. In an unsigned story, even the
pronoun _I_ should not be used, nor such circumlocutions as _the
writer_, _the reporter_, or _the correspondent_. In a signed story,