o after it, no matter if there is need of
incurring expense. Papers will stand any reasonable expense for valuable
news.

7. Never forget the worth of sending time. Every minute is valuable.

8. Until you have received your first check, clip and keep every story
printed. Most papers keep their own accounts with correspondents, but
some require them to send in at the end of each month their "string:"
that is, all their stories pasted together end to end. Payment is then
made on the basis of the number of columns, the rates varying from $2 to
$7 a column of 1500 words.

APPENDIX

STYLE-BOOK

I. HANDLING COPY

=1. Definition.=--_Copy_ is any manuscript prepared for printing, and is
written according to the individual style rules of each newspaper. The
first thing for a reporter to do on beginning work in an office is to
ask for the style-book, the manual for the guidance of reporters,
copy-readers, and compositors. The chances are nine to one that the
paper will not have such a book, since only the larger dailies print
their rules of style, and that the reporter must study the columns of
the paper and the changes made in his own stories for the individual
office rules. If the paper happens to be the tenth one, however, the
reporter should employ every spare moment studying the manual and should
write every story, even his first one, as nearly as possible in accord
with the printed rules, as the copy readers will insist on a strict
observance of the regulations. Many of the rules will be mere _don'ts_,
embodying common errors of diction. Others may be particular aversions
of the editor or the head copy-reader and may have little regard for or
relation to best usage. But such rules must be observed, even though
they may be as absurd and contrary to all custom, as that of one
metropolitan paper which makes its reporters write "Farwell-av," a usage
peculiar to that journal. All such requirements may be found in the
style-book, which, whenever in doubt, the reporter should consult rather
than the columns of the paper, as the paper is not always reliable.
Uncorrected matter is frequently hurried into the forms, causing
variations that the rules of composition forbid.

=2. The Typewriter.=--The first requirement in preparing copy is a
knowledge of how to handle a typewriter dexterously. In all offices the
reporters are furnished with typewriters, and one is helpless until one
learns how to use a machine. Longha