Roundup

“ THE PERIOD
1. A period or any other mark, except an interrogation-point, is not often used after a display line in the title-page of a book. This practice is well-nigh universal in book-work, and almost equally so in magazines.
2. A period is generally placed after the letter or the number indicating a division in enumerations. Periods are so used after the figures 1 and 2 numbering this and the preceding paragraph.
If the divisions have subdivisions, and the subdivisions are further subdivided, it is helpful to the reader if a good conventional style is followed. ”

“ A roundel is wrought as a ring or a starbright sphere,
With craft of delight and with cunning of sound unsought,
That the heart of the hearer may smile if to pleasure his ear
⁠A roundel is wrought. ”

“ Conclusion.—Of the two types of lead, the beginner is advised to attempt at first only the summary lead, relying on the excellence of the news to carry the story. This kind of lead is definite. A reporter always can know when his lead answers the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how. And if he has presented his facts clearly in the lead, he may feel a certain degree of assurance that he has been successful. In writing the informal lead, on the contrary, one can never be positive of anything or of any effect. ”

“ Not only does every [106] story have a different feature, but it is concerned with a different kind of happening. One assignment may call for the report of an explosion, another the report of a business transaction, and another a murder. In each one we have to get the facts and choose the most striking fact as our feature. Never can we resort to the simple beginning "Fire destroyed," but we must find a different beginning for each assignment.
Just as in the fire story, the lead of any news story is the most important part. ”

“ Round the news-shops—whence poured a very flood of papers and pamphlets—in the cafés and public places, crowds of men formed and dispersed and formed again, who all at once flashed into lightning-like action at the cry "To arms, to arms!" ”

“ The purely informative type of story is the common form for reporting meetings, investigations, and hearings. The parts of the proceedings that are of general interest and significance make up the contents of such stories (cf. “State Legislature,” p. 116, and “Meeting of Safety Council,” p. 120) . In meetings of some importance are to be found humorous or pathetic phases that may be brought out legitimately to heighten the interest and to emphasize the significance of the proceedings (cf. “Hearing on Proposed Ordinance,” p. 113, and “Testimony in Investigation,” p. 110) . ”

“ Climactic Order Difficult.—Of the four organization plans, the hardest by far to develop is the climactic order, which should be avoided by young reporters. This method of arrangement is on the short-story order, and the beginner will find it difficult to group his incidents so that each shall lead up to and explain those following and at the same time add to the reader's interest. Some papers as yet admit only rarely the story developed climactically, but it [Pg 65] is growing in popularity and the reporter should know how to handle it. ”

“ In our entire circle there will probably not be one who will not present one or more topics in papers or addresses during the year, as time permits, and equal opportunity is given to all. Our plan is to follow down the class roll, beginning at the top, and the leader is handed a list of ten or twelve names from which he selects six or eight persons to whom he assigns topics, the roll itself being prepared for that purpose. ”

“ The minutes are kept on the body of each page, leaving the margin on the left of the red line for anything intended for an annual report, such as number in attendance, number of visitors, number of members and a list of those in program numbered, opposite whose names, in the regular minutes, are their topics or themes. In this way a complete record of each member is kept, and by referring from each dot to the minutes of that date an individual or annual report can be readily made which otherwise would be tedious at least. ”

“ As the number of titles under each heading increases in number so does the opportunity and need of division. The first and most usual groups to be made are Bibliography and its companion History, and the “practical-form” groups Dictionaries and Periodicals Under countries the first grouping will be Description and Travels, History and Politics, Language and Literature, followed by Natural history, etc. For examples of further subdivisions see the longer catalogues. It is not worth while in a printed catalogue to make very minute divisions. ”

“ Conducting a Local Column.—When conducting a column giving the news of a particular locality or neighborhood, the one thing not to write is that there is little news in the community this week or to-day. The readers of a column should not be allowed to suspect that one has little information to present. All about one are unnumbered sources of news if the correspondent can only find them—humorous incidents, reminiscences of old pioneers, stories of previous extremely wet, dry, hot, or cold seasons, recollections of Civil, Spanish American, and European War battles, etc. ”

“ Every printed production worthy of being called a book should have an index. Is the index the same as the table of contents? The table of contents is printed at the beginning of the volume. It is a synopsis, by chapter headings or more detailed topics, of the plan of the book. It gives a general outline of [131] the contents of the book. You are interested in public speaking. You wonder whether a book contains a chapter on debating. Does this one? You notice that a speaker used a series of jerky gesticulations. ”

“ If a retrospective survey of the labors of thirty years, on this occasion, has rekindled a degree of enthusiasm, it is the natural result of an examination of all our volumes, from the contents of which we have endeavored to make out a summary both of the laborers and their works. ”

“ For periodicals—newspapers, magazines, reviews—are the Fools' Paradise of the commonplace, the mediocre, the orthodox, the respectable. As the strength of a chain must be measured by its weakest link, so the thought of a periodical must be measured by the thought of its most imbecile subscribers. ”

“ Observations and remarks on various subjects will often be found as memorandums, made during or at the end of a sweep, to which the general index may serve as a direction—as for instance under the head of zodiacal lights—the index points out twelve different sweeps in which they were observed. ”

“ The social intermission is generally occupied in discussing the books read by members of the C. L. S. C. The rest of the evening’s exercises is under the control of the committee on program, and is varied from evening to evening. We had at the last meeting, and will have at the next, what we call a sentiment roll. The roll of the circle is called and each person, as his or her name is called, responds with a short sentiment selected to suit the taste of the person selecting. ”

“ After recording these transactions, my Journal thus continues:—
“It is impossible to notice all the proceedings of the week, nor is it necessary. The accounts of meetings to protest against the measure, and the gross falsehoods which have been promulgated in order to get up a case, will be found in the Morning Herald; . . . the real facts appearing in my published minute, and in the statements of Ministers on receiving the deputation of Wednesday.” ”

“ Address it, not later than February 28, 1897, to Harper's Round Table, New York, and put in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope the words "Story Competition." No story may be sent by you that is not wholly original with you, and none may be submitted that has ever been submitted in any contest. One person may not submit more than one story. Two persons may not join in writing a single story. ”

“ SAPIENTIA. When numbers of any magnitude are set down in order. the first set down is called the "minor term" and the last the "major." When, in making a division, we say by how many the number is to be divided, we give the "divisor," but when we enumerate how many there are in each of the parts we set forth the"quotient." ”

“ In magazine sections of Saturday and Sunday issues such articles are supplied in greater numbers. These feature stories are frequently illustrated. They seldom fill less than a column; more often they are several columns in length.
“Human Interest” Stories. Material for the “human interest” type of feature story is to be found anywhere and everywhere in the reporter’s daily round of news gathering. The many police court cases furnish an abundance of humorous and pathetic incidents. ”

“ The present week has been one of such general excitement, that we do not recollect its parallel for many years and, though we have more space to devote to news than any other weekly paper in the town, it would be impossible to give more than a sketch of the proceedings at the different public meetings, on the subject of the ministerial proposition. ”

“ The modern reader will not brook long ones. Single-sentence paragraphs are frequent, particularly in the lead. Two- or three-sentence paragraphs are common. Half-column paragraphs are unendurable. The average newspaper column permits lines of about seven words each, so that twenty lines, or 140 words, should be the limit of a paragraph. Eight or ten lines is a good average length. Because of this necessary brevity, the newspaper paragraph allows no topics and subtopics within its limited space, but throws every subtopic into an individual paragraph. ”

“ In the editorial columns are discussed every phase of business that could affect the readers’ business and the news columns give every obtainable fact, including columns of routine record such as price list quotations, statistics of merchandise movement, government reports of agricultural and metal production, and the like. ”

“ When the enumeration, moreover, is thus bent from the direct order of progression, and is made to form, if we may so say, a kind of corner for the purpose of taking a different course, what meets us at that corner is mentioned twice over,—namely, at the close of the preceding series, and at the head of the deflection specified. ”

“ Committee should appear in the Times inviting adhesions and subscriptions, to be published from time to time: is all this in harmony with your own view? Are you not afraid that the moment when "everybody" (for our purposes it is everybody) is leaving town or has left it—I go myself in a few days—is a very bad one? Many people lose sight of their Times, or would not write from the country or foreign parts. ”

“ In colleges where the marginal numbering of errors and faults is supplemented by personal conferences, the swiftest improvement will be found to follow the practice of requiring the student, before the conference, to copy his faulty passages on a new sheet of theme paper, to copy also the admonition indicated by the marginal number, and to rewrite each passage in accordance with the admonition. ”

“ In short, a methodical table as specific as possible and highly instructive to a jurist or accountant, but perfect jargon to peasants, most of whom can scarcely write their name and who, on Sundays, are seen standing before the advertisement board4226 trying to spell out the Journal Officiel, whose abstract phrases, beyond their reach, pass over their heads in aerial and transient flight, like some confused rustling of vague and unknown forms. ”

“ When we try to play up the most interesting feature of a court report we find that we must fall back upon the same beginnings that we used in reporting speeches and interviews. There are several possible ways of beginning such a story, depending upon the phase of the case or its testimony that is of greatest importance.
1. Name Beginning.—The proper name beginning is very common. It is always used when any one of prominence is involved in the story or when the name, although unknown, can be made interesting in itself—as in a human interest story. ”

“ When it is remembered that a column of an ordinary newspaper has somewhere about fifteen hundred words, and that an editorial article such as on page 268, which is thirty-eight hundred words long, is in these days of hurry apt to be repellent, because of its length, and on the other hand that a theme of fifteen hundred words seems to the ordinary undergraduate a weighty undertaking, the nature of this difficulty becomes clear. ”

“ The books in each division are arranged in chronological order. In Division Nine the fourteen epistles of Paul are placed first, in the order of their composition, then the seven general epistles in the order of their writing.
4. Where the books of a division are separated into two groups by a dash, those above the dash are historical, those beneath the dash are biographical, or poetical, or legal, or prophetical, or epistolary.
5. The teacher may exercise his own judgment in requiring the committal of this chart at the start, or part by part as the study proceeds. ”

“ For the newspapers it is too long. With the accompanying documents, of which there are a considerable number, it will fill a volume of nearly 300 pages, and the accompanying documents are as interesting and instructive as the report itself. In fact, they form the strength of the report as far as the establishment of facts is concerned. ”

“ I now enclose the proceedings of this town at a meeting appointed to receive the report of the committee, which is attested by the town-clerk, and published by order of the town.
Our enemies are taking all imaginable pains to disparage the proceedings, and prevent their having any effect in the country. They are particularly endeavouring to have it believed, that the vote was carried at a very thin meeting ”