Practical English Composition: Book II by Edwin L. Miller (best books to read fiction .txt) 📕

BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY EDWIN L. MILLER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
U · S · A

This volume is the second in a series of four, each of which has been planned to cover one stage in the composition work of the secondary-school course. These books have been designed to supply material adapted as exactly as possible to the capacity of the pupils. Most of the exercises which they contain have been devised with the idea of reproducing in an elementary form the methods of self-instruction which have been employed by successful writers from Homer to Kipling. Nearly all of them have been subjected to the test of actual classroom use on a large scale. They may be used independently or as supplementary to a more formal textbook. Each volume contains rather more work than an ordinary class can do in one hundred recitations.

In each volume will be found exercises that involve each of the four forms of discourse; but emphasis is placed in Book I on description, in Book II on narration, in Book III on exposition, and in Book IV on argumentation. Similarly, while stress is laid in Book I on letter-writing, in Book II on journalism, in Book III on literary effect, and in Book IV on the civic aspects of composition, all of these phases of the subject receive attention in each volume.

In every lesson of each book provision is made for oral work: first, because it is an end valuable in itself; second, because it is of incalculable use in preparing the ground for written work; third, because it can be made to give the pupil a proper and powerful motive for writing with care; and, fourth, because, when employed with discretion, it lightens the teacher’s burden without impairing his efficiency.

Composition is not writing. Writing is only one step in composition. The gathering of material, the organization of material, criticism, revision, publication, and the reaction that follows publication are therefore in these volumes given due recognition.

The quotation at the head of each chapter and the poem at the end are designed to furnish that stimulus to the will and the imagination without which great practical achievement  is impossible. On the other hand, the exercises are all designed on the theory that the sort of idealism which has no practical results is a snare. Indeed, the books might be characterized as an effort to find a useful compromise between those warring types of educational theory which are usually characterized by the words “academic” and “vocational.”

The specific subject of this volume is newspaper writing. The author has himself had enough experience in practical newspaper work to appreciate the difficulties and to respect the achievements of the journalist. He knows that editors must print what people will buy. It seems probable, therefore, that instruction in the elementary principles of newspaper writing, in addition to producing good academic results, may lead pupils to read the papers critically, to discriminate between the good and the bad, and to demand a better quality of journalism than it is now possible for editors to offer. If this happens, the papers will improve. The aim of this book is therefore social as well as academic. It is also vocational. Some of the boys and girls who study it will learn from its pages the elements of the arts of proof-reading and reporting well enough to begin, by virtue of the skill thus acquired, to earn their bread and butter.

For the chapters on advertising I am indebted to Mr. Karl Murchey, of the Cass Technical High School of Detroit, Michigan. Mr. John V. Brennan, Miss Grace Albert, and Miss Eva Kinney, of the Detroit Northwestern High School, have rendered me invaluable help by suggestions, by proof-reading, and by trying out the exercises in their classes. Mr. C. C. Certain, of Birmingham, Alabama, and Mr. E. H. Kemper McComb, of the Technical High School, Indianapolis, by hints based on their own wide experience and ripe scholarship, have enabled me to avoid numerous pitfalls. My thanks are due also to Mr. Francis W. Daire, of the Newark News, and Mr. C. B. Nicolson, of the Detroit Free Press, who have given me the benefit of their experience as practical newspaper men. Above all, I am indebted to my friend, Mr. Henry P. Hetherington, of the Detroit Journal, whose untimely death in June, 1914, deprived me of a never-failing source of wisdom and a critic to whose ripe judgment I owe more than I know how to describe.

E. L. M.

 “Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.”

Samuel Johnson. Life of Addison.

“Children learn to speak by watching the lips and catching the words of those who know how already; and poets learn in the same way from their elders.”

James Russell Lowell. Essay on Chaucer.

“Grammars of rhetoric and grammars of logic are among the most useless furniture of a shelf. Give a boy Robinson Crusoe. That is worth all the grammars of rhetoric and logic in the world.... Who ever reasoned better for having been taught the difference between a syllogism and an enthymeme? Who ever composed with greater spirit and elegance because he could define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis?”

Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Trevelyan’s Life of Lord Macaulay. Chapter VI.

“Truth is the highest thing that man may keep.”

Chaucer.

The object of this book is to teach high-school boys and girls how to write plain newspaper English. Next to letter-writing, this is at once the simplest and the most practical form of composition. The pupil who does preëminently well the work outlined in this volume may become a proof-reader, a reporter, an editor, or even a journalist. In other words, the student of this book is working on a practical bread-and-butter proposition. He must remember, however, that the lessons it contains are elementary. They are only a beginning. And even this beginning can be made only by the most strenuous and persistent exertions. English is not an easy subject. It is the hardest subject in the curriculum. To succeed in English three things are required: (1) Work; (2) Work; (3) WORK.

The modern city newspaper is a complicated machine. At its head is usually a general manager, who may be one of its owners. Directly responsible to him are the business manager, the superintendent of the mechanical department, and the managing editor.

 The business manager has under him three sub-departments: (1) Advertising; (2) Circulation; (3) Auditing. To the first of these is entrusted the duty of taking care of those small advertisements which, owing to the fact that each occupies only a line or two, are called “liners”; the management of a corps of solicitors; and the maintenance of amicable relations with the business men of the community. The circulation department includes not only the management of local and foreign circulation, but also the collection of money from subscribers, dealers, and newsboys. The auditor keeps the books, has charge of the cash, and manages the payroll.

The superintendent of the mechanical department has three subordinates. These are the foreman of the composing-room, the foreman of the pressroom, and the foreman of the stereotyping-room. Each, of course, always has several assistants and often many.

The managing editor has charge of the collection and distribution of news. He has no routine duties, but is responsible for the conduct of his subordinates, for the character of the paper, and for its success as a business enterprise. The relation of the paper to the public is in his keeping. Not infrequently he has serious differences of opinion with the business manager, especially when he publishes news which does not please important advertisers.