JOURNALISM AND GOOD ENGLISH

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 239, 27 September 1930, Page 9

JOURNALISM AND GOOD ENGLISH

Stanley Baldwin, recently addressing the delegates to the Imperial Press Conference in London, pleaded for the use of good English in journalism. The appeal is appropriate, both on account of the immense influence in matters of culture wielded by the British press, and because of the illustrious literary heritage that the English papers of to-day enjoy. Shaw. Barrie, Kipling, Swift. Carlyle, Matthew Arnold and Dickens are among British men of letters who have at one time or another in their careers been connected with newspapers.

It has been suggested that in the less exalted and ambitious forms of literature English standards have not been so rigid as French, because France possesses the guidance of an Academy. Not even an academy, however, can keep a language completely and pendantically free from inaccurate expressions, for the French still talk of “closing the door” instead of “closing the room,” as the Academy, in its zeal for complete linguistic purity, once desired that they should. Nevertheless, the existence in the capital city of the kingdom of a body like the Academy does give to French journalism a guarantee of' the maintenance of literary standards to which, at least until recently, England could show no counterpart. Whether the British Broadcasting Company will ultimately develop into a linguistic authority in any way comparable with the French Academy there are as yet no means of knowing. But the committee on pronunciation which it has set up, and the talks and debates on good English which it frequently radiocasts, are concentrating public opinion on the question of preserving the purity of the English tongue in a way that in the future will undoubtedly form a most useful check upon the carelessness which the popukr press occasionally displays.

ECONOMICAL READING

It is gratifying that a new addtion of Dr. Ernest A. Baker’s book, “Tho Uses of Libraries,” is necessary. Dr. Baker is director of tho University of London School of Librarianship, and his book is valuable to tho ordinary reader because it tells him h'ow to make the best use of the libraries near to him and how to make his course of reading of service to himself and others. In his opening chapter Dr. Baker says:— "A library is a machine that requires a certain amount of skill to handle, if you are to elicit the best results; the larger and more varied its contents, the more is it needful that readers should bo familiar with the library arts, the uses of catalogues and indexes, tho meaning of classification, and. above all, the functions and the scope of books of reference. “These are the handles that set the machine Working. “The object of the present work is not to inveigle you into reading more, but to show you how to read more economically, perhaps with less expenditure, and certainly wtih better returns. Libraries aro full of labour-saving devices. Our aim is to show you how you can bo spared much useless and wasteful toil. THE WAY ABOUT. “Those who really know their way about a first-class library have tho secret that is most valuable to the student, researcher, or any kind of workman—that of economy of effort. “Librarians, however, militant, are not anxious to make people bookish; quite . the reverse Bookishness means an unintelligent addiction to reading, or a slavish reliance on memory and mechanical knowledge at the expense of freedom and practical understanding. We are pointing to something different. We would show you how to use books as tools and libraries as workshops; the object is mastery of books, not sub servience to the printed word. To see life only through books would ho perhaps worse than physical blindness. “Tho object of intellectual effort is to see things as they actually are; and converse with many books and mental vision of many authors will help to the attainment of this desirable realism. LIBRARIES v. BOOKSELLERS. “It must not be supposed, on the other hand, that in inviting you to make more' use of libraries we have the benevolent idea of saving you tho expense of ever buying books for your selves. It is a well-known fallacy that libraries aro the enemies of booksellers; whereas statistics show, what commonsense would have expected, that the more people use libraries tho more they want to buy books. “If, at the middle of last century, instead of passing an Act for the establishment of municipal libraries, Parliament had suppressed what public libraries existed, very few people to-day would bo in the habit of buying books, a handful of publishers and booksellers would find it no very lucrative business to supply the requirements of whole country, and authorship itself —which some might say was no such terrible disaster —would be tho last pursut any sensible person would choose for a livelihood. It. is libraries that have implanted the reading habit. ’ ’