“HOW NOT TO DO IT.”

Lyttelton Times, Volume LI, Issue 5715, 20 June 1879, Page 7

“HOW NOT TO DO IT.”

The Burlington S&w&eye gives the followmg directions to it* aowwpwHanffl m i« iW. manner of supplying manuscript, which our contributors will please follow as closely as possible. We have no revolvers, but waste paper baskets abound in this office: —Never write with pen or ink. It is altogether too plain, and doesn’t hold the mind of the editor and printers closely enough to their work. If yon are compelled to use ink, never iha that vulgarity known as the blotting pad. If you drop a blot of ink on the paper lick it off, The intelligent compositor loves nothing so dearly as to read through the smear this will make across twenty or thirty words. We have seen him hang over such a piece of copy half an hour, swearing like a pirate all the time—he felt that good. Don’t punctuate. We prefer to punctuate all manuscripts sent to os. And don’t use capitals. Then we can punctuate and capitalise to suit ourselves, and your article when you see it in print will astonish, even if it doesn’t please yon. Don’t try to write too plainly. It is a sign of plebeian origin and State school breeding. Poor writing is an indication of genius that a great many men possess. Scrawl your article with your eyes shut, and make every word as illegible as you can. We get the same price for it from the ragmen as though it were covered with copperplate sentences. Avoid all painstaking with proper names. We know the full name of every man, woman, and child in the United States, and the merest hint of the name is sufficient. For instance, if you write a character something like a drunken letter “ 5.,” and then draw a wavy line, we will know at once that you mean Samuel Morrison, even though you may think yon mean Lemuel Messenger. It is a great mistake that proper names should be written plainly. Always write on both sides of the paper, and when you have filled both sides of every page, trail a line up and down every margin and back to the top of the first page, closing your article by writing the signature just above the date. How we do love to get hold of articles written in this style! And how we would like to get hold of the man who sends them! 3 ost for ten minutes. Alone. In the woods, with a revolver in our hip pocket. Bevcnge is sweet —yum, yum, yum. lay your paper on the ground when you write j the rougher the ground the better. Coarse brown wrapping paper is the best for writing your articles on. If yon can tear down an old circus poster, and write on the pasty side of it with a pen-stick, it will do still better. When your article is completed, crunch your paper in your pocket, and carry it two or three days before sending it. This rubs off all superfluous pencil marks, and makes it lighter to handle. If you can think of it, lose one page out of the middle of your article. We can easily supply what is missing, and we love to <io so. We have nothing else to do.