Comments Corner.

Southland Times, Issue 22293, 7 April 1934, Page 18

Comments Corner.

Both Cousins Chrissie Ross’s and Patrick McMullan’s prize-winning entries for “The Old Sailor’s Story” were excellent. They used their imaginations and wrote tales absolutely typical of the ramblings of an old salt. But Cousin Chrissie must watch her spelling! Cousin Laurence Moir wrote a real boy’s story. He is a frequent contributor whenever the competitions are of the doings of men and I am pleased that he won. His writing has greatly improved recently. The other entries were good but on the whole, the construction of sentences was disappointing. You must remember, my dears, that your Cousin Betty has a distaste for involved sentences and I am convinced that too much hurry is the cause of them. Write your essays and read them through carefully. Then, put them aside for a while and when you have freshened your mind—go back to them and study them again before writing them out neatly. You will be surprised at the number of mistakes you will find when reading them the second time. You see, I want the finished article —corrected in everyway by you, yourselves. I enjoyed Cousin Iris Puffery's story immensely and Cousin Zoe’s Smith’s was a most imaginative tale, but not finished off as it should have been. By that I do not mean that the actual conclusion was poor but that many of her sentences were badly constructed. Cousin Phyllis Rule always sends in good entries and this one had very few mistakes grammatically. Cousin Eileen Howden shows promise and I liked her story. The main fault in Cousin Enid Cockerell’s entry was her punctuation. Do watch it, my dear. Once again I must remind you to watch the Rules to Remember.

You are all fond of reading School stories, I gather, my dears. Most of the entries were tinged with the usual school story atmosphere. They were very good on the whole and I was pleased with the large number of entries. One little point, however, always keep to the subject—a school story must be a school story.