ADVICE TO NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 9287, 13 January 1892, Page 4

ADVICE TO NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENTS.

Never write with pen or ink. It is altogether too plain, and doesn't hold the mind of the editors and printers closely enough to their work. If you are compelled to use ink| never use 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 copy sent to us. -And don't use capitals. Then we can punctuate and capitalise to suit ourself, and your article, when you see it in print, will astonish, even if it dqes not please you. Don't try to write too plainly. It is a sign of plebeian origin and public-school breeding. Poor writing is an indication of genius. It is about the only 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 ragman as though it were covered with copper-plate sentences. Avoid all painstaking with proper names. We know the full name of every man, woman, and child in the colony, and the merest hint at the names is sufficient: For instance, if you write a character something like a drunken figure '-3,' and then draw a wavy line, and then the letter M and another waving line, we will know at once that you mean Samuel Morrison, even though you may think you mean Lemuel Messender. 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 like to get hold of the man who sends them ! Just for ten minutes — alone — in the woods, with a cannon in our hip pocket. Revenge is sweet. ;' Lay your paper on the ground when you- write ; the rougher the ground the better. When your article is completed, crunch your paper in your pocket, and carry it two or three days before sending it in. This rubs off the superfluous pencilmarks, 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 do it. c