ure, p . 13.
journalese;" 49 in part to the stilted , grandiose language that has
often been fashionable, in part to the ambition of reporters to create a new dialect, - the descriptions of baseball games have
partially created a language that many read even though not particularly interested in the game itself ; in part to the fashion
of the hour and an eagerness to be " up to the minute;" 50 and again in part to the enthusiastic but untrained reporters still found on the smaller papers .51 Somewhat in the nature of a by
product of this influence is the tendency to -day towards the elimination of unnecessary words, coupled with a multiplicity of facts that in themselves may add confusion since they are the
result of excessive imagination on the part of the reporter and thus leave no scope for imagination on the part of the reader.52 This aspect of newspaper activity in and of itself need give
the historian little concern . As one phase of a newspaper 's
personality it only repels him and leads him to seek his material in more congenial form , but however repellent it may be in it self, it does not necessarily vitiate the accuracy or truthfulness of the accounts presented .
But the opposite tendency is indicated by Dr. Arnold who wrote more than eighty years ago, “ A newspaper requires a more
condensed and practical style than I am equal to .” 53 W . C . Bryant kept an index expurgatorius in the office of the Evening Post, solely for office use, and although many of the prohibited words and phrases included in it have since passed into reputable
usage, it stands as an enduring example of the ideals in language maintained by a great editor.54 To -day the journalist writes of 49 Mrs. Humphry Ward and C . E . Montague, William Thomas Arnold , Journalist and Historian , pp . 82 - 83 .
60 The climax of newspaper English is perhaps to be found in A . H . Lewis' Richard Croker ( 1901) . 51 In an important work dealing with the press, recently published , the
word “ stuff " was used twenty -six times in thirty-five pages, and the use of the word records fairly well the attitude of many young reporters towards their work .
62 F . N . Scott finds a partial explanation in the apparent effort to write with children in mind. The funny page, the illustrated sporting page, “ sob ” stories, the crimes of children as well as of adults, all appeal to the unde
veloped mind. — “ The Undefended Gate,” The English Journal, January , 1914 , 3 : 1 - 14.
53 Letter to Mr. Platt, December 6 , 1837, Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold , ed .by A . P . Stanley, II, 96 .
64 G . C . Eggleston, Recollections of a Varied Life, pp. 209– 214.
