lopped off if space requires. The most carefully prepared news articles and letters to the editor seem often foreordained to be
come journalistic amoebae. Writers sometimes find a news article sent in to the press distributed through different columns, one portion appearing as news, perhaps one paragraph as a short editorial, and a third coming out as a letter to the editor.
The old rule of the English press that the leader must contain three and only three paragraphs and each paragraph elaborate a
single idea applies to journalism a procrustean measure that would be fatal to literature. However " little distinction can be made between a piece of journalism and a piece of literature on the ground of external subject-matter alone;" and however well it may be recognized that the product of the same incidents may in one instance “ be interesting as news, in the other, as it bears
upon some universal principle or emotion of human life,” it may assume the creative and interpretative function of litera ture ;62 yet, the limitations of journalism from which literature is free , must be accepted .
The headline defies classification, yet it is rapidly transform ing current English “ as she is read " into a new and surprising language; the exigencies of space demand the use of the shortest,
though not necessarily the clearest word .63 This result is seen in such words as filat (apartment), gems (jewelry) ,hit (criticize ),knife (surgical operation ), loot (plunder), lore (wisdom ), nab (arrest), pact (treaty ), probe (investigation ), quiz (investigate), rap (censure), score (rebuke), show (exhibi tion ), waifs (children ), wed (marry ), zone (territory ), - an almost endless list could be made. It seems as if the desire to put a story into a headline practically eliminates all parts of speech except the noun and the verb.64 62 H . W . Boynton , Journalism and Literature, pp. 1- 23. 63 Much of the telescoping of words was many years ago charged to the manifolder of the Associated Press , - Frisco , Rio , Orleans, and numerous other syncopated words were all laid at its door. The Associated Press is
held to a rigid accountability for “ pouring a stream of cold poison into the English language every morning. " — W . Aplin , “ At the Associated Press
Office," Putnam 's Magazine, July , 1870, 16 : 23–30. 04 See a column contributed by J. L . Lowes to the New York Evening Post, February 21 , 1913
See also a diverting editorial on “ Headlines,” New York Evening Post, November 21, 1908.
