Hints about Writing

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 23, 1870

Hints about Writing.

BECOME full of your subjects, and then write. Let the cup overflow without tilting.

Condense, correct, strengthen, and, if necessary, rewrite the entire article.

Never write for a newspaper merely for your own improvement. As well might one fire a Derringer at his neighbor's head in order to improve his marksmanship. One reads a schoolboy's composition to see whether it is worthy of being read. We read newspapers with the idea that some one has read them before us, and pronounced them worthy of general perusal.

See that no manuscript is sent to the press until carefully revised—all the words carefully spelled, all proper names written plainly, all sentences made clear and grammatical, all personalities cast out, and all low, clownish, common-place phrases heavily erased.

Never get a bad spirit into your articles. If a man can think twice before speaking once, he can think a dozen times before committing his thoughts to paper. No weak, foolish things should ever flow from the point of one's pen.

Do not think that every pin you see in another's article is intended for you. It may have been stuck there to hold truth to truth, and not to make your own chair uneasy, nor to drain your ink-bottle into a rejoinder.

Study brevity, and find if possible the shortest road to what you want to say. It makes the head dizzy to whirl round in a circuit of sentences instead of being led straightforward to the point.

If now and then your articles are rejected or necessarily omitted, do not cease to pray for the editor. Never cast the gun away that snaps at the game. Pick up the flint, and try it again.

Never complain at editorial corrections. If by mistake the sense of the article has been changed, that may be pointed out. Every business has its laws, its usages, its necessities.

No man ever writes for a paper, whether as editor or correspondent, but who may find it well to inquire of himself: What will be gained if this article is printed, and what will be lost should it never appear in type?—Gospel Herald.