Aim at Something by C. W. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 26, 1877

Aim at Something.

By C. W. S.

A MINISTER was once asked why he wrote so lengthy sermons. He said it was because he had not the time to make them shorter.

It is a fact that when an article is written, unless the greatest care has been taken, it can be greatly improved by striking out and boiling down. Think of what you mean, and then say it; and when a thing is once well said, additional words tend only to weaken. What would you think of the hunter, who, after shooting a deer through the heart, should stand and fire away at his legs?

In writing for the paper, care should be taken to make paragraphs of proper length. The first paragraph in Eld. D. T. Bourdeau's report in this paper is a good rule for length. The second is rather long. To indicate a new paragraph, commence on a new line two inches from the edge of the paper.

Be careful in punctuating. The dash (—) and the colon (:) are to be used very sparingly, and yet one writer sent us an article recently with 28 dashes on one page. We had to cross them out and put commas and periods in their place, before the printer could use it. Another writer uses the colon in the same lavish way. Another lazily rests his pen on the paper making a mark just like his periods after every three or four words. Writers should make commas that look like commas, and periods that look like periods. When points are thrown in promiscuously so that they all have to be crossed out or changed, we could arrange them more conveniently if they were all written on a separate piece of paper by themselves. C. W. S.